Servant leadership requires the application of many different characteristics, three of these are listening, building community and\u00a0conceptualization \u00a0(Northouse, 2016).<\/p>\n
Jesus often faced challenging situations. Instead of debating or displaying his power he often asked questions and then listened.\u00a0 People require someone to listen in so many situations.\u00a0 When we are frustrated, stressed or facing tough personal challenges having a sounding board is important.<\/p>\n
Being a good listener is important to me.\u00a0 I am intentional about shutting doors, turning off screens and silencing devices when listening to someone that is sharing something that is important.\u00a0 This practice often has great value for me so I can better understand and support a staff member, friend or family member, thus building our relationship.\u00a0 I know that it also helps these same people to maintain emotional health because they have been heard and supported.<\/p>\n
Our school community includes students, staff and parents.\u00a0 All three of these groups understand their place in the community in different ways.\u00a0 They are able to contribute in different ways and they may have different needs.\u00a0 Servant leadership in this setting would involve making sure the needs of the community are being met and providing experiences for all three parts of the community to interact and work together in a way that builds positive culture.<\/p>\n
Conceptualization is about looking beyond the day to day and understanding the long term vision and plan. For many years our school has been a kindergarten to grade 9 school.\u00a0 Recently, we have worked to establish a small high school group who learns with us but is formally assigned to another school.\u00a0 As this program becomes more successful, shaping an identity for it will be important should it become our own program.\u00a0 It will be a conceptualization exercise to determine which identity would best suit this program so that it would reflect the culture and direction of the school.<\/p>\n
The most challenging of these three concepts has been conceptualization.\u00a0 In many ways I lead a young school with a parent group and school board who contribute thought toward understanding exactly what our school is about.\u00a0 At times it is a challenge to balance day-to-day needs which could involve time, money or other resources with the more long term perspective guided by vision. We are learning to work together to make sure\u00a0 the long term vision of the school shapes our understanding of what it needs today.<\/p>\n
In regard to conceptualization, how does vision practically overcome the constraints of time and money?<\/p>\n
Northouse, P. G. (2016).\u00a0Leadership: theory and practice<\/em>\u00a0(Seventh ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Servant leadership requires the application of many different characteristics, three of these are listening, building community and\u00a0conceptualization \u00a0(Northouse, 2016). Jesus often faced challenging situations. Instead of debating or displaying his power he often asked questions and then listened.\u00a0 People require someone to listen in so many situations.\u00a0 When we are frustrated, stressed or facing tough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit1","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/350"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}