Hello Sea Breeze,
Wonderful post on behalf of Change Makers, ET2 group! You have provided a lot of food for thought for me to consider.
“Servant leadership would therefore bring about more engagement from staff (Hughes et al., 2014, p.56). Staff would feel loved and appreciated. They would be encouraged to emulate their servant leader and would thus start performing at a higher level.” I find the linkage of “more engagement” to ‘feeling loved and appreciated” an interesting comment. I wonder if this criterion is needed for most people to be engaged at a higher capacity? Are you speaking for yourself personally? For me, I don’t need to feel loved, but I do need to be respected. Also, I was in a senior administrator meeting today where there was a conversation about the lack of staff engagement even though there have been several transformational servant leadership competencies applied to these specific teachers. Being strategic in ones TSL can be difficult to implement also.
“At staff meetings, there would be more participation and open-ness to experimenting with the new curriculum. Negativity, pride, selfishness and gossip would all flee. If servant leadership were the central focus of strategic leadership in schools, there would be a new revolution.” I also find this an interesting interpretation of the effects of strategic TSL. As we are in different sectors of the education system, you in public and me in private, I wonder if you interpret the public-school system as non-strategic TSL? I get that sense when I read your post. Maybe I am interjecting, so this is why I ask. I would consider my school as striving for strategic TSL, and yet there are still negativity, pride, selfishness, and gossip found in the staff culture. As humans, we are prone to walk in the flesh, participating in the fruits of the flesh (Galatians 5). However, as strategic TSL leaders, the job is to cast vision higher (ex. towards the Lord, towards a better future) so that the fleshly expressions are dampened. We inspire to give hope, to take the thoughts off of the difficult day-to-day work we do, reminding people of the calling we have. Maybe we are saying the same thing but it seems your description is too utopian!? Let me know.
“I think TSL is a great strategy to implement in educational settings and would work best in a Christian school environment where all teachers are at least on the same page and the Christian school community would rise up and eagerly support with little or no backlash.” To be sure, being in a Christian school environment provides leaders the opportunity to acknowledge the desire to follow and be like Jesus. However, it is my also my experience in the public-school environment when I did my teaching practicum recently, that the passion for making a difference in students’ lives was palpable. Creating unity on these bases created wonderful professional learning communities that I am still in contact with today. Do you have this opportunity in your school? As the sower of seeds, teachers in both sectors have the awesome ability to share the love and light of Christ in our spheres of influence. In fact, my high school Biology teacher, who inspired me to pursue a B. Sc., was a Christian but I didn’t know that until a few years ago. As a young person searching for God, I saw the light in him and that passion changed me. I hope you see that you have that same impact in your setting!
Blessings!
Stella
References:
Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie D. (2014) Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition
Hi Stella,
Thank you for responding to our Change Makers blog. Perhaps I am a renaissance woman at heart and use the word love too liberally for your palette when I should tone it down. True, teachers do not need to be loved as in the eros kind of love but rather love in a more self-esteem kind-of-way. So to re-explain my point, “staff would feel loved (have self-esteem after being encouraged and lifted –up by another teacher or administrator who practices transformational servant leadership) and appreciated.”
To your next query, you are correct; I do not see the public system orientated to the implementation of strategic transformational servant leadership. There are certainly some things that people do that might be servant-like, take for example the fundraising for Terry Fox, assisting Aboriginals in Fort Langley to build up a wall of sandbags to prevent the river from doing too much flood damage and other kind service acts that the Humanitarian Club participates in, every once and awhile. There is in my opinion a difference between Christ-like strategic transformational servant leadership and worldly (doing good works without Christ at the center) transformational servant leadership. I grapple though with understanding how the word servant could be used when in my own mind-set, Christ is the epitome of servant-likeness.
I agree with your closing remarks where you said “as the sower of seeds, teachers in both sectors have the awesome ability to share the love and light of Christ in our spheres of influence.” Certainly, I do have a unique opportunity to bring some light into a dark place and working towards becoming more of a transformational servant leader will naturally draw others into the light.