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Teaching, Learning, Leading CONFERENCE 2005 |
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Ron White Are you a manager or a leader? |
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| This question assumes that there is a distinction between the traditional activities of management: planning, organizing, directing, and controlling; and leadership: challenging and inspiring shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, and encouraging emotional commitment. Leadership theory itself has moved from trait approaches, to behavioral approaches, to contingency and situational models. In all there is an assumption that managing and leading are two different worlds, occupied by different types of people. While it is clear that the skills involved in managing are essential in maintaining an effectively running language teaching organization, there are dimensions to managing and leading which appear to be important in achieving coherent strategic direction, functioning as a learning organization, and in managing change. The search for universal "truths" about leadership is ultimately fruitless, but aligning leadership with different levels of responsibility is likely to provide a way to achieving successful outcomes for an organization's stakeholders. | |
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Biodata: Ron White, a New Zealander by birth, is based in the UK and has taught and worked as a consultant in most parts of the world. He now works as a trainer for the International Diploma of Language Teaching Management and as a consultant to Cambridge ESOL. He has published on the teaching of writing and on language teaching organization management. |