What kind of leader am I?

Higher Education, Leadership, Nonviolent Communication, Reflective Teaching 0 comments

Photograph contributed by Fernando Carranza and taken in Honduras, CA

Wandering in My Education Life:

What kind of leader am I?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Post 305

While taking a Laureate Education’s Faculty Development program on WASs (working adult students), I was confronted with the task to identify the kind of leadership I exercise in my classroom most of the time. But, while working on this self-analysis of my teaching, and though Dr. Marshall Rosenberg does not speak about leadership in his writings about Nonviolent Communication (NVC), I have come to realize that this type of communication must permeate all sorts of leadership we intend to use with students in higher education or elsewhere. Based on Rosenberg’s (2003) statement of NVC, “we have, however, learned many ways of ‘life-alienating communication’ that lead us to speak and behave in ways that injure” students and “ourselves” as instructors. But we should be the ones who can enhance each type of leadership style.

What is now presented to the reader is my very personal insights into how NVC should be working along with any leadership types one is intending to use within a learning environment.

Feature leadership	Feature leadership includes integrity and emotional maturity for the teacher to keep cooperative relationships with the students.
	*How does this show in class?* Since the leader teachers are mature professionals, they ought to keep cooperative relationships to achieve difficult goals and to carry out a successful influence over learners. This is commonly done in class by demonstrating openness and respect towards all learners’ particular and individual situations.

In Feature Leadership, it is important to avoid the usage of “life-alienating communication” based on “moralistic judgments that imply wrongness or badness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values” (Rosenberg, 2003). To put it simple, there should be an absence of the ambivalence of good or bad just because a learner is not producing what does not comply with my set of values as an instructor or as a single human being. In the exercise of the student’s creativity, they are bound to develop projects that do not necessarily fit what we instructors consider “correct” or “accurate.” And since we will include integrity and emotional maturity to guide our relationships with students, we will embrace diversity coming from learners, and moralistic judgments will also be absent, as suggested by Dr. Rosenberg.

In doing so, NVC will prevail in our interactions with learners in and out of our teaching settings. Feature Leadership will make use of integrity and emotional maturity for the teacher to keep cooperative relationships with the students, in which none of the learners will feel threatened and their (personal, individual, or academic) needs can be satisfied to prompt them to continue their learning journey.

Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leadership implies the emotional quality that is established with the followers, being in this case, the students.

How does this show in class? Since the learners come into the classroom with no bias against the authority the instructor represents, making the students feel emotionally safe in class can produce some good learning. Activities that demonstrate the charismatic leadership include: lectures, scaffolded group, pair and individual work, provision of formative feedback on one-to-one basis or done collectively for a group of learners working together.

In Charismatic Leadership, the use of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is also a must. Teachers who label themselves as charismatic leaders motivate learners beyond the boundaries of what Dr. Marshall (2003) calls life-alienating communication that contributes to behaving violently against peers, learners, faculty members, and so on. Instructors do not get trapped “in a world of ideas about rightness and wrongness –a world of judgments” (Rosenberg, 2003) because they are not interested in labeling students and their actions towards the attainment of learning and complying with assignments for a course. There sole interest is to help students construct their knowledge and skills for their current or future jobs. This is why the self-called charismatic leaders do not judge students and their behavior with words such as “good, bad, normal, abnormal, responsible, irresponsible, smart, ignorant, etc.” (Rosenberg, 2003). The intention while being charismatic is to encourage learners to go for their goals in spite of the fact that they do not comply with the set of values of the instructor who will simply assess the final product in spite of the process followed by the students.

Behavioral Leadership	One of the ways in which behavioral leadership is perceived is when a given behavior is oriented towards the achievement of a task, and such actions as work organization, roles definition and responsibilities are well-defined.
	*How does this show in class?* This type of leadership can be detected when the leader teacher is providing learners with the “right” behavior to achieve goals based on a chronogram of activities. Tasks are posited on the learners to be developed by exercising their own creativity and problem-solving skills.

In Behavioral Leadership, it is imperative to avoid the use of “analysis of others” because they are “expressions of our own needs and values” (Rosenberg, 2003). When instructors express themselves in this way, they “increase defensiveness and resistance to them among the very [students] whose behaviors are of concern to [them]” (Rosenberg, 2003). While working with working adult students (WASs), having them behave defensively and resisting our teaching is by all means counterproductive for any learning process. As Rosenberg (2003) states, if learners feel threatened, they will “agree to act in harmony with our values because they concur with our analysis of their wrongness,” and “they will likely do so out of fear, guilt, or shame.” And as a college professor, I have had this conversation many times with students regarding the way they feel when other instructors label them with moralistic adjectives (right/wrong or good/bad), and in the fear to fail a course, they respond to the set of values the other educator has, “not out of desire to give from their heart, but out of fear” (Rosenberg, 2003). The final outcome of education is not met though a faculty member may feel that s/he has taught learners correctly; it is met when our learners have found out their way to solve problems by themselves, whether their solutions concur with ours or not.

This type of leadership predominates in my teaching: The reason why I use this type of leadership is connected to my discipline to be providing learners with a chronogram of tasks to be developed (organization) and to achieve course objectives that mean they are developing a skill (deep learning). Once learners understand their role in learning, we are on our way to consolidate a skill but not just because I think it is important to have but because it can be of great help for learners in their professional practice. However, no imposition is exercised on them since coercion is not part of teaching style. I just want learners to embark themselves in a personal self-discovery of their innate talents.

Contingent Leadership	One of the characteristics of contingent leadership is the relationship between the teacher and his/her students, the task structure and the “power” exercised by the teacher. An interpersonal oriented leader teacher with contingent features will get better results thanks to his/her proximity with the learners.
	*How does this show in class?* This kind of leadership can be exercised by having an open relationship with learners especially when formative feedback is provided to them on a group or personal basis, especially when dealing with very specific learning tasks such as essays, research projects, talks, and the like.

In Contingent Leadership, the instructor’s proximity to learners is crucial. But this proximity must be attached to the acceptance of one’s responsibility for the learning process the student is to be embarked and that needs to be guided. As stated by Dr. Rosenberg (2003), “life-alienating communication clouds our awareness that we are each responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.” These thoughts, feelings, and actions need to be quite clear to the contingent leader in education when one is to provide feedback to learners. Proximity implies having a good “Nonviolent Communication” relationship that does not prevent learners from exercising their autonomy in their learning. Faculty member’s thoughts, feeling, and actions cannot be governed by that idea that “there are some things you have to do, whether you like it or not” (Rosenberg, 2003). This type of leadership needs to be exercised with the complete absence of responsibility denial of what needs to be done for students. “We can replace language that implies lack of choice [for the learners] with language that acknowledges choice” (Rosenberg, 2003) for the students and a good hold of theirs for their own creativity and search for knowledge.

This type of leadership predominates in my teaching, too: I like to have an interpersonal role with my learners since my sole objective is to have them learn what needs to be achieved along the course (based on the course outline). Having this “proximity” with learners allows me to provide them more personal and corrective feedback to guide them back on track and on target without making them feel threatened but guided. I am certain that I am dangerous when I am not aware of my responsibility in the academia for my pupils, especially when I am not aware of the way I behave, think, and feel. I do not want to get to make a learner feel bad because s/he has done something “wrong” (based on my set of values in a given college subject), but to make him/her feel good for the attempt and the courage to try to face a challenge.

This type of leadership reminds me of a conversation I had some months ago. This ex-student of mine was telling me about his experiences in a practicum course with a supervisor who did not acknowledge her life-alienating communication strategies to guide him towards “better” practices in his practicum. With her behavior, feelings, and actions the supervisor did not communicate nonviolently with this student who –at the end- complied with what she demanded just out of fear of failing the practicum. Having learners depend on educators like her is making students believe that the education is rotten and ill-conceived, but it is just the behavior or a violent teaching figure who does not really know what her role in education is.

Transactional Leadership

As it is understood, the base of transactional leadership is interchange. The leader teacher has already established –based on the course outline- what needs to be achieved and guarantees that the right accomplishment is attained. Learners either get a reward (good grade) or a kind of punishment for inefficient performance (bad marks).

How does this show in class? This is seen in a classroom where there are in-class projects where students are awarded grades for their achievements as well as for their attempts. This is probably one of the most common practices since quizzes, exams, presentations, research projects and the like do include some sort of interchange between the teacher, who is looking for the “right” accomplishment of objectives, and the student, who is interested in getting a good grade.

In Transactional Leadership, as instructors we must be in the lookout not to communicate our teaching desires as learning demands directly posed on the learners’ shoulders. “A demand explicitly or implicitly threatens listeners with blame or punishment if they fail to comply” (Rosenberg, 2003); we teachers tend to make our pupils carry a very heavy burden upon their shoulders when we become just the “grades” provider especially when their academic lives rest in our hands while coursing a subject in charge of us. Transactional leaders must remember that this type of behavior pointed out by Dr. Rosenberg is “a common form of communication in our culture[s], especially among those who hold positions of authority” (Rosenberg, 2003). And I have seen this off-track use of leadership and authority in many colleagues of mine at the university level where they tend to impose rather than negotiate with learners based on course objectives.

This type of leadership predominates in my teaching as well: I must confess that I am also part of this group of faculty members interested in the achievement of objectives but aligned with Nonviolent Communication. After formative, corrective feedback, grades are awarded to my students so they can see their advancement based on a rubric prepared for the evaluation of their projects and learning tasks. But the rubric is not phrased into demands but points that need to be fulfilled to get credit for their attempts. This is why we must remember that our role as teachers is not to change learners and make them behave the way I want them to, but a transactional leader makes learners understand that learning is not meant to be assessed in terms of grades but in terms of the application of knowledge.

Transformational Leadership	Transformational oriented teachers provoke changes in their students by making them conscious of the importance and value of results obtained after carrying out assignments.
	*How does this show in class?* They encourage students to transcend their personal interests for the common good engendering learners' trust and respect, since they are motivated to achieve beyond what was originally expected on any kind of project carried out for the course and grades.

In Transformational Leadership, the instructor aims at provoking positive changes in the learners and their construction of knowledge and skills. A transformational educational leader goes beyond violent communication with students and forgets about punishment. And since “Life-alienating communication is also associated with the concept that certain actions merit reward while others merit punishment” (Rosenberg, 2003), in education this is something that must be away, but far away from any possibility in the mind of the instructor. I am certain that teachers get angry at times with certain learners and simply want to canalize their anger in destructive ways to punish a student who is not complying with their set of values, and I have also witnessed colleagues who confront their “defiant” students in ways in which you simply feel uncomfortable for both of them. In the end respect is simply forgotten at home in a one of the desk’s drawer.

This type of leadership also predominates in my teaching: As a university professor I also use this kind of leadership as part of my teaching since I want students to see the value of their efforts and how the newly-acquired knowledge can be used in their current or future jobs. In addition, it could be possible that whatever they are doing at work can be enhanced by new trends or tendencies but in an NVC environment. And all this can be achieved with trust and respect for what learners are attempting to achieve in their ways of learning.

Relationship Leadership	The teacher's work is that of exerting an influence in the students' motivation through his/her own behavior to get the student to seek an association with the teacher through a contributing relationship.
	*How does this show in class?* This manifests itself in the way in which planning is actually done. That is, by using the ABCD way of writing learning objectives, the leader teacher can concentrate on the kind of behavior s/he expects to get out of learners in terms of what students can face in their working lives.

In Relationship Leadership, the instructor aims at creating a relationship-based management of the classroom to potentiate relationships and their impact on education. As Scholl (2016) suggested, relationships are the basis for learning when they are created in a classroom. A relationship leader also avoids “life-alienating communication” that “both stems from and supports hierarchical or domination societies” (Rosenberg, 2003). Relationships, as suggested by Scholl (2016), are also grounded on the idea that power and control can be shared by teachers and students. We do not want teachers to be in control and having all students complying to this desires and demands; we want learners to feel at ease in class with us instructors, peers, and themselves.

Also this type of leadership predominates in my teaching: I see myself using this kind of Relationship Leadership, too. Based on what it is stated above, I look forward to having learners demonstrate what they are learning in the classroom or on the LMS not only on their learning tasks but also on their way of seeing what we are covering in the course and its importance for their future or current jobs. I do not want them to look for me, an outside authority, “for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good and bad” (Rosenberg, 2003). It feels great to see when students come with their own ideas whether something is functional or practical for them and they feel free to exercise their critical thinking and creativity. This leadership allows us all to comply with the goal of education: to develop skills and competencies in our learners.

At the end of this lengthy self-assessment to discover how I exercise my leadership, the reflection upon NVC is what really counts. That is, in spite of the fact that none of us is one single type of leader, we need to be aware that life-alienating communication can come in the way to spoil the whole learning/teaching process. Let’s reflect upon Rosenberg’s teachings to discover how we can really exercise our leadership styles to help learners become fulfilled and satisfied learners.

References

Rosenberg, M. (2003). Nionviolent Communication A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Scholl, M. (2016, October 7). Relationship-Based Management. San Jose, Costa Rica: PD Talks.

Sunday, November 06, 2016

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