Leadership

I have just finished an 18 month leadership course for senior leaders. It is called the Hillary programme run by Excelerator which is part of Auckland University. The course has been hugely demanding not in time but in commitment. The commitment is about a need to work from ones self. To be a better leader requires a person to be a better person.

There have be many challenges over the 18 months. The challenge of needing to look at myself and how that drives my leadership. The challenge of working with others closely over a long period of time. The last challenge is what this means moving forward and how I am going to use this in the future.

There are two areas which interest me in education. The first and I think easier one is the whole area of where education in the 21st century is heading and how connectivity and Web 2.0 have the capacity to totally alter the way we learn and teach. Schools need to adapt to survive and teachers need to change to continue to exist.

Education as a compulsory part of our societies is only relatively recent and high school education in New Zealand has only been compulsory for 70 years. If we don't change our profession risks becoming as redundant as blacksmiths are compared to 200 years ago.

The second issue follows from this and it is the area of that new word of the decade 'sustainability'. Sustainability in education not only from an environmental view but how do we make learning sustainable as as Friedman states our world flattens around us?

So my leadership over the next time window (undefined in length) is to work in the areas of 21st Century education around firstly connectivity and secondly sustainability.