I have been working in the Education Bureau for a couple of years, and have been posted to different sections. From my experience, the learning cultures and patterns can vary significantly from section to section even though they are all within the same bureau. I am going to report on the experiences in two of them, “X section” and “Y section”.
The head of X section was a dominant leader who demanded his sub-ordinates to follow many strict instructions and used to reject most new ideas suggested by his subordinates. It seemed that he seldom considered them seriously. He might criticized them openly and regarded them as “stupid” and “silly” ones. Some of us might have quite a lot of unpleasant experiences of being banned and rejected upon expressing our views. Therefore, most of us were reluctant to make any comments and suggestions gradually, even though we had some views or suggestions on better handling of certain cases or improving our working procedures. Under the above mentioned supervision, X section tended to learn very slowly or even could not “grow”.
On the contrary, the head of Y section was a democratic leader, who highly encouraged us to participate in decision making. He also greatly treasured the importance of our continuous professional development. Apart from nominating us to attend training courses and seminars, he encouraged us to share among ourselves. We were free to discuss any educational issues in the office no matter whether they were directly related to our present duties. We were also encouraged to share our views and knowledge in informal discussions and also in the formal meetings. Moreover, he supported us to work out of the office and to liaise with schools closely for better understanding the “real pictures” and needs of schools for improvement of our services and support to schools. Out of his leadership, I could see the improvement and growth of myself and our section. The learning culture of Y section was indeed nourished.
No comments:
Post a Comment