I. Moral Purpose
It is a fundamental principle that every effective leader must have his/her moral purpose and work on improving it. Moral purpose guides people to do good things and facilitates coherence making. So, prior to our initiating any change and making any proposal, we have to think about the goals and objectives clearly making sure that they are, and understood by others to be, for good purpose. However, a moral purpose in the leader's mind may not be always perceived by other people as “moral” because people may see things from different perspectives. For example, an automation to improve the efficiency may be viewed as a step to lay off the staff. Further explanation to the staff side, like “we cannot survive without the automation, any alternative suggested?", may help as this can let them have a say and get involved.
II. Understanding of the Change Process
We should also be aware that some leadership styles (such as authoritative, affiliative, democratic and coaching) are indeed beneficial to the development of an organization, but some (like coercive and pacesetting) can have negative impact on its climate and performance. So, apart from learning and adopting the effective leadership styles, we have to raise our self-awareness and evaluate ourselves from time to time in order to keep away from any negative style. To listen to others’comments with an open mind can also be very fruitful to us.
We should also understand that we need to be patient, well aware that our goal is not to innovate the most. Moreover, having good ideas are not enough, we should master the positive leadership styles. We have to appreciate that it's common to have implementation dip, and we must have the confidence and wisdom to achieve success. It is unfortunate that some good changes may have been withdrawn too early because of an implementation dip not being accepted. Therefore, it is advisable for the change leader to forewarn the stakeholders of the possible implementation dip if it is so anticipated.
As we understand that people tend to have resistance to change, we must build good relationship with them, listen to them and gain their trust. Good relationship with staff is important but it cannot be built just before considering a change. It should be built as an ongoing practice and culture, with no hidden agenda. Moreover, we should learn to lead in the culture of change for achieving success through transforming the culture of an organization. We should also understand that there is no checklist for change and no absolute leadership strategy and model of doing, we must adjust our leadership styles and strategies flexibly, which suit the situations and circumstances.
When we implement a new initiative in our organization, we need to be well aware of the process of change and adopt the effective leadership styles flexibly that most suit our organization or the ways of doing being customized for it.
III. Building good relationships
We need to build good relationship with our team-mates in order to create collaborative cultures. We must also make sure that we are focusing on the right things, otherwise the collaborative cultures may be destructive if our focus is wrong. Thus, moral purpose, good ideas, focusing on results, and obtaining the views of dissenters are essential, because they mean that the organization is focusing on the right things.
Effective leaders may not be the smartest one in IQ. In addition to intellectual brilliance, they tend to have high emotional intelligence. So, we have to train our emotional competencies in self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. We should also learn to appreciate that resistance and understand that dissent is a potential source of new ideas and breakthroughs.
As we always need to work as a team, team building is most important, which requires good relationship amongst team members. I have met some team leaders who put much effort in building good relationships with team members and successfully maintaining good team spirit, so that we could cooperate well and complete our work smoothly most of the time. I also encountered a team leader who tended to find fault with her team members and blamed them whenever her supervisor did not accept her work. The staff morale was very low and the team members did not have any confidence, even in their routine tasks, not to say when there was something new.
IV. Knowledge Building
As we know that sharing of knowledge, particularly tacit knowledge, is crucial to the development of an organization, we should initiate more sharing opportunities and create collaborative culture. In doing so, we can learn from each other and facilitate the development and improvement of the organization.
Sharing among colleagues in my organization has been increasing and the collaborative culture has also been nurturing gradually, concurrently sharing among teachers in schools, collaborate lesson planning and co-teaching as well as sharing of good practices among schools are being promoted. This is an important part of our professional development.
It is worth noticing that the advancement of information and communication technology facilitates sharing of knowledge at large. Apart from organization website and intranet, some leaders now have their personal blog for opening up their views and ideas and inviting opinions and comments.
V. Coherence Making
Bearing in mind that people have different opinions, we should allow the differences to surface, and shift them to a state of new interactions and ideas so that coherence can be well achieved. The results will not be good if there are hidden differences and some members do not work wholeheartedly towards the agreed goal.
Most team leaders in my organization are quite open, and most of us are free to express our ideas and suggestions. We can agree on the final decisions through deliberate discussions most of the time. I think the head of my section plays an important leading role by explicitly sounding out the message to all members.
Reference: FULLAN, Michael (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco, Calif. : Jossey-Bass.
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