What is your management style? Is all leadership the same? Are leadership and management roles about personality? How do you take people with you on a journey of improvement? Can leadership be taught?
“there is no doubt that effective leadership and appropriate training for the leadership role is an increasingly important element as we move to larger and sometimes more complex, multi-professional teams of staff.”
ELEYS study (2007)
Within Early Years settings promotion to leadership and management roles are usually gained by individuals who are experienced practitioners.
The skills to be a good manager let alone an effective leader are not often directly addressed. It seems to be assumed that these skills are about personality and will be developed almost by osmosis.
So, what do I mean when I talk about management and leadership?
Someone once said management is doing things right and leadership is about doing the right things. In other words following procedures is managing and selecting the appropriate course of action is leading.
In my view, the most effective leaders flex between these two roles. What do you think about the following statements?
• The leader/manager questions “what and why” prior to the “how and when” of a course of action.
• A vision clearly communicated enables change / development
• The most effective managers are also leaders
• Expressing leadership requires taking responsibility
• Leaders have courage
• Developing leadership/management skills is an ongoing journey
• Sometimes leaders need to follow
• Leadership is expressed in different ways by different people
• What leaders and managers don’t do is as important as what they actually do
• The motivation and enthusiasm of leader/managers is infectious