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Module 30: Leading and Managing
“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”
H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006
Module description:
In relation to a working definition of the process of holistic development this module looks at the nature of, and use of, the idea of ‘leading and managing’ by the teacher, or other practitioner, so as to encourage learning, professional development and/or personal growth.
New leadership is needed for new times, but it will not come from finding more wily ways to manipulate the external world. It will come as we who serve and teach and lead find the courage to take an inner journey toward both our shadows and our light—a journey that, faithfully pursued, will take us beyond ourselves to become healers of a wounded world. Parker J. Palmer
‘The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.’ Peter Drucker
Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” It is a set of general principles — distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management…. During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility — for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.
Peter Senge SEE http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm
Introductory reading/s to get started:
Leading:
http://www.infed.org/leadership/shared_leadership.htm
http://www.infed.org/leadership/wood_spirituality.htm
http://www.infed.org/leadership/traditional_leadership.htm
Managing:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-foll.htm
http://www.infed.org/biblio/functions_of_supervision.htm
http://www.infed.org/rank/managing_projects/thinking_about_projects.htm
A sense of the field can be obtained from Roger Stack’s ‘Map’ of Holistic Education see also his blog
