Just a few minutes ago, I learned that Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education by the Senate. The vote was entirely by party lines, although two brave GOP senators joined the Democrats. Pence had to cast his vote to break the 50/50 tie. This as the first time the vice-president ever had to vote to have a nominee confirmed. DeVos is manifestly and singularly unqualified to be the leader of the Department of Education. It is a complete travesty which was only possible because she is filthy rich and basically bought the position.
But enough of that.
What does it mean to lead in this age? Leading is not about telling people what to do but about collaborating with them in an active, respectful way. We are certainly not seeing that in Washington today.
Leading means to work with others to achieve consensus in pursuit of a shared goal.
Blended leadership means to combine a variety of different modes of interaction to promote a group’s successful attainment of a goal. With the advent of technology and the information overload of the internet, it is possible for no group to ever achieve a goal because of the inertia caused by an over-abundance of good and bad information.
Thanks to a presentation by two colleagues during an bi-monthly meeting/sharing of ideas, I have learned about the book Blending Leadership: Six Simple Beliefs for Leading Online and Off by Stephen J. Valentine and Dr. Reshan Richards. Like most of the books which are targeted to the administration of various educational institutions, it is chock full of anecdotes to keep the reader entertained. I generally skim through the anecdotes and samples cases to find the chunks of information, suggestions and ideas which are most immediately relevant to me and my situation.
So here are my notes:
Distributed leadership is leadership which is more organic and is less hierarchical and regimented; often tasks are mutually delegated and the team works collaboratively with multiple view points.
Blended leadership is when the leader combines on-line and off-line skill sets to move a group along to a goal. This means a leader might set up on-line group chats, establish a shared document containing layers of links to files and other information, organize a meeting to accommodate multiple schedules so people can attend the live meeting or contribute before/after a live meeting.
One can lead by learning. In other words, sometimes a leader is not the one with the answers but the one asking the questions and provide a forum for all the proposed answers to be archived. An example of this would be using a #hashtag on twitter to post a query and collecting all the responses. Once the responses are collected the blended leader would categorize and shape the responses into meaningful groups for further exploration.
A blended leader is a networked individual who knows how to interface with people in the real world and the cyber world. A blended leader participates in a variety of on-line communities by asking questions, posting comments on blogs, search topics and gleaning the best resources to share through googledocs, trello, etc.
Pyramid searching is when you ask a question in one field, collect progressively more complex and nuanced information until you reach the top of that field’s pyramid and then you might jump to another pyramid in a different field. This “pyramid searching” allows of unexpected connections and resources which might solve a unique problem.
Make learning visible: witness the experiments, research, questions, re-envisioning as an iterative process. This means don’t keep re-inventing the wheel. If you have a template that works well, share it and let others improve upon it.
Networked conversations look messy because people are throwing so many ideas and observations out there. The blended leader takes the networked conversations and looks for emerging patterns which can be emphasized with strategic use of subheadings and editings of information and the incorporation of links.
A blended leader cares for “on-line” spaces just like a classroom teacher cares for his/her classroom. On-line spaces must be curated so they are easy to navigate which means setting up the on-line space after deliberate thought about the goal and the process and the audience.
Create a curated document after a meeting is over. Have two people take notes on the meeting. Pull in their notes and merge them. Within a week, go back and curate the notes with subheadings, action items, links, etc. and send it out to everyone for comments and feedback.
Blended leaders to not hoard information or skills but share widely and frequently.
“Disruptive innovation” is a new way of doing things with interrupts the old. People don’t like change so you need to make it worth their while to make the change since at first it will cost more of their precious time. Be respectful that what you are asking for when you ask for change takes time.
Share only information that is immediately relevant in a context. Information that is useful but is not shared in a timely fashion is lost information.
There is an application called “Storify” which will allow one to archive Twitter conversations. That might definitely be worth exploring.
Another thing to do if using Twitter is use the analytics tools and see which tweets were getting the most play and then build from there.
The rule of 12. If you ask a question in school, and folks say it can’t be done. Ask the same question of 12 strangers who are not related to the school and see what they say. A fresh perspective might yield an unexpected solution.
Public displays of knowledge gaps can yield innovative solutions. Think about help boards for a tech problem. Someone confesses s/he does not know something. Others respond with their knowledge and then a solution is found (often).
A blended leader shapes information before sharing it so it is maximally effective and efficient. A blended leader does not hoard information but invents ways of archiving or making available the information so everyone can find it when s/he needs it.
Try to think of ways to embed information in a single source instead of sending out bolluses of information in emails which can be easily lost.
If you feel you don’t have time to tell the whole story, tell a “micro-story.” Snap a picture, add a caption, write a quick follow up and post outward to the world. Keep doing this and then collect the “micro-stories” when you have time to write up the entire narrative.
Where your habits of learning and technology “lightly” so are you are willing to try new tools and experiment. Don’t get too invested in any one platform or app or you will miss the next best thing. Be brave and embrace newness.
“Blended leaders find a way to tame the complexity that ripples outward from ingenuity. Because of their own professional and personal networks, they hear about innovations more quickly than others. Because of their mindsets, they seek to understand these innovations before adopting them or abandoning them. And finally, because of their awareness of, and allegiance to, their organization’s missions, they understand how to process innovations into existing systems.” (164)
This past weekend my sister was in Philadelphia. She had to visit a chemical plant in K of P for her job and extended her stay a few days to spend time with us. While she was here, taught me how to knit brioche. She is an expert at it and has made many beautiful cowls and scarves.
In brioche knitting, the basic idea is that you use two colors and knit each row twice. First you knit with a dominant main color; then you push all the stitches back and knit the same row with the other color. To achieve the distinctive rows of pattern on each side, you have to yarn over a certain way.
One mistake I did not want her to correct was the paired lines of knitting blue stitches running up one side. That looked nice but it was a mistake I made repeatedly. But I guess I should really call it a variant at this point since it shifted from a flaw of execution to a desired design element.
Who needs to think? 