Leading from the front!
By: Syed Mudaris Andraabi
Leadership in Education is vital in ensuring student and Institutional success. Effective Leadership can help improve learning and teaching and boost performance at educational institutions. Administrators control fundamental assets of an institutionand are responsible for hiring high-quality teachers. These important decisions impact student learning and experience, leading to shifts in performance and achievements.
When you are a leader in the school, everyone who walks through the building will depend on you for guidance in daily decisions and unpredictable disputes. Your role also extends beyond a Leadership position. Your influence as a friend, advisor and mentor to students and staff will transform your school. Adopting the following qualities can help you understand your duties and create a lasting impact.
Making decisions on the fly is a necessary trait for developing Leaders. Unfortunately, not every decision you make will be the right one or the most popular. As a consistent presence in a child’s life, you hold them to a standard of upholding honesty and integrity. Just as you trust your students not to cheat on a test or quit a sports team mid-season, your students and faculty are trusting you to be their voice and do what’s best for the school.
No one is perfect. When you make a mistake, it’s best to take responsibility. Your staff and students will appreciate your honesty and character, which will last longer than the memory of a flub. These character traits alone can cultivate tomorrow’s leaders, empowering them to hold themselves and others accountable, even when it’s hard. Commit to being transparent with the people in your school and uphold your word and promises.
An honest and open leader makes everyday work more enjoyable and efficient by creating a transparent environment for their team members. Teammates can work without reservations and express their opinions honestly. The leader is also able to generate trust in others with their open attitude and actions.
Order and discipline are essential for a good leader. You need to manage your schedule mindfully to meet deadlines, keep appointments and end meetings on time. Your company management and team members will judge your leadership capacity by the degree of discipline you show in your tasks. A good way to build self-discipline is to wake up early, prepare a list of important duties and allot the time to complete them. The main quality effective leader is interpersonal skills. You need to be able to interact and relate with different people, such as your colleagues, your clients, and your partners.
You also need to be able to display emotional intelligence, empathy, and respect, and handle difficult or sensitive situations with tact and diplomacy. Interpersonal skills are essential for building and maintaining positive and productive relationships, as well as for managing diversity and conflict. It’s easy to dismiss the concept of “vision” as vague and woolly, but the best school leaders are visionaries with a clear sense of moral purpose.
The best head-teachers show great judgment, make the right calls and are wise leaders. Crucially, however, it isn’t simply a matter of acting alone. It’s about involving the whole school community and taking people forward together.A good educational leader is always a good listener. In order to be an effective leader, you need to be able to understand what the people around you are saying.
You might not always agree with what they say or want, but it will give you a chance to understand their viewpoint. Just because you are in a leadership role does not mean that you should be the only one making decisions. It is important to give people an opportunity to share their thoughts. Whether it is good or bad, at least you get an idea of where they stand on different issues. You will also gain respect from those who provide helpful information for your decision-making process.
Lastly the most important quality of good leader is patience. Patience frequently takes a backseat when instant gratification and results are highly desired in our quick-paced society. However, patience is not only a virtue in education but a fundamental principle that all teachers must uphold. Learning takes time, and students may need various learning techniques to understand a concept fully. Understanding the need for patience in helping students internalize information and create a genuine buy-in to the learning culture is vital for teachers.Patience inspires your team to have a positive attitude during difficult times. Your leadership when displaying patience will be noticed by your employees and will infect them with positivity.
Kashmir Images is an English language daily newspaper published from Srinagar (J&K), India. The newspaper is one of the largest circulated English dailies of Kashmir and its hard copies reach every nook and corner of Kashmir Valley besides Jammu and Ladakh region.
