Leadership Challenge #6

Module 11 ldc Steps 1, 2 and 3 on provocative question #6

Provocative Question #6 (LdC)

Note: You will use the "Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action" video from TEL 703 Readings in your leadership challenge activities for this Module (in addition to Wenger).

As your identity changes, what can you do to foster continued connections and even grow your engagement in COPs that can influence your ability to innovate?

I think that I would be wanting to embrace more communication with my COPs in order to keep developing my identity. I feel that as my identity changes, I still have the opportunity to push my development and enrich my experiences. There is only one way to do this: being an active participant. By doing this, I will help to promote activities and discussions with my colleagues so that we can learn to ask questions and seek out exposures to other viewpoints. I see that building upon an identity may push me out of some COPs; however, for the most part, I see it as an enrichment process.

Step 1. Prepare for an on-line Conversation

Quote/ideas from the book; applications/instances from your workplace setting	Page number
A defining characteristic of participation of the possibility of developing an "identity of participation", that is, an identity constituted through relations of participation	56
The experience of identity in practice is a way of being in the world. It is not the equivalent to a self-image; it is not, in its essence, discursive or reflective.	151
Identity as a relation between the local and the global. We define who we are by negotiating local ways of belonging to broader constellations and of manifesting broader styles and discourses.	149
We are always simultaneously dealing with specific situations, participating in the histories of certain practices and involved in becoming certain persons.	155
I recently got a new role that will start in January being the program degree coordinator. I will still be teaching (three classes), but taking on this administrative role. I am not sure how this will change my identity as my relationships and identity changes.	Workplace
I talked with some of my students about a mentoring program (bouncing intervention ideas off of them) and they were saying how helpful it would be to have a guiding hand with a lot of what they are going through. It seems like part of their nervousness with approaching school and grad school and to do with where they saw themselves fitting in.	Workplace
re: Alignment... It gives up some of its ability to combine institutional reification with local participation, to engage the designed with the emergent, to connect the global with the local, and to inspire identification with negotiability.	261
Indeed, the kind of personal investment and social energy required for creative work are not a matter of institutionalized compliance or abstract affiliation; they are a matter of engaging the identities of participants.	253

 

Step 2. Hold an on-line Conversation

After participating/viewing the “fishbowl” conversation record notes here (below) about your responses to your peers or new thoughts based on their postings.  Be certain your notes here are comprehensive, as were your responses to peers. (If you participate as a “fish,” in the fishbowl your notes, which should be entered below, can be much more succinct.) (This space expands to accommodate your writing.)

Quote/Application #1 - Identification is not merely a subjective experience, it is socially organized. p. 192. - Her ID as a lecturer (Criminal Justice Department) has been developed as a result of the relationships she's forming. Originally, in person only, now fully online. Develop online templates, ID forming through this online teaching and development and now through action research and this program.

Quote/Application #2 - People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. - Simon Sinek, Ted Talk

Leading my example, walking the walk and talking the talk. Her research is about technology and how to integrate it into their practice, show by demonstration, become a subject area expert in order to better communicate the technology. Show the technology value in the classroom, have ownership

Quote/Application #3 - All the great and inspiring leaders and organizations of the world think, act, and communicate in the exact same way and it is the complete opposite to everyone else. - Simon Sinek, Ted Talk

Making sure to communicate the "why" behind the innovation and what people are doing. More important than the what, or how. Opposite of what people traditionally think about. Why is part of the belief system, encourages people to feel passionate about, invest in it. “Why” is what their purpose is, their cause, their belief… why they exist. Why should anyone care? Inspired leaders/organizations thinking, act, and communicate from the inside out.

Quote/Application #4 - From this perspective [paradigmatic trajectories] a community of practice is a field of possible trajectories and thus the proposal of an identity. p.156

This quote seemed to me to be very applicable to our provocative question, because it references the possibility of the development of either a new or ongoing identity.  Identity, then, can be proposed and negotiated among members of a community of practice.  This is a moment in which history, or possible pasts, and the possible futures converge in the present time to create a space for mutual engagement.  These paradigmatic trajectories embody the history of the community through the very participation and identities of the practitioners. Maintaining an open dialogue with these members can help to grow engagement in our community of practice and motivate our members to innovate.  

Quote/Application #5 - An identity, then, is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other.  As we encounter our effects on the world and develop our relations with others, these layers build upon each other to produce our identity as a very complex interweaving of participative experience and reificative projections. p.151
Through a regional group, we have developed a community of practice related to the completion agenda and closing the achievement gaps.  This started as a local participation, but as we all started to expand our learnings and interpretations among various colleges and programs, we have broadened our scope, understandings, and contextualized differences, but the combination of the various expertise and the complexity of the context has deepened our identities and relations with each other related to this community. Challenge of changing habits and roles. Routine, shy away from such changes

Quote/Application #6 - People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it. - Simon Sinek

Quite often people tend to base one’s value solely on that of their accomplishments.  But there is more to it than just that. When thinking about COP and identifies as a member it will will lead to the solidification of membership. Need active participation, not about who you are but what you do to add value and why you do it. In other words, what is your purpose that drives your personal practice and how can others learn, be moved, or buy-in to that of what you do?   

Step 3. Determine your Leadership Challenge/new leadership challenge

Based on your own quotes/ideas from Wenger, your workplace experiences, and new insights you developed as you reflected on your peers’ work, what behavior do you want to experiment with/try out for your leadership challenge in the next few days? (Write one sentence.)

I would want to actually meet with one of my co-workers to talk about my new role and place within the department and school. He used to be a lecturer and then moved into the new role as I will be but for a different department.

 

Step 4. Implement and Reflect

November 8 - I am still awaiting time to meet with my co-worker. He has yet to get back to me about meeting with me formally. We have briefly talked about the added responsibilities of the position, in particular the additional committees and meetings to attend. As far as identity, this still remains a mystery.
November 13 - So this leadership challenge was a bit of a bust. We were never able to catch up together. We will be in the same meeting at the end of next week, so perhaps then I can corner him for a few minutes.