Leadership Techniques

The following is excerpted from a presentation by Benjamin Brewster (slides available). The purpose of this interactive presentation was to aid in developing leadership techniques in working with Teaching and Learning Assistants, and with students. Interspersed are several “Self Reflection” questions intended to cause the reader to think more deeply about these topics.

Tools of Leadership

  • Leaders employ many tools, many of which are experience-based, all of which must be practiced to be effective.
  • Presented here are three tools you can use in any situation to better lead your charges, and communicate with your leaders.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

This is the primary tool at your disposal: how effective you are at communicating!

  • It might seem obvious, but to put us at a baseline, our communications should be:
    • Uplifting (Causing feelings trending towards peace, confidence)
    • Motivating (Causing feelings of excitement, helping them see a reachable goal and understanding the benefits of reaching it)
    • Connective (Promotes communications again in the future)
    • Productive (Addresses the issues)
  • If you’re wondering about a particular communication, ask yourself this:
    • If they forward my email on, will I be embarrassed where it ends up?

Examples of Interpersonal Effectiveness

A student asks the question “When are Office Hours?” and receives one of the following answers. Which would leave the student with a better impression, eager to continue interacting with an instructor/assistant?

  • Answer A: “Office Hours are posted on the website, see you in class.”
  • Answer B: “Thanks for asking, I’m glad you are looking to find help - I’m confident we can solve anything! You can find myself and my TAs at the schedule listed on our website here: [URL]. See you in class, let me know if you need anything else!”

Answer B is Uplifting, Motivating, Connective, Productive: it insightfully notices that if a student is asking for help, the student likely needs that help.

Self Reflection - What changes would I need to make to improve my interpersonal communications?

Emotional Intelligence

  • Identifying and controlling your own emotions
  • Identifying (“reading the Room”) and playing to the audience and their mood
  • Calming down or cheering up others

Examples of Emotional Intelligence

A student sends the following communication.

  • i have a 95% in [class] and given that each wrong test answer can lower my score by 0.5%, i can only miss 5 questions on the final, … yet the questions are poorly written and they commonly are on things we haven’t even discussed
  • [the class] is a total crapshoot

Assuming that the course is well set up, and doesn’t actually reflect those criticisms, how would you de-escalate the situation?

Understanding Organizational Dynamics

  • In our leadership, no matter who we are leading, and in our own employment, we are always constrained by the specifics of the organizations we find ourselves in Is this statement true?
    • “Understanding the dynamics of your organization - and working within them - makes those to whom you are accountable happy”
  • What are the pros and cons of this?
    • One important con: sometimes you need to make special requests and/or blow the whistle.

Organizational Dynamics as Employees

Organizational constraints define how you can:

  • Effect change (via suggesting new initiatives, or asking for forgiveness afterwards)
  • Gain promotion (both advancing to new positions and to higher ranks)
  • Magnify your job (formal PD & CE, informal learning and personal projects)

Some constraints you will be under while teaching at OSU include:

  • Workload we can take on (number of courses taught and developed at once)
  • Operational Policies
    • Hiring, HR, Office
    • Course Development procedures
  • State Law

Organizational Dynamics as a Student

Our students are constrained by:

  • A progressive set of class prerequisites, dictating their sequence
  • Their teacher being both instructor and arbiter of their grade
  • Time
  • Money

What are the effects of all of these constraints, as teachers and for our students?

Reflection and Summary

Self-reflection: How can you apply these principles in the leadership of your own classes or course developments?

  • Interpersonal Effectiveness
  • Improving Emotional Intelligence
  • Understanding Organizational Dynamics

Good Leaders will…

  • Seek to summarize and complete
  • Choose good assistants and delegate
  • Are in the business of service: both to those whom they lead and the larger customer base they all jointly serve
  • Set goals, work towards them, analyze the successes or failures, then set new goals

Self-reflection: As you lead, where could you add or increase your efforts toward these?