Deron Durflinger's List: UNI Technology for School Leaders

• To succeed in our volatile, complex, ambiguous world, we have no choice but to master our ability to adapt and learn.
• At the same time, we need to have the confidence to make decisions on the spot, even in the absence of compelling, complete data.  The qualities needed at the top—openness, authentic listening, adaptability—also indicate that leaders need to be comfortable with and able to embrace the “grayness” that comes from other people’s ideas or situations that arise.
• Learning Agility is a reliable indicator of leadership potential because learning agile people “excel at absorbing information from their experience and then extrapolating from those to navigate unfamiliar situations.
• In short, Learning Agility is the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly morphing conditions.
• Problem Solvers; Thought Leaders; Trailblazers; Champions; Pillars; Diplomats; and Energizers. The researchers wrote: “People who are learning agile: Seek out experiences to learn from; enjoy complex problems and challenges associated with new experiences because they have an interest in making sense of them; perform better because they incorporate new skills into their repertoire. A person who is learning agile has more lessons, more tools, and more solutions to draw on when faced with new business challenges.” (Hallenbeck, Swisher, and Orr, July 2011)
• Mental Agility
• People Agility
• Change Agility
• Results Agility:
• Self-Awareness
• The world of leadership belongs to the most learning agile

9 more annotations...

• 1. Principals must effectively and consistently model the use of the same technology tools they expect teachers to use in their classrooms with the students.
   
     
   
  2. Principals must be consistent in their decisions and expectations about integrating learning technology in the school.
   
   
   
  3. The principal's communication about the pace and process of integrating learning technology needs to be clear and reasonable.
   
     
   
  4. The principal must provide appropriate professional development time and resources to support effective classroom implementation of technology.
   
   
   
  5. The principal must support early adopters and risk takers.
   
     
   
  6. The principal must do whatever it takes to ensure that all staff has early access to the very same digital tools that students will be using in their classrooms.
   
   
   
  7. As the educational leader, the principal must make it clear to the technology leader that all decisions relating to learning technology will be made by the educational leaders with input from the technology leaders, not the other way around.
   
     
   
  8. The principal must set and support the expectation that student work will be done and stored using technology.
   
   
   
  9. Principals must ensure that families and the public are kept informed about the school's goals and progress relating to its use of technology as a learning resource.
   
     
   
  10. The principal must be an active and public champion for all students, staff members, and the school in moving the vision of fully integrating learning technology for the second decade of the 21st century.

• All administrators have to do is LOOK AROUND and they can see the changes in their students. In society at large. In the many institutions that are dying in the face of these transformative technologies.

• A personal brand is the total experience of someone having a relationship with who you are and what you represent as an individual; as a leader. 
• If your teammates and/or colleagues don’t know what your personal brand is, the fault is yours and not theirs. Having a personal brand is a leadership requirement.  It enables you to be a better leader, a more authentic leader that can create greater overall impact.  In fact, those who have defined and live their personal brand will more naturally demonstrate executive presence and as such may find themselves advancing more quickly at work

• Leaders who are truly (1) servant-hearted; (2) able to put others and the organization first ; and, (3) willing to listen with humility to other points of view are the ones that people will follow.

   

  Thus, if you want to win in today’s hyper-competitive world of work you should (1) hire, promote and retain people who fit that description; and, (2) strive to fit it yourself.