Michael Tebbano's List: leadership

• I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China.

  • I truly believe that given the thesis Friedman shares in this column today the same can be applied to education.
  Add Sticky Note
• unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive businesses without smokestacks, China will die of its own development.
• China is focused on low-cost manufacturing of solar, wind and batteries and building the world’s biggest market for these products. It still badly lags U.S. innovation. But research will follow the market. America’s premier solar equipment maker, Applied Materials, is about to open the world’s largest privately funded solar research facility — in Xian, China.

1 more annotation...

• In general, optimally effective leaders used a combination of transformational and contingent reward (e.g. exchange-based transactional leadership) behaviors, coupled with a low level of passive management-by-exception behavior (e.g. remaining uninvolved until problems emerge).

• The property has a labyrinth on it built with stones and woodchips.

  • What an interesting descriptor to use for this scenario
  Add Sticky Note

• If you live in a culture where your colleagues believe you can be a leader and help you develop the skills you need, you will enthusiastically embrace the mantle of leadership.
• people generally exhibit what she calls either "growth mindsets" or "fixed mindsets." Those with growth mindsets believe they can get better at what they do, that they have reservoirs of untapped potential. They realize that promise by working hard and making incremental improvements over time, whether they are athletes, or writers, or surgeons.
• First, how effectively are you managing your organization's talent?
• First, how effectively are you managing your organization's talent? In the rush to get things done, especially during a severe recession, it's tempting to single out your top 10% for development and forget about everyone else. But from the standpoint of a growth mindset, you're letting a lot of potential throughout your organization go untouched.
• Second, does your organizational culture permit risk taking and mistakes? We of course don't want the kind of egregious mistakes and completely irresponsible gambles that helped lead to our current economic crisis. But innovation does require making some strategic bets, some of which will pay off and some of which will fail. A growth mindset sees those failures as great opportunities to learn.
• Second, does your organizational culture permit risk taking and mistakes?
• are you resting on your laurels as a leader?

• Finally, are you resting on your laurels as a leader? It can be hard to stay hungry over time. The more experience you gain and the more successes you have, the more likely you are to believe there's not much left to learn. 

   

   A growth mindset, of course, calls for exactly the opposite.

6 more annotations...

• To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
• the issue is how to meet the challenges of delivering content and skills in a rich way that genuinely improves outcomes for students.