Fullan / Donham and Leadership

The five components Fullan associates with effective leaders are moral purpose, understanding the change process,developing positive relationships, foster knowledge building and sharing, and to strive for coherence. Whilst I can appreciate the value of all of these components, I see the task of creating coherence as the most challenging aspect and look forward to investigating more ideas about how to develop coherence and to mobilize people's commitment to a collective goal.'The litmus test of all leadership is whether it mobilizes people's commitment to putting their energy into actions designed to achieve improvements.'Whilst I think this is true, it is also a daunting task! However I agree that a desired outcome "of effective leadership is that more good things happen and fewer bad things happen"
In relation to a T/L, Donham makes a similar comment in his article re Leadership when he states " They ( Library Media Specialists(LMS))embrace the responsibilty to make good things happen in their schools" He goes on to describe leadership attributes of library media specialists as technical competence, pro-activity and passion.
At this point I am very relieved to see that he urges us to "understand what you can do best.. the challenge is to pursue to the maximum what one has aptitude for and strive for acceptable performance in the other aspects of the field" and he acknowledges "Rare is the LMS who is a true expert in all dimensions of the field".
Phew! I was beginning to feel so inadequate and overwhelmed by the task ahead of me!
This article resonated well with me and gave sound suggestions on how to lead from the middle and exert influence in a school community to gain the respect of colleagues. "Having influence requires establishing one's own expertise, working collegially with others, articulating one's ideas clearly, maintining a good 'say -do' ratio...and establishing processes for reflection and assessment."
Another way to gain respect is to "articulate a disposition of continuously seeking to get better" that is to improve the resources,lesson content and the library environment. He also gave some good reasons to advocate the T/L's inclusion on curriculum or leadership commitees and urges us to make the most of opportunities
to promote and use T/L expertise and information services within our school community. This article outlines key steps and critical attributes of strategic leadership for LMSs. He advocates regular reflection on progress, mentoring within the profession and some action strategies for learning and teaching, information and access delivery and program administration that could be effective in current school library settings. This article gave me a great introduction to the topic and many points to reflect on throughout this semester.