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No matter which sector you work in, if you’re running a team, a department or an entire organization, you must have good leadership skills. Still, this is particularly important in the education sector, where your leadership ability will have a significant impact on many impressionable young people and on society at large.
Encouragingly, if you watch lifestyle TV shows, books, reports, blogs and sites, you’ll hear about many teachers and other educators who are excellent leaders having a positive impact on people of various ages.
If you’re considering enrolling in an education administration degree or other education-related degree program, you should focus on becoming the best leader you can be. Read on for some of the most important traits top leaders in the education sector typically demonstrate.
Stamina And Resilience
As an education leader, you will have challenging times more often than you like (that’s just the nature of school leadership), so you must be able to keep going, no matter what obstacles are in your way or how dire certain circumstances may seem. In the education sector, lives can be affected by strategies and results, so you have even more pressure than in other fields.
No matter what kind of educational institution you’re leading, you must have the stamina to work long hours and to handle a wide variety of tasks, often with many people and projects competing for your attention. You need to be able to stay calm and upbeat to lead your team effectively, even on those days when you would rather be home on the couch, nursing your wounds from a project that didn’t go well or from a tough comment or other difficulty.
When you face failures in your work, or sometimes just a lack of success, you must be resilient, so you can learn from what you or your team did wrong and know how to improve in the future. This trait will enable you to keep moving forward at all times.
Effective Communicators And Relationship Builders
Working in the education system with people from all walks of life, you also need to be an effective communicator. When leading, you need to convey instructions and your vision, mission and goals to teachers, librarians, admin and tech staff and other key employees. You also need to be able to communicate well with students, parents, members of a board, government workers, journalists and the like.
Being a person who is good at building relationships is vital. Developing strong connections with people is a big part of making an educational facility prosper since you need to ensure various parties work together well and that parents and students trust you and your organization. Relationship building skills will help you draw out the best from your team and encourage students at your school, university or other type of campus to fulfil their potential and be inspired and motivated.
Confidence And Direction
Being confident will help you engage your team better. Employees need to see that their leader is confident in them, in the organization and in the various strategies being executed to move the institution in the right direction.
As well, when you express your confidence on campus, you are much more likely to attract more interest from parents and from students. You will also be better able to lure in top candidates for teaching positions and other roles that become available, and you will find it easier to stay the course when faced with challenging times.
Vision And Purpose
Successful educational leaders can see the big picture and don’t continually get bogged down in minutiae. Leaders with vision are better equipped to spot opportunities in the market and are better at staying on target and avoid distracting ideas that may seem wonderful but don’t actually align with the overarching vision.
To be a top leader, you must have a strategic outlook and see many months and years ahead to steer your organization in the right direction and make corrections to the course over time, if needed. You must be very clear about what both the short-term and long-term goals are for your facility and understand what kinds of projects should be implemented to achieve the necessary results.
