Leadership

Five Traits of Exemplary Leaders

There are a number of leadership traits or qualities that have been discussed in class this semester. To pick just five of them as the most meaningful is difficult. I would like to choose five that I believe are the most critical in the educational arena. I have written much this semester about the differences between educational leadership and private industry leadership. It has only been recently, after discussing the issues with a classmate, that I have come to view the intent of the course differently. My focus in this paper is to reflect on several qualities that I believe make a good leader and how those qualities might be developed within me. My goal is to explore my own potential for leadership and to identify traits within myself that might serve me in a leadership capacity. Additionally, I want to examine traits that I might value in a leader and seek ways in which these characteristics can be attained or developed within myself. In rereading the syllabus of assignments, I can see where this topic might have been explored more appropriately in an earlier essay, but it is my hope that I will be able to expand on the ideas there and perhaps create a more reflective paper in the process.

Throughout the semester I have focused less on the qualities of leadership and more on the comparison between leadership in the schools versus leadership in private businesses. I think that for many teachers and others who work in a public school environment there is an automatic, almost reflexive, response whenever there is talk about adopting a "business" model of school administration. While this might not be entirely a bad thing, it does lead to rejecting ideas that could well be appropriate and meaningful. As I will explain later in this paper, one of the traits that one should value in a leader is openness to new ideas and philosophies. I would like to draw upon the readings and class discussions to examine five traits of leadership...