Reflection ONE

Reflection One – Vision
In the first session we had Dr. Helen Anderson and Tina Fitchett, share their knowledge, skills and experience of being managers and leaders. I remember Helen told us about how leaders have to have vision. It rang true to me, because I’ve always believed that being a good manager doesn’t necessarily mean being a good leader. A manager may be very able to manage a group of people but may not be able to lead staff, and this is especially true when the manager doesn’t have a vision of what they want to achieve.

How do these ideas reflect on my position?
Since I was appointed as a practicum coordinator in December last year, I’ve wondered how this position came to be unpopular, with its heavy workload and stress from creating and maintaining relationships with different stakeholders. The last practicum coordinator stepped down after one year of this job. I’ve been thinking, how I can be sure not to resign from this position after a year? Therefore, my main vision for this year is to make the practicum administrator’s job and my job easier; to do so means we need to work smarter, not harder. This year I have made lots of changes in the practicum; if one thing didn’t work, I tried another strategy, if that didn’t work, I tried the next one. Now we are almost at the end of the second semester, and all the new things are settled.

What obstacles did I face?
The biggest obstacle I had was staff. I have vision, but it does not mean that other people are willing to share the vision with me. I made all the changes for practicum, but there was nothing to do with them. I made our jobs easier but the changes may have made them stressed as they had to change their working style. Also, some people often struggle with changes. I consulted with management and discussed the changes with staff in meetings before I developed new things for the practicum. Many staff members often disagree with what I do, but thankfully I have a very supportive management team who trust in my abilities.

What to do in the future?
I will continue to develop my vision for the practicum. Next year I won’t need to implement any more big changes in the practicum, and we don’t need to aim to get a big number of students. I therefore want to have a vision of quality. The vision is: to maintain the quality of students, and to create and maintain a quality relationship with staff, teachers and associate teachers. To complete my vision, I will have more open discussions and spend more informal time with staff. In the next reflection I will discuss my relationship with associate teachers.