Reflection SEVEN

Reflection Seven – Overall learning from the course
This course was wonderful. I strongly recommend other staff members to take this course. I enjoyed listening to the speakers’ share their knowledge and experience of their management and leadership journeys. It is a journey, we all need to learn and we won’t be able to become an effective manager or leader overnight.
Because the speakers were sharing instead of teaching, their role for me was more like a mentor than a teacher.

What obstacles did I face?
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend all sessions due to other commitments e.g. teaching, meeting with staff and students, caring for sick children, togging away for a conference, etc.

What should be done in the future?
I suggest that it might be an option to take the course online and just have few sessions face-to-face. There is more flexibility with an online course and that way, we wouldn’t feel guilty if we couldn’t turn up to class.
In the future, I will seek more opportunities to take professional development workshops or short courses for management and educational leadership. I always believe that if I want to change people’s attitudes toward teaching and learning, I have to change myself. As I said at the beginning of this reflection – it is a learning journey for the ones who are keen to be a manager or a leader.

The following are my personal points of view of being a manager/leader:
• Be confident and believe in yourself
• Trust your staff, use their talents and skills
• Build and maintain relationships with the people around you e.g. other managers, academic staff, support staff, and stakeholders
• Be good at marketing
• Have vision
• Have the five “S’s” as Peter Quigg said - Sit back, Strategies, Structure, Staff and Systems
• Reflect on own practice
• Be happy to receive feedback, open to ideas
• Seek ongoing professional development
• Relax and seek for help if needed (the manager/leader is still human).