Elaine V. Bernal

The Technology Director’s Guide to Leadership: The Power of Great Question by Don Hall is a practical resource for technology leaders, administrators, and teacher educators.  The book is a handy, quick reference with an easy to follow format of technology leadership principles and activities to reinforce these lessons.  The strategies are highly inclusive that allows any technology leader to work with various departments of their organization.  The author strikes a balance between principle and practical applications.   Hall uses the story of Max Seeker, a technology director in his respective institution throughout the seven chapters to illustrate the challenges and successes of leaders in technology.  Each chapter is divided into theory, application, and guided activities comprising of a series of questions for the administrator and those he or she works with. The chapters are structured in a manner such that anyone in an organization who has the decision-making capacity regarding technology can lead their team to the best possible solutions.

Chapters one through three provides a roadmap showing the reader where and how they will begin their journey towards successful technology leadership, and ultimately how to create a vision of how that successful leadership will look like.  Chapter one opens with Max Seeker facing a gamut of problems that most technology administrators face - ranging from a series of technical issues, employee management, and appropriately gathering data for the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in accordance to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).  Max had felt he was running out of options with the overwhelming issues he faced at work, and signed up at his local university for leadership training in hopes of finding solutions. He brings his problems to his three instructors - Professor Sage, Professor Oracle, and Professor Sensei - and each teacher suggests to Max a different strategy on how to overcome his obstacles.  Professor Sage gives Max copious amounts of information, Professor Oracle seemed distracted and just responded to Max’s inquiries with more questions, and Professor Sensei provided Max with guidance and clarification.  Chapter two then details the kinds of leadership that Max Seeker just encountered among his professors - the Sage, the Oracle, and the Sensei - and how technology leaders will need to call upon the three different leadership styles when working with various departments, employees, and teams. The Sage “represents an authoritarian type of leadership”, the Oracle, “lives in the world of global and abstract ideas,…and most concerned with attitudes and relationships,” and the Sensei, “represents the dual role of mentor and facilitator.”  The chapter gives details on what types of employees will respond best to the leadership styles, for example, Instructional Technology staff may respond best to the “Oracle” type of leadership as such staff, according to the author, generally want to feel connected to who they are working with and are not accustomed to authoritarian leadership such as the Sage.  Chapter three then moves on to showing the reader how to create a mission and vision for their organization, in light of the different leadership styles possible and the types of leadership employees best respond to. The first three chapters are effective in logically and clearly illustrating how to implement various leadership styles in certain situations, but what the reader should be careful about is not to heavily rely on the generalizations the author asserts about working with different types of employees.

Chapters four and five delve into further detail about the problems that leaders face when it comes to implementing technology projects to improve teaching and learning, and how to develop a strong team capable of successfully completing such projects. Chapter four guides the reader to exploring goals and objectives of a projects - especially in regards to feasibility and practicality.  The reader is shown ideal situations in which technology is an effective fit with the pedagogy - for example, technology may be highly useful in project, brain-based, or innovative types of teaching, however, minimal technology might be needed when traditional teaching is used in the classroom.  Other useful questions include, “How will this improve teaching and learning,” “What problem are you trying to solve,” “Is the result worth the effort?” and, “Can you afford it?”  Chapter five starts with Bruce W. Tuckmann’s model of Developmental Stages of teams - Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.  The author briefly describes delegation strategies, that while, “there are no hard or fast rules,” he suggests that the biggest factor in delegation is trust, and gives guidelines about when it is safe delegate based on the characteristics of a project, for example when the task is low risk or the deadline is relaxed or distant. The order of these two chapters works - defining the problem, then figuring out how a leader will work with their team to solve it. Chapters four and five set up the remaining chapters very well as those sections go into assessing the team and how a leader can check their own progress.

Chapters six through eight give the reader the tools to assess how their projects are going, and how they can improve themselves and develop their team further. The author draws upon the Four Quadrants of Leadership model by Wilfred Jarvis, in which leaders can assess their teams through the following criteria - Leadership Capacity and  Performance - and to check for trends that arise from their organization such as: Creative Synergy, Dysfunctional Synergy, Constant Conflict, Awkward Coexistence, Persistent Frustration, and Avoidance/Isolation. Based on those results, the author outlines steps on setting on how “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Oriented, and Time-Bound” (SMART) goals for leader and his or her team to get everyone on the right track, and how to monitor progress. The author then provides a detailed instructions on how to develop a communication plan to disseminate information about current technology projects.  Using the power of storytelling, the reader learns how to get the community (i.e. parents of students) and any other stakeholders to buy in to the investment being made into technology in the classroom.

The book is highly recommended for new and emerging technology leaders in K-12, Community College, or Higher Education environments. Given that the author draws upon various existing leadership models, the book is ideal for administrators who may have a wealth of expertise on educational technology, yet lack leadership experience and skill.  Technology administrators and professors in Educational Leadership can easily use the book as a teaching tool for introducing executive and management skills in the context of technology in education.

Today I am volunteering my time to be one of the Facilitators for the CSULB Latina Connections Conference. The root word of Facilitator is, “facil,” or easy, and I thought to my self how am I, and how can I make things easier for my students?

Now some of you who are reading this post may think, “don’t students have it easy enough as it is?” First off, what I mean by easy is what can I do best to support and encourage a person’s growth. Easy is not giving someone the answers, or teaching to the test, but rather what is the best action I can take as an instructor to ensure that a student is getting the best education possible, such that they are prepared for whatever venture they choose to pursue.

For more information about the Conference, visit the following webpage:

http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/students/caps/programs_workshops/latina_connection_conference/welcome/