All the six habits of becoming a highly effective person have opened my eyes to some amazing ways that I can become a more effective leader and increase my sphere of influence. I need to first be proactive, take responsibility for my actions, gain control over my circumstances, and make wise choices rather than by reacting to situations and blaming others. Second, I need to start with the end in mind. I need to begin with a vision of where I want to go in order to move forward. I decided my future goal would be to take part in curriculum development or teacher training/mentoring programs. Third, I need to put first things first and focus on my time management to complete important tasks first before worrying about other non-important tasks. Fourth, I need to think win-win. I need to focus on my work relationships and how to make them mutually beneficial for everyone involved. I need to work with others by coming up with a better way of doing things that meet both our needs. Fifth, I need to seek first to understand, then be understood. I need to be an effective listener to show others how I would like to be listened to and this will also allow me to demonstrate how respectful I am when listening to others’ ideas. If I am respectful when others’ are talking and sharing, they will respect my ideas in return. Sixth, I need to achieve synergy with my team. Synergy involves working together to achieve better results than if individuals are working alone. Synergy leads to being an effective, Democratic leader. The last habit of a highly effective person is to practice each one of these skills continually to continue improving. These habits are not something you can do in one week and then be fantastic at forever.
In order to sharpen the saw and continually work to improve in these seven habits, I will need to remind myself of the habits and work to incorporate them into my everyday routines. I have written blog posts about each one, now, that I can refer back to to remind myself of what I need to work on and the focus of each habit. I am extremely excited to learn how to become a more effective leader. Having these tools and techniques at my disposal encourages and challenges me to work to become even more effective than I already am. I am going to print out these seven habits as well and post them in my classroom to continually refer back to. After learning about each one, I know how valuable they are, I just need to remember to continually work on them. This week when discussing this last habit with my colleague, Courtney, I will remind her that as teachers we can never be perfect. We can never be the best and we can never be done learning. This is probably the best habit to remember. We need to continually work to be more effective and increase our sphere of influence. |
Andrea Jacobs
Fifth Grade Teacher Archives
October 2015
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