Leadership as a Doctoral Student

Introduction

A leader is an individual who shapes the behavior and thoughts of others. He provides direction that others follow willingly. Effective leadership standardizes performance. Good leaders are those who influence organization’s human resource to perform beyond its expectations. Administrators plan, lead, control, and organize; and as such, leading and administration are inseparable. Each of them forms an integral portion of the other. In this regard, if an individual cannot inspire and influence others into working willingly towards the strategic goals of the organization, all the administration and planning becomes ineffective (Bailyn, 1972). Similarly, the activity of setting direction would be ineffective without proper administrative skills.

Advanced Leadership Ability

Advanced leadership ability facilitates an individual’s achievement in interacting, conflict resolution, and motivation of group members. Certain traits differentiate leaders from the non-leaders. The traits include the desire to lead, drive, cognitive ability, honesty, knowledge, and self-confidence. Effective leadership requires a person to possess communication competence and knowledge (Richardson, 2008). A leader requires knowledge on issues so as to be able to lead a team. Additionally, the knowledge enables a leader to identify the available alternatives. As much as he communicates effectively, the leader ought to be a good listener. To communicate and listen in an effective manner, an individual needs to acquire qualities such as empathy, interactive, courage, openness, positive attitude, and flexibility.

Effective leadership necessitates one to value his colleagues, listen actively and be of consistent behavior, credit others’ achievements, admit mistakes, be an exemplar for his followers, and possess a sense of humor. A doctorial student possesses an advanced leadership ability which enables him to interact with the rest of the team members. The interaction facilitates discussions on issues relating finance and student performance (Robert, 2008). Additionally, the ability enables the student to make plans and generate ideas during his discussion with others. The responsibility of an educational leader is to set priorities, design agendas, follow-up during their discussions with others, and make learning sessions meaningful. The student performs simultaneous roles of motivating other students and solving conflicts among them, as well as the members of staff. At the doctorial level, students have the ability to set vision, strategize, and assess institutions’ past performances. As such, they succeed in guiding others towards the desired behavior and actions (Boyd, 2007).

As a leader, a doctorial student undertakes dual responsibilities of organizing and developing the culture of altruism. They are equipped with the knowledge that makes them see the failure of their organization or the teams they lead as their own. They are motivated to undertake their engagements selflessly, and as such, their greatest challenge is to inspire their team members to perform beyond their aspirations. The leader has the responsibility of making the members consider themselves as a part of the institution (Shirky, 2008). As such, they would be willing to engage in their activities in a manner that assures success for their organizations. They work passionately for the good of the institution and all its stakeholders.

A doctorial student’s advanced leadership abilities present him with enhanced analytical skills that strengthen his leadership and management. The students are provided with hands-on learning and studying which is based on varied backgrounds. Their prior educational background provides them with the ability to tackle any kind of challenges that they face. Moreover, they utilize the opportunity to share their experiences with the rest of their team members (Prensky, 2008). Their leadership traits are enhanced, and this enables them to develop and learn new capacities as their effectiveness improves. As a result of their advanced learning, doctorial students possess refined communication skills. Additionally, they improve their knowledge as they relate with experienced members of their group. Their behavior and attitudes improves, and this improvement which is beneficial in their education and administration careers. The students, therefore, manage to address challenges in educational leadership, a situation which results into an organized culture of altruism (Ozmon et al, 2007).

Of late, there has been an increased level of student participation in administrative engagements. This has improved the quality of education, especially in the higher level learning institutions. Student participation in educational administration has facilitated reformatting, a situation which has raised the level of accountability. The revised program facilitates the evaluation of students’ growth on a yearly basis. The teaching sections are designed in a manner that incorporates the emotional and social needs of individuals from the diverse racial backgrounds. This facilitates the enhancement of the interaction between the tutors and their students. For the advantage of the learners, the curriculum has been made flexible enough, a situation which has been able to foster enthusiasm amongst the stakeholders, especially the students (Downes, 2005). The curriculum ensures that the materials being utilized are attuned towards the enhancement of racial integration. This has led to the diversification of team effort, a situation which facilitates an effective service delivery.

The advanced leadership enables students to invite all the stakeholders to participate in the formulation of strategic goals. They enable the institution to devise a strategy of ensuring that all the important pieces of information are documented in a conventional manner, which would ease the evaluation process (Gutek, 2004). Additionally, their effective documentation skills facilitate the determination of the strengths and weaknesses being exhibited by an educational program.

The advanced leadership ability enables doctorial students to devise a school curriculum in a manner that fosters enthusiasm and passion for learning. The program facilitates the apprehension of concepts with regard to the leader’s capacity (Cahn, 1996). To achieve this, revised curriculums are prepared in a flexible and creative manner so as to balance the diverse racial backgrounds, technology, ecological sensitivity, and developmental readiness. This empowers through social intelligence and self-knowledge. Aspects of social integration and technology feature in all aspects of the curriculum. Such a strategy is meant to facilitate learning through developmental models where students are able to recount the experiences that they have been through while detailing their achievements in teaching (Brown, 2008).

Effective leadership enables the students to learn according to a unique developmental model that caters for a racially diverse environment. This is done in an endeavor to enable students to experience learning. The idea is to avoid rushing the students in their educational engagements. Proper educational administration enables the creation of teaching materials in a manner that enables the students to recount the details and experiences that they have learnt over a certain period of time. The doctorial students are equipped with the skills of ensuring that the learning arrangement is prepared in a manner that nature is a stimulating environment through proper rhythms of days and seasons. This enables the students of the institutions being administered to receive detailed evaluations at the end of a schooling term (Cremin, 1970). This is unlike the report cards with number and letter grades that used to be issued in most learning institutions.

Doctorial students embrace an all-round curriculum, a curriculum that influences knowledge upon a student when his/her mind and body have the capacity to process the messages being received. Contemporary elements are resisted so as to prepare the student for an effective absorption. As such, doctorial students are equipped with knowledge relating to process of incorporating computer and information technologies in the learning will. The school curriculum they prepare emphasizes the need to assume various social and extracurricular activities. This presents the school community with an opportunity to experience the cultural diversity, a scenario that leads to the recognition of the community’s robust cultural history. This is represented in the curriculum and the educational administration strategies (Knight, 1980). This is especially necessary because of cultural and racial backgrounds of the stakeholders in most learning institutions.

The goal of the advanced leadership ability is to broaden the understanding of the students with respect to the realities in the society. It facilitates this achievement through bridging the contact between students from different backgrounds as they engage in activities like vocational and social initiatives. This helps the students to be sympathetic and compassionate to others, a situation which enables them to develop the desire to assist those in need. Additionally, such initiatives and team efforts facilitate the building of community spirit between various categories of stakeholders (Hampel, 2000). This harnesses the stakeholders’ capability to work together for a common goal in trust and cooperation. This, therefore, helps the students to embrace the diversity in the community in an enthusiastic manner.

Conclusion

The advanced leadership ability encourages the stakeholders to share their views with the school administration. This facilitates innovation in the mode of teaching and learning, a situation that, in effect, encourages an accommodative engagement. Furthermore, such exchanges facilitate the formulation of revisions that need to be made in order to enhance the educational administration. The advanced ability facilitates an in-depth evaluation of the educational program on regular basis. The evaluation incorporates institutions’ performance records in comparison to others that are of a similar category. As such, all stakeholders are required to participate in the process of formulating the guiding principles and governance structures, all of which are laid down in a concise and clear manner. The structures are formatted in such a way that these facilitate the evaluation of accountability. The students are able to develop guiding principles in a manner that guarantees autonomy while demanding accountability (Cahn, 2011).