Tenacity: a good quality or a bad one?
One of the qualities that a subject leader must have, in my opinion, is the ability and willingness to stand one's ground. I think that this applies especially in the case of the ICT (or educational technology) leader, given the sorts of pressure he or she is often under.
For example:
- It's perceived as expensive....
- ... Consequently, there is often pressure to demonstrate that the investment has been worth it. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that I wonder if other subject leaders find themselves under similar scrutiny to prove, say, that the class set of textbooks 'worked'.
- A good rule of thumb is that around 90% of staff in a school use information technology in a basic but perfectly acceptable way, and most of the other 10% (excluding you) pride themselves on not understanding any of it. Unfortunately, much of the time that small proportion tends to be more influential than their numbers suggest. I have no scientific evidence for that statement, by the way, only my (casual) perception and experience!
The word 'politicians' is not usually found sharing a sentence with the term 'role model'. However, whatever you may think of Michael Howard's 'performance' in this video clip, I think he shows an admirable ability to stick to his guns and to manage to not answer a question which he clearly does not want to answer. (At the time he was bidding for the leadership of the UK's Conservative Party, which gives his stubborness/toughness a context.)The issue here is this: leaving aside the actual issue and politics in general, does Howard demonstrate a trait which ICT leaders should seek to emulate, or not?
This article was first published on 22nd September 2009
leadership, tenacity in From the Archives, Leading & Managing ICT 
Reader Comments (1)
it doesnt answer the questions on whether ICT is good or bad.
it simply just says common facts that anyone could find on "wiki" etc.
But enough of the bad comments, you tried, and i think this could be good if you make it more your own.
And i mean where did politics come into this? EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE.