In this session we will explore the everyday experience of innovative leadership, which includes moments of self-questioning, vulnerability, and failure. We will share perspectives on taking risks, courage through vulnerability, and failing up, and brainstorm ways in which we can integrate these practices into our higher education professional environments.
Leading change is difficult, not only on an institutional level but also on a personal level. Innovation requires taking risks: expressing new (and often emerging or partial) ideas, exposing lack of knowledge or experience, and accepting the chance of being wrong and taking responsibility for it. In this session, we will engage participants in discussions about the realities of being a leader of innovation: specifically, how proposing innovation involves, risks, vulnerability, and failure and how those experiences can be lived and expressed in ways that support positive change for one's self, team, and organization.
As facilitators of a “conversation, not presentation,” our goal is to engage participants in individual, small group, and whole group reflection, discussion, and strategic planning. After a brief introduction, the session will begin with a gallery walk. Individuals will be asked to leave their perceptions of session topics (e.g. failure, opportunity, courage, creativity) on large sticky notes placed around the room. Then participants will join small groups and engage with conversation starters left on each table. Most of these will be based on quotes from famous innovators and leaders (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein) related to their experience of session topics. Most of these conversation starters will encourage participants to (1) consider and share their understanding of the quotes; (2) compare their attitudes or practice with those of innovation leaders; and (3) critique the stances of the innovation leaders in terms of how these views may be applied in contemporary higher education contexts. Finally, we will engage the entire group in a broader conversation around the following topics:
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What is innovative leadership and what does its practice look like?
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What is the ‘dark side’ of innovative leadership (e.g. risk taking, vulnerability, and failure) and what does the experience feel like?
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How does faculty and institutional narrative impact the ability to practice innovative leadership?
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How do we scaffold and express risk, vulnerability, and failure to be more acceptable to our institutions (and ourselves?)
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When and how do we say that we or our initiatives have failed?
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How do we change the higher education narrative to be more accepting of risk, vulnerability, and failure?