A nation is built by its citizens and citizens are molded by teachers, so, it’s the responsibility of teachers that being good leader brings reforms. Passion, drive, and reflection are the hallmarks of an educational leader. Teachers can be rightly called nation builders. Education is the backbone of any society and university is the source of strength. Universities cannot grow overnight. When we build a new university or start a new business it takes time to grow. Every business takes at least 10 years to show performance. Improvements are an ongoing process, and each university has its own specific needs; however, there are few common improvements that are necessary for many organizations on an ongoing basis.
The purpose of education must be clear to all of us. The present education system is facing enormous challenges due to the rapidly changing technology-based economy. There is a dire need to redefine the role of a teacher. Teaching is a multifaceted profession and a good leader is one who is always ready to make changes and create an impact on the lives of the students they teach. The best leaders always learn from their experiences in a thoughtful and strategic manner. Secondly, a teacher must know the history of his/her country. In the Mughals’Emperor era, Akbar, the great Mughal ruler, showed greater interest in education. During his tenure, instruction was free and the relationship between the teachers and the taught was cordial. Moreover, there were great centers of learning, and people were preoccupied with theology and the conduct of life. The educational syllabus was laying more emphasis on moral education. The decline stage of that tenure started when they did not give importance to education. Good leaders need to find the right direction and change their thinking styles. Education plays a huge role in developing society and the societies that know the importance of education strive hard to acquire it. Many teachers today, understand that the essence of education is a close relationship between a knowledgeable, caring adult and a secure, motivated student. Academic leaders need to grasp that their most important role is to get to know each student as an individual in order to comprehend his or her unique needs and learning style.
Educational leaders can have a greater impact on Economic growth. Universities can also play a very crucial role in securing economic and social progress and improving income distribution. Education raises people's productivity and creativity and promotes entrepreneurship and technological advances. If a teacher produces good graduates, it will help the country to accelerate economic growth and our country can get out of debt as the students will find new ventures. Pakistan is in dire need of quality and innovative products to compete with other countries for higher earnings and increased foreign exchange. It is a need time that the Universities should emphasize more applied research for the socio-economic uplift of the country.
Education is one of the key contributions to the personal growth of the individual and nation as a whole. Successful nations are those that make their education more objective and purposeful. The youth of today are the masters of tomorrow. As long as we have a properly trained, groomed, and dedicated youth, the future, and destiny of our resilient nation are in safe hands.
Disclaimer This article has been taken from the talk delivered by Dr. Shafaat Bazaaz, in a workshop “Changing Tomorrow for Academic Heads” on November 30, 2021 and is compiled and written by Ms. Faiqa Anwar for Faculty Development Academy’s website.
Teachers have a very significant, lifelong impact on their students. This impact involves not only the teaching of particular academic skills but also helps in fostering student self-esteem. Reinforcing self-esteem in the classroom enhanced motivation and learning. A good teacher could teach something that we will remember for a day, but a great teacher will teach us something that we will remember for the rest of our life. A teacher can influence many important characteristics in a person's life.
Universities need to reconfiguregraduate programs to better prepare aspiringprofessors for teaching. There is a dire need to adopt outcome-basedlearning techniques in our universities at multiplelevels. It will empower the students to choosewhat they would like to study and how they wouldlike to study it. Faculties usuallydefine the learning objectives of their coursesand various programs without keeping the goals of students. They have to determine what type of students we want to produce. Many universities are offering a large no of degree programs, courses, and extracurricular opportunities, but unfortunately, by the end of the educational experience, our students are not achieving the desired goal. The academic heads need to produce quality students and graduates. The parameters of teachers' performance need to be improved and teaching quality must be assessed on regular basis. In Pakistan, there is a dire need to open multi-disciplinary universities instead of subject-specific. For example, Harvard University is offering diverse disciplines to their students and they are successful. The Chinese Model of higher education is also very effective. Focus on being a good human being.
In Pakistan, almost every university has an Office of Research Innovation Center (ORIC) and Business Incubation Centers. Our universities should create business opportunities from within the institution. We may learn lessons from renowned universities around the world that are creating businesses opportunities from within their institution. Unfortunately, our faculty members always feel the pressure to publish large no of papers, especially towards the end of their Ph.D. degree. As a result, they publish their work in any journal regardless of its international standing and recognition. In order to create an impact on society, there is a dire need to publish highly productive papers. Although, there should be a balance between quality and quantity in academic publishing yet the focus should be on quality over quantity to achieve better results.
Teachers must adapt the strategies to develop leadership skills in their students. The faculty must adopt the role of instructor, trainer, facilitator, and/or mentor based on the outcomes targeted. Educating oneself has no age limit because learning is always believed to be a lifelong processso, we should learn at every stage of life. Everybody has a role to play in a university whether he is a rector,professor,staff,orstudent. We should doourworkwithfullpassionand honesty, Allah will give us a reward.
Disclaimer This article has been taken from the talk delivered by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ali, VC QAU in a workshop “Changing Tomorrow for Academic Heads” on November 30, 2021 and is compiled and written by Ms. Faiqa Anwar for Faculty Development Academy’s website.
The institutes are based on quality and standards which become the backbone of any institute. The more the criteria are higher, the better the institute is. Every university has some parameters for recognition. Five common parameters for recognition of any university are discussed here:
To cope up with the changing era, these parameters should be implemented and used wisely for the growth and development of any institute. “Everything is theoretically impossible until it is done”. Therefore, it’s the need of time to take practical steps.
Disclaimer This article has been taken from the talk delivered by Prof. Dr. Saleem Farooq Shaukat, in a workshop “Changing Tomorrow for Academic Heads” November 29, 2021 and is written and compiled by Ms. Aafia Rashid Malik for Faculty Development Academy’s website.
Leadership, as we know, is to identify a positive needed change by creating a vision that takes into consideration views of others through inspiration to common goals. The conventional definition of leadership was that how many followers do one have. However, in the modern contemporary world, the definition of leadership has changed. 'It's not about how many people ARE WITH YOU, it’s about that people have faith YOU ARE WITH them’.
Leadership helps to maximize efficiency and to achieve organizational goals. The book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babinpublished by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in 2015 distills the essence of leadership into twelve principles. Almost, everybody knows these at a gut level but practicing it consistently is the tougher part. Being promoted to a management role may seem like a great accomplishment, but many professionals find the responsibility to be more challenging than they imagined. Although, people are very much competent on positions working before heading the department, however, when they lead the department, they need to acquire new skills, sharpen existing ones, perform better, increase productivity and be better leaders. Hence, before going up in the hierarchy, people skills are really important and heads/ leaders need to shake themselves before getting into these positions as it adds value to the organization. In order to enhance the professional competency of heads and to perform their job in a most effective and efficient manner, training plays an important role. Leadership is ultimately taking responsibility for results. As a leader, one must know how often they are confronted with challenges and struggle to identify the ideal solution.
As part of leadership manifest, leader-shift has four elements i.e. confidence, intuition decisiveness and empathy. The demystified amazon leadership principles led by Jeff Bezos highlight the guidelines focusing on the basic values that are required to govern the company and its employees. These leadership principles can lead to a remarkable success. Leader build a team, set goals and after achieving those goals, regular problems occurred. Then being a leader, he/she needs to solve that problem and effective leadership helps in resolving issues or conflicts. Leaders and followers should ready to accept positive change for the betterment of the organization and understand the goals they want to achieve. Moreover, the significant element of Leadership is confidence. Sometimes, leaders are very good communicator, but they do not have the confidence to convey the right message. In order to make things happen; Courage is the key.
To become a successful leader, one must follow the secrets of Singapore success that is captured in an acronym – which stands for three words. M for Meritocracy: Singapore’s leaders tried to get the best possible people to join them in government. For them, the quality of the minds of the people that are around them is equally important. The letter ‘P’ stands for pragmatism. Singapore is by far the most pragmatic country in the world. They tried anything without thinking whether it would fit its ideology. The third letter stands for honesty. This is the hardest one and that is why most countries fail. Singapore had three brilliant leaders who were also exceptionally honest, even when Singapore was a very poor country and the salaries were very low. Leaders can only lead by example. Any country can succeed by implementing these three principles.
Leadership is not about the title it’s about how leaders solve problems. Leaders and Titles are not mutually inclusive.
Disclaimer This article has been taken from the talk delivered by Dr. Aneel Salman in a workshop “Changing Tomorrow for Academic Heads” on November 30, 2021 and is written and compiled by Ms. Faiqa Anwar for Faculty Development Academy's website.
Effective leadership in academia is critical to meeting the needs of students and faculty. However, team building helps our workforce to get on the same page. A leader is responsible for maintaining and enforcing high standards of performance as his team works toward its goals. The leader must not dictate high standards only but to encourage others to communicate and enhance collaboration for eliminating communication gap. Good leaders always build trust and mitigates conflict.
Leaders must be forward thinkers and innovators. They have to think out of box to solve the problems. For example, in an organization some departments are performing well while others are not. There could be multiple reasons. They might be focused, willingness to do work, out of box thinking, teamwork, lead from the front, unbiased, right person for the right job etc. At this point, leaders need to think, “What factors really impact and what is the reason behind this”.
In addition, when we are working in a team, solutions become easier. “Teamwork is less Me and more We”. A leader must increase their motivation to complete tasks in a timely manner. It will help in rising the productivity. Moreover, greater things are happened in any organizations are never done because of one person but due to teamwork. While working in a team, the first and the foremost thing is to develop connection with team members. Besides, there is a difference between good team and a bad team. The real definition of team building is “I'm with the team”. Once, we have assigned the task, then we should trust our team members. If a team or team member completes a task that is not up to mark, the leader needs to insist that task be re-done until it meets the standard. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Furthermore, things get better and productivity can enhance in team work. However, in a teamwork certain problems may occur. If the problem is consistent and unaffected by efforts to correct it, then a leader needs to take more serious action. In a team, if some members are working but somehow one team member consistently performs poorly despite the leader's efforts to mentor and help him to improve and is holding the team back from its potential success, the leader must remove him from the team as a means to maintain high standards.
When we are in a leadership position, we as a leader has to think one step ahead of our team. In most of the cases, certain heads can get best out of their teams and others don't. For instance, we make a team, three (3) members are working very well while fourth one is not working as required. A good leader should not stop giving him task. If, he will stop giving him task he will feel that I'm neglected and a team can work without me. It's better not to go. This is the biggest flaw of the because we have developed the eco that we can work without him. Being a team leader we have to make him clear that we have trust on him and he is part of our team. Here, we can take the example of jigsaw puzzle when we pull out one puzzle, the picture is not completed. Most of the organizations requested not to put that person with us in a team in next project. This is not the right solution. We have to take work from everyone in the team. Being a good leader, make him feel secure and give him confidence instead of kicking him out. Leaders have to make each member of the team productive.
There are so many ways in which we found “Leadership and the PLATEAU of Change” perspective useful when approaching change. One is to see change in order to achieve desired outcomes. Organizational leaders get to a plateau, plant the victory flag, and declare success, even though they are far from the outcomes that they claimed necessitated the change in the first place. Each plateau is a place to rest, to recharge, to reassess the path we are on and where it is taking us. It can be the place to replenish our resources and our spirits.
The credible leaders are honest, competent, inspiring and forward looking. Moreover, the most effective teams share information openly, participate in the team's task, encourage each other, and use all of the team's resources effectively. When groups are formed into teams, roles and interactions are not established. Some members may observe as they attempt to determine what is expected of them while others engage the team process immediately. As members learn their roles, they find ways to work together and learn about team issues then an effective team leader ensures the team runs as smoothly as possible, and goals are hit.
Effective leaders look for ways to increase the team's capacity. “Teamwork is less Me and more We”.
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