Running head: FINAL REFLECTION 1

Final Reflection

Justin Gamache

EDDC 620

Concordia University

Dec 13, 2016

FINAL REFLECTION 2

Final Reflection

The goal of this course is to carefully examine creativity, inquiry, and innovation in way

that will build strong leadership goals in knowing how to select, connect, play, grapple and grow,

and shine.

Leadership

The leadership lesson I have learned throughout this course is to be optimistic, manage

happiness, find true authenticity in my passion, students, and staff, be generous in helping others,

and make an important impact on improving my life every day because nothing is perfect and

everything can be improved. Hallowell (2011) created five steps that are formed to be the cycle

of Excellence, they are: “Select, Connect, Play, Grapple and Grow, and Shine” (pp. 6-7). When

examining some of these paradoxes, I believe that they are all just as important to maintaining

excellence in the workplace. You want to be the best candidate you can be to yourself, but you

also want to be the best candidate that can ultimately work successfully with your team. You

don’t want to be the boring type or the person that is disliked. You want to find balance, be

imaginative, creative, connected with your work and your colleagues (including students), and be

able to flourish so that you can shine through it all.

The elements in the leadership lesson should allow for open communication which is

essential to success and is very important among team members. Each member of the team

should do their share and work together so that everyone is on the same page, and when

everyone is on the same page everything should go smoothly and there would be less time

wasted if something did go wrong.

According to what I have a read, witnessed, and watched throughout this course I believe

a great leader is made by the unique skills and interests they put forth to enforce positivity to

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build and strengthen the organization from the bottom up. A great leader will put in place actions

that contravene the negativity to forge connections and open doors to positive new relations

based on mutual understandings. A great leader will build a team to facilitate the needs of

working together or to advert a disaster as Nass and Yen (2012) described where “people

demonstrate their faith in their teammates by closing their eyes, folding their arms over their

chest, and falling backward shouting “I trust you” while the other teammate catch them before

they hit the ground” (p. 81). The leader will create goals that will challenge, connect, and impact

their team in a positive way like; Define high-impact challenges, strengthen high-impact

connections, and amplify the impact that allows each member of the team to be augmented with

the right infrastructure that allows for adaptable space, smart capture and share, and mutual

ownership.

A great leader will encourage their team to play and communicate with each other.

Hallowell (2011) stated that “play is what humans can do and computers can’t. Play is the

activity of the mind that allows you to dream up novel approaches, and fresh plans” (p. 113) and

is the beginning stages of creating a whole new world. The first suggestion for encouraging play

in any workplace would be to ask open-ended question. I believe that asking these types of

questions lead to engaging the power of the imagination because you have the imagination to be

able to focus on what you are getting ready to perform. Hallowell stated, that “Socrates was the

greatest master of this technique, which now bears his name. The Socratic method remains one

of the best ways to teach. Instead of giving answers, ask questions. People will give you answers

you never expected, and often knew they never had” (p. 128). That in which is true lies within

the possibilities of making answers from your imagination.

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The second suggestion for encouraging play in my workplace would be to give students,

and staff time to go somewhere away from work and think. I believe that when a person is able

to take the time to sit or stand in a place outside of their area, to ponder their abilities, is a great

way to encourage play. A great way to implement this is by taking a simple walk outside to get a

breath of fresh to please and calm the mind, and stimulate the mind to think, play, and work hard.

The outcomes I would expect from implementing this suggestion would be that my students and

staff felt they were able to concentrate better.

A great leader would give time to build creativity so that their staff or students can build

from their journey to be productive in what they are trying to achieve so that they can get to the

next level. As a leader, I will consciously engage my staff and students to be creative, have fun,

take a break when need, and enjoy the little things. Robinson said there are huge benefits to

consciously engaging the whole staff and I stand by those benefits.

Conclusion

As a leader, it is important to know the meaning of creativity, inquiry, and innovation.

Creativity is the relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration, inquiry is

the act of asking for information while doing the investigation, and innovation is the action or

process in defining a new method or idea that leads to better solutions and meets the

requirements of your team.

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References

Hallowell, E. (2011). Shine: Using brain science to get the best from your people. Boston,

MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Nass, C., & Yen, C. (2012) The man who lied to his laptop: What we can learn about

ourselves from our machines. New York, NY: Current.

Robinson, K. (2011). Out of our minds: Learning to be creative. West Sussex, UK: Capstone

Publishing. Ltd.