Academic Leadership

Chapter 6 – Integrator

93

Developing the Integrator

As important as the five operational roles of
academic leadership are, the role of the Integrator
is the most critical to your effectiveness as an
academic leader. No matter how good an
academic leader is, it is your ability to select and
adopt the most appropriate role in a particular
situation that will ultimately determine your
effectiveness as an Academic Coordinator.
The Integrator has been called the ‘behavioural control room’ (Vilkinas & Cartan,
2001). It is this role that ensures that previous experiences and their outcomes (the
successes and the failures) have been reflected on and analysed in the context of
relevant data from a particular situation, and that both have informed the selection of the
appropriate role to be taken during a particular situation. As stipulated previously, this
role essentially has two parts – critical observer and reflective learner.

When using your Integrator role you will be:

• developing critical observation skills that allow you to observe your own behaviour
  and its impact on others at University


• critically assessing the appropriateness of this behaviour


• reflecting on what you have observed


• learning new behaviours if current ones are inappropriate or ineffective

When your Integrator role is overused or used inappropriately you will be:

• insensitive to others’ needs


• behave inappropriately


• respond in a similar fashion to different situations


• overuse reflection at the expense of other appropriate behaviours.

You may need to:

• Develop the role:
  
  
  • critically review your own behaviour and its impact in different contexts over a
    period of time;
  
  
  • develop strategies to assist you in becoming better at reading the external
    environment;
  
  
  • find ways to better utilise the knowledge you have gained from previous
    experiences as an academic leader in new contexts.
  
  
  
  


• Refocus the role:
  
  
  • pay more attention to it, recognising the importance of selecting the most
    appropriate operational role for each new situation.
  
  
  
  


• Reflect on the role:
  
  
  • given the feedback you have received from others and what you know of
    yourself, consider how you could more effectively select the most appropriate
    operational role in different situations.