My experience as a Head of Department required me to work with two teams of academics: senior academics who taught me as a graduate student and junior academics I had taught as graduate students. I was the only female in an all-male environment. I knew the department needed rebranding but how was this to be done? I counted on the goodwill I had in the establishment to change direction of our academic business. I began asking questions, first from our students and alumni, then individual faculty members, then friends outside the department, purposely to identify what we needed to do differently and how. Critical among these were student and staff welfare, timetabling and interpersonal relationships. Departmental Board meetings followed where I got my colleagues to understand our situation and get inspired on the need for change and how to sustain it. We made changes to timetabling, agreed to team teaching, and contribution of seed money to buy ACs to make offices comfortable for staff to stay longer in the afternoons so they can meet the students and help with their research. I modelled the way with my seed money and also received contributions from our students to extend ACs to our lecture rooms so they would have a place to work outside school hours. Our seed money won us financing to complete our project.
Leadership demands modelling in practice to inspire our followers. Good interpersonal intelligence paves the way for inspired leadership. Effective Modelling and inspired leadership plus good relationships can get the work done more effectively and efficiently.
About the Author:
Prof. Nana Afia A. Opoku-Asare, FCILG is a member of the National Executive Council of Chartered Institute of Leadership and Governance, Ghana Chapter and a Professor at Kwame Nkrumah Univerisity of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi- Ghana.
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