Affiliate News - November 2022 (Plain Text Version)
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SUCCESSION MANAGEMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING ASSOCIATIONS Dawn Lucovich, President of The Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), Tokyo, Japan
JALT will hold its 48th Annual Conference on Language Teaching and Learning & Educational Materials Exhibition (https://jalt.org/conference/jalt2022) from November 11th to 14th, 2022. It will be JALT’s first international conference to be held in a hybrid format, online and on-site in Fukuoka, Japan. We are rapidly approaching our 50th-anniversary conference, set to be held in November 2024, which we hope that you will all join us for. The annual conference has traditionally been the time when new leaders are identified, recruited, nominated, and appointed or elected. JALT is fortunate in that it, conservatively, boasts over 400 leaders. We have 30+ geographic chapters, 30+ special interest groups (SIGs), and 30 committees; thus, we have 90+ elected and appointed leaders who form our Executive Board at any given time. Each chapter and SIG also have at least 4 other officers in charge of membership, program, public relations, and treasury; each committee has several members. However, when I became president in January 2021, I was acutely aware of an expanding leadership gap in our association. A leadership gap considers the current leadership vis-à-vis what will be needed for future leadership readiness and effectiveness (Center for Creative Leadership, 2022). As many associations have experienced recently, members have retired or moved on at a slightly accelerated rate, while our replacement rate has slowed significantly—in part because the pandemic made it difficult to recruit and cultivate new members, volunteers, and leaders. To alleviate the problem, I proposed the creation of additional leadership positions so that each Director works in tandem with a liaison. This approach takes two important considerations in language teaching associations, leadership development, and succession planning, and pairs them to create what Conger and Fulmer (2003) describe as “succession management.” They present five rules of succession management: focus on the development of skills and people, identify pivotal positions, create transparency in the succession process, measure, and track progress, and adjust the succession management process as needed. Leaders and treasurers of chapters and SIGs already had an elected liaison who represented their interests to their respective Directors. Their succession lines were better defined, and planning was easier. Liaisons work closely with and learn about being a Director. However, this is not the same as job shadowing—the liaisons have different roles with important management duties. They oversee organizing meetings with their 60+ officers, relaying and documenting questions and answers, clarifying and establishing procedures, and handling day-to-day issues so that Directors are better able to spend time on long-term thinking, strategic planning, and creating a vision for the association. In addition to increasing the number and types of leadership opportunities available, especially for newer or mid-career members, and thereby strengthening our leadership pipeline, I also wanted to create a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, et al., 2002) based around leadership. Each liaison aims to create a closer community among their officers, and laterally as their own CoP with whom they can share their challenges, solutions, best practices, and growth. I encourage language teaching associations to examine their organizational structure and capacity development measures and to implement succession management so that we can better support the professional development of our members into leaders. Finally, a big kudos to our liaisons for leading and representing their peers and for being pioneers in a new position in our organization. JALT Liaisons New for 2021-2022 References Center for Creative Leadership. (2022, October 4). The leadership gap: How to fix what your organization lacks. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/leadership-gap-what-you-still-need/ Conger, J. A., & Fulmer, R. A. (2003, December). Developing your leadership pipeline. R0212F. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2003/12/developing-your-leadership-pipeline Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355 Wenger, E. C., McDermott, R, and Snyder, W. C.. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press. Biodata Dawn Lucovich serves as President of The Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), TESOL Higher Education Interest Section (HEIS) Co-Chair-Elect, and on the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference Task Force. She warmly welcomes discussion and dialogue with other affiliate leaders at the next ZPD (bit.ly/ZPDRSVP), at our annual international conference in November (jalt.org/conference), or by email at president@jalt. |
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