 Hello, my name is Dr. Margaret Bidyo. I am an academic advisor at Millersby University. I also serve as an assistant professor, as well as coordinating advising for the College of Business and the College of Arts and Humanities. It gives me great pleasure to do this presentation because this is an area of my profession, which is very, very important, and that is transformational leadership, especially in academic advising. And how can we integrate that into our daily practice? And so I want us to talk a little bit about that. Of course, this is going to be a recorded presentation, but I do hope that you can really incorporate some of these things that I'm going to talk about in your practice. The slide that I am projecting on the screen right now is a representation of many students, students from all walks of life, students from different backgrounds, speaking different languages possibly, brought up differently, went to school in different places and all these students are in the center of what we do as professionals, as academic advisors, as administrators, as teachers, as mentors, as tutors. No matter what your capacity is in any given college or university, you have a role to play in making sure that the students in your university or college succeed. And so we have students and that is what we are all about. And so what I'm going to talk to you about today is about transformational leadership. And this is a theory that Bass came out with sometimes in the 1980s. And basically in very short form, transformational leadership has four important areas of consideration. The first one being idealized influence, individualized consideration. Second, third being intellectual stimulation. And the fourth one being inspirational motivation. The idealized influence purports that anyone in leadership role plays a critical role in building trust, confidence and respect in their followers. And it is very important especially as academic advisors, as tutors to realize that we have what it takes to influence our students to be better. And there has to first of all be trust in the way we relate with them. There has to be mutual respect. The students have to see you as someone they can trust first before they can share the details of what they are going through. And so the idealized influence as part of the transformational leadership is very, very important. In that, as in our role as academic advisors, we can look at it as giving or building that trust we need in order for students to be able to share a little bit more with us. And also as professionals being able to trust enough confidence in our students that what they are sharing with us is important and we need to take it into consideration and really look for ways of helping a given student. Secondly, we have individualized consideration as the second part of the transformational leadership model. And this refers to the extent to which a leader attends to each follower's needs. In our case, students, it's very, very important to know that our role in advising, in tutoring, or whatever your profession is, as that person, a student comes to see is really very important because we have to understand students and where they are coming from. Each student is unique. Each student brings to us different challenges. Challenges that are particularly suited for that particular student. And therefore we cannot address the needs of students collectively. We have to deal with each student individually. And that's why when we talk about individualized consideration, we have to really think about what students are sharing with us, what issues do they talk about as challenges and how can we customize our services to each student in a way that when they leave our offices, they can say that that academic advisor, that tutor, that professor really, really helped me and they were able to understand me. They were able to really listen to me. They were able to help me according to the need that I presented. Intellectual stimulation, which is the third arm of transformational leadership, is about the behaviors, you know? It is about talking to the students in a way that we can really cordial their critical thinking skills, you know? Motivating them, encouraging them to know that they are here for our purpose. There's something in them that is unique. There's something in there, you know, they have potential. There's something in them that they can look, they can reflect on and really encourage themselves to be productive in their schooling. And so when we talk about intellectual stimulation in advising, we are talking about making our students independent thinkers, challenging them to troubleshoot, challenging them to be problem solvers, showing them as, you know, their example so that they can be able to do what we are asking them to do by themselves. They can be able to go and talk to their professors without being afraid. They can be able to talk to the residential people without being afraid, because otherwise our students are actually, many of them are of issues. They have, you know, problems, but they are scared of going to talk to someone. And so intellectual stimulation is about encouraging students, teaching them in a way, advising them in a way that they can take responsibility. They can go and find where to get assistance from because as academic advisors, as students, as faculty, we can only do so much. And 80% or even more, it's up to the student to take their responsibility, to take the responsibility to look for assistance. The fourth one and the last one has to do with inspirational motivation. I've talked about motivation, which is almost like, you know, encouraging someone, but this refers to the way leaders, you know, inspire, encourage, motivate, encourage the students, especially if they are academic advisors, faculty, staff, encourage the students to go out there and do the best. They have what it takes, you know? They have the skills that are needed. And if they don't have those skills, they can go to the library and talk to a librarian to know how to find books. They can go and talk to the professor who teaches a seminar on skills to get more, you know, get more information. They can go and talk to the academic advisor and get assistance that is needed in order for them to be able to succeed in that class. So inspirational motivation is very important in any setting. And there's academic advisors. We, when we think about inspirational motivation, we are thinking in terms of really encouraging our students to be the best there could be. When it comes to the workplace, of course, you know, like our advising administrators or even our deans and other administrators within the college, it's about motivating the employees. It's about motivating the staff, motivating the faculty to do their best. Again, very, very important. Now, I link the transformational leadership with the NACADA core values. And I hope all of you are familiar with NACADA. The national, in the US, the national academic advising community, which is actually a global community of academic advisors. And NACADA is the organization that organizes the annual conference. You know, there are different types of affiliated organizations within it. I think UCCAD is an allied member. And so when we talk about transformational leadership, I already explained the four different types of arms or support that support the transformational leadership theory, which is idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration. I like to link it with NACADA, especially when I'm talking to academic advisors, when I'm talking to people that advise students. And when you look at NACADA core values, we have seven key pillars of NACADA core values. Number one being respect and integrity, which can be associated with idealized influence. Then we have empowerment, which can be associated with inspirational motivation. Then we have caring and inclusivity, which can be linked to individualized consideration. And finally, we have professionalism and commitment, which can be linked with intellectual stimulation. These are very, very important. Of course, we know the core values are very important. Without having that caring spirit, the student will notice right away that you really don't care as an academic advisor, that you really don't care as a faculty, that you really don't care as a staff. The students know when a faculty member is caring, students know when an academic advisor is caring. And they also see that commitment in the way you respond to emails, in the way you refer them to different resources. Students are able to see that you are being professional in the way you are handling yourself, in the way you are referring them to different offices. And again, that respect and integrity is very important. And realizing that students are individuals, they are human, and we have to approach them with respect. And we also have to respect the integrity of knowing who they are. And lastly, empowerment, and again, we are empowering our students through mentoring, through advising, through tutoring, we are empowering them. It's critically very important. And so I thought I shared these things, they are very important. I know this was very short, but it's a good way of introducing transformational leadership because I totally believe in it. All of us are our leaders in our own rights. We cannot always look up to the director of a given department to do things for us when we can do them. And of course, doing them with respect, doing them in consultation, just going to your dean and saying that, you know, I am doing this. And when you do that, there is oneness, there is teamwork in the workplace. Otherwise, it's very, very important for all of us as academic advisors, all of us as mentors, all of us as tutors, all of us as faculty to think in terms of us being leaders, and not just leaders, transformational leaders, because that is what is needed in the workplace. That is what is needed as we talk to our students. That is what, it's a mindset that is needed of transformational leadership that is needed as we serve our students in all that we do. It's critically important. It has been a pleasure talking with you and I look forward to many more sessions where I can talk with you. Thank you very much. Thank you, have a good day. Bye-bye.