Brian P.

Iggins HCM Unit 4 Reflection

December 14, 2015
For me in this unit, I was really struck by the idea of the proactive administrator. In
Rebore, it is discussed that at any given time we are becoming better more ethical versions of
ourselves or slipping to a lower version. This really stuck out to me because it is such a
Christian notion to think of ourselves growing more ethical, or closer to God, or less ethical, or
further from God. As an administrator, I will obviously strive to work on my own ethical
approach and improving that approach. When I reflect on my own administrators, I would say
the best ones have been the ones that have followed this ethical compass and approach. Another
idea that struck me in this section was the comment that ethical leaders are proactive. I thought
this was interesting because if you think about school administrators, many struggles come in the
failure to act or that failure to do what should have been done. This lesson is valuable for me
when I consider a recent party that many of our students took part in, off campus. There was
alcohol involved and many of the students were punished after the host gave up their names.
The school held up its ethical standards by being consistent with the students and enforcing the
code of conduct they expected of them. A failure to act in this moment could have resulted in a
loss of ethics for the administrator and the school as a whole, yet this moment was handled,
despite many students grumblings, in a way I believe is consistent and sends the appropriate
message.
The compensation discussion in this unit was eye opening because I loved the point that
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation must be available to people to improve and get better. I think
as a school leader, the ability to motivate is vastly underappreciated. It would be amazing to
think of school that functions well and who does not have an admin team that is pushing them to
achieve and work hard to be all they can be, and want to better themselves. Setting goals is at
the heart of this and that is something that my first day of teaching I had to do. My Dean of

Brian P. Iggins HCM Unit 4 Reflection

December 14, 2015
faculty at my old school did a tremendous job of helping me stay focused on the little
improvements during my first year and accepting the failures as part of growth toward my goals.
In comparing this to my current school, I think there is room to grow as far as making these goals
feel important. I filled out goals but have not been asked to look at them since. There has been
no tie-in as well to performance and compensation with goals either or discussions on this from
above. It is not clear how to better progress and really grow as an individual. In fact, my only
experience of compensation was when I was about to leave my old school and my principal
offered a little more money. This came across as desperate and not at all based on my effort or
performance, two critical components when considering compensation.
Finally, the health care component of this unit scared me from the standpoint of analyzing
costs. I was able to look during my audit that our school pays a lot for health care, but distinctly
remember last year talking to faculty members who said the cost had gone up tremendously in
the last few years for them. This is an issue that moving forward I want to investigate with my
school and see what we are doing to better our systems for our workers. I think this will only
become more challenging and is something that Catholic schools in particular might not be ready
for. This is an area that I am very unfamiliar with and recognize the need to improve greatly in.
I am not sure what my current school is doing to address these needs but really hope that I can
help to stem the tide against the rising costs.