MSLD 633 Module 7 - Leader Follower Relationship

Leader Follower Relationship

Complex Adaptive Leadership (CAL), differently from other leadership approaches, shows how different behaviors and strategies can be blended for greater effectiveness. (Obolensky, 2014). At a first stage, a leader needs to diagnose the problem/challenge in order to direct the strategy. There are technical problems (where the solution is “known how”) and adaptive challenges (where people are part of the problem, forced to a collective response, when only technical solutions is not enough). (Heifetz, 2009).

Although Coutu and Kaufman (2009) show through researches that coaches, nowadays, are hired primarily to work with executives on the positive side of coaching (developing high-potential talent and facilitating a transition in or up), which I believe is great for the continuous progress, I also believe that a coach on the diagnosis process would play a crucial role, in most of the organizations, especially those where a leader is directly involved on the challenge, and might miss the chance of being more often “on the balcony” seeing the big picture, the important fine points, and keep the goal at the center.

After identifying the depth of the challenge, through a meticulous critical thinking evaluating all the 8+ elements (Nosich, 2012, p. 48), a leader needs to define the strategies to be used to deal with it. Obolensky (2014) says that there are mainly four strategies (telling, selling, involving and devolving), but the most important strategy is being able to shift around the strategies effortlessly and constantly, according to the needs, and allowing flexibility on the decision made throughout the entire process.

Analyzing the strategy I tend to apply (in a scenario with a high killed and motivated team), I found that I would rather be involving when challenges arise than using other strategies. It would depend on the occasion, but most of the times I would allow others to discover the solution, when time is not pressing and there is a good opportunity to educate and develop people’s knowledge and skills further (Obolensky, 2014). This matches with the main passion I have (training and teaching) so I believe the questionnaire results were accurate.

I think my perspective changed throughout the past six weeks, mainly when related to devolve strategy, where a follower has high skill and will, and is already living in the fifth level of followership. Although I ask for opinions and suggestions, I usually do not encourage shared opinions while making more difficult decisions. I rather talk to another formal leader asking for advices and showing my point of views, and then gather the team for direction and guidance. Heifetz (2009) says that people are part of an adaptive challenge, and as so they need to be a direct part of the solution, for embracement and ownership, as a collective decision. I still struggle to apply the art of inaction (“wu wei”) when any challenge arises, and this trait is shown on the results of the questionnaire as well (the second most scored strategy: “telling”).

Although I do not know the source of my behaviors (if is the nature of my job or my personal nature), I believe that telling is a rooted trait, and comes from the desire to educate and develop people of the involving strategy. The issue is that telling is not necessarily the best way to do so, even though it is the traditional way. So this is a perspective changing as well.

So far, the main theoretical learning point of the course, is the importance of having the ability to step back when a challenging situation arise. As I like control and I am very active per nature, I intend to step over and act. For the future, I want to put this learning in practice, not only for technical problems as I already do, but for challenging ones. In my current job, I find it hard as I do not have time to know my “subordinates” well enough, and I do not have time to build a collective and adaptive culture (Heifetz et al., 2009) due to job nature. I strongly believe that building this type of culture is crucial for the effectiveness of any other strategy used in challenging situations. In my opinion, if the adaptive culture is not built, it will affect, sooner or later, the flow of the changing process, if the goal is achieving a collective adaptability.

On the collective subject matter, Hill (2014) presented examples of her researched made along the years,  stating that visionary leaders understand the importance of collaborative problem solving, they know how to do discovery-driven learning and they know how to do integrated decision making, nurturing the bottom-up and not let it degenerate into chaos. A leader must set direction and make sure that no one deviated from it, while aggregating viewpoints and creating the space where people are willing and able to share and combine their talents and passions.

Going away from a traditional view of leadership, contemporary and visionary leaders should stop giving answers and providing solutions. Instead, leaders should see the people at the bottom of the pyramid, the young sparks, the people who are closest to the customers, as the source of innovation (Hill, 2014). The role as leaders is to set the stage, not perform on it, creating the space where everybody's slices of genius can be unleashed and harnessed, and turned into works of collective genius.

In my case , I find it hard to change a culture in a team, when the organization keeps reminding through actions the strong authority, and how it plays in the system in order to get what expected. Punishments, cut-offs, favoritism, so forth, go against the idea of CAL if applied to extract behavior from employees. Changing policies and procedures, improving structure, enhancing technology and many other fixing solutions will not solve an adaptive challenge. They are all a response for technical problems, which will not last (Heifetz, 2009) and will not change the mentality of the organization as a whole.

As I cannot change the organizational culture only in small operational team, it makes hard for me to apply any adaptive strategy, but this teaches me another lesson: the best way to apply CAL is to have all its traits applied from the beginning, still when the organization is just an embryonic project.

References

Coutu, D., & Kauffman, C. (2009). What can Coaches Do for You?. Harvard Business Review,87(1),91-97.

Heifetz, R. (2009). The nature of adaptive leadership. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfLLDvn0pI8&feature=youtube, on October 21, 2018.

Hill, L. (2014). How to manage fro collective creativity. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/linda_hill_how_to_manage_for_collective_creativity/transcript, on October 24, 2018.

Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2^nd edition). New York, NY: Routledge.

MSLD 633 Module 4 - Should the "Boss" always know the answers?

Should the "Boss" always know the answers?

Leadership is not necessarily a formally ranked position, it is a choice you make (Sinek, 2014). Often the "bosses" pretend to know the answer, while people on the bottom line knows it well, and pretend they do not know, constructing a system a leadership charades. (Obolensky, 2014).Since I watched Sinek’s video, two years ago, I started sharing that with my team members on my current job (including or not people on higher rank than mine, since the people I work along changes every day). The reactions are all different (eyes tighten, brief smile, nodding, or staring) but have a common background: curiosity. I concluded that because at this point everyone starts listening in a different way, willing to listen, and afterwards they often come to me to talk about it.

Since I got the sense of curiosity I started elaborating my sentence. I explain to my team members that there is no boss in our relationship, and that everyone can lead any situation. I work with inflight service as supervisor, in a large airline, where this mentality is not common seen in an organization on this field, neither within a conservative culture where the company is based. My job requires me to be adaptive, due to its dynamism and the variety of cultures that I deal with (including coworkers and customers), but more than that, requires me to count on the leadership capacity of every and single one of my team members.

Dudley (2010) explains that every single moment you decide to create an impact, you are leading. Working with safety, security and medical situation, and being accountable and responsible for every consequence, made me hesitate to “pass the torch” of leadership to my “followers”. With time and studies, I understood that a job which requires me adaptive solutions, requires me automatically an adaptive leadership approach. Northouse (2016) says that one of the behaviors of an adaptive leader is to protect leadership voice from below. I would add a behavior on this subject matter which I believe to be powerful: protect and VALUE leadership voice from below. The author explains that an adaptive leader allows low-status members to be more involved, independent, and responsible for their actions. This will lead to more engaged people, with a sense of accountability on the planning and decision making. Since I realized all this, even in high challenging scenarios, I give my team member the opportunity and the trust they need to lead.

I am always around in challenge situations, and I set this clear during every pre-meeting when talking about leadership as an equal responsibility. I am there to guide or take over if needed, to be able to report the real facts to the office, and as an extra hand in case they need me, but one risk I am always ready to take: back up my team member on their decisions.

The impact on people’s performance, since I changed my approach, and the down or upwards feedback I get is always positive. I have faced situations where higher ranked leaders disapproved my approach, and sometimes after a long conversation, if there is no agreement on my decision, I end up the conversation with a conclusion that frequently leaves them with no reasonable argument: “whatever happens I will take the consequences”.

This brings me to the Harvard article “How to Lead When You're Not the Boss.” Leading my team and need to be under a responsibility of a boss or a leader is not always an easy task. I make my decisions, knowing that the consequences will not please, and in fact will impact upwards.

To be able to lead this way, I follow some guidelines which is mentioned on the article plus some adaptive behaviors required from a leader, mentioned by Heifetz et al. (2009) and Obolensky (2014). I have my goals clear to everyone (up and downwards), and I am constant flexible for changes, based on experiences faced at the moment, or in outcomes of my decisions. I try to think systematically, getting on the balcony and looking at all possible perspectives, diagnosing in what I believe to the most accurate reality we are facing. Afterwards, through engagement and focusing on the diversity of my team I open up for opinion and any valuable inputs, for a collective creativity on decision making or problem solving (Hill, 2014; Clinch, 2015). When the day is over (or in times of lower workload) I either ask or provide feedback as a form of gathering important information, paraphrasing positive impact, motivate the lateral leadership approach, and to avoid misunderstanding from the boss of the day.

I am aware that directly I impact in a very small portion of the work force, the human beings whose run the organization, but I believe that being an adaptive leader is not giving up on solution which can be lasting, no matter how far your attitudes can reach, and how demotivating can be when the system (or the people within it) not always backs up you actions. Clinch (2015) says that people is often a solution for problems and adaptive changes, and I believe that the way I lead every day, even my small team, will have a greater impact than policies and procedures impacts, because our challenge is adaptive and not technical, and changing peoples mind and behavior towards a more horizontal leadership, will define the long term success of our organization.

References

Clinch, M. (2015). Adaptive leadership. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xxvqwv_p2g&feature=youtu.be, on September 30, 2018.

Dudley, D. (2010). Everyday leadership. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership/transcript, on December, 2016.

Heifetz,R. A., Linsky, M., Grashow, A. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for changing your organization and the world. Business Harvard Review

Hill, L. (2014). How to manage for collective creativity. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/linda_hill_how_to_manage_for_collective_creativity?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare, on January 2, 2018.

How to Lead When You're Not the Boss. (2009). Harvard Management Update, 14(3), 1-2.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice. (7^th edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2^nd edition). New York, NY: Routledge.

Sinek, S. (2014). How great leaders make you feel safe. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe, on October 5^t, 2018.

MSLD 633 Module 1 - Leadership Gap

LEADERSHIP GAP

I believe leadership requires a two-ways relationship between leaders and follower. Since childhood I unconsciously faced leaders as teachers, parents and older relatives in an approachable way, not as hierarchy.

I can recall one phase that my own attitude toward a leader changed my life. I started in a company as a trainee, and due to my experience in the field and commitment I became a full-time employee. Each day my relationship with my manager was getting stronger and more personal. We became friends, and with that I conquered full trust from her. I started, informally, taking over her roles, and slowly doing her tasks. While people were labeling her as lazy and opportunist, I was taking the opportunity to learn new things and to show what I was capable of. After resigning she recommended me to the directors to fill the gap as manager since she was leaving, and the director accepted her recommendation. Although it was stressful, challenging and overwhelming at that point, it was my first leadership direct experience and I carry my lessons to the current days in my organization.

While considering leadership traits differences across generations I can think of one major trend, which leads to other: communication. The communication channels are more variable and more open. Slowly, people started having freedom to express themselves in all senses. Even in traditional families, the dialogue between generations are more frequent and wider. This trend leads to the point made by Obolensky (2014) when he mentions the transition from anarchy to oligarchy and then to polyarchy. As the relationship across generation become more opened, consequently the leadership attitudes become more polyarchic.

The main reason behind this trend, in my perspective, is the general discussion and fights for freedom, equality and technology, which make younger generations think they have more knowledge, and with that they have something to add, to teach and consequently being able of decision making, even if partially.

This, as many other questions are hard to answer precisely. For an instance, why we have an apparent gap in the quality of our leaders, if we live in a world with more information about leadership and leadership practices?

The reason I can think of, is the fact that leadership studies is something new, comparing with other business subjects. Still, people in the corporation environment are more concerned about technical knowledge than subjective one. We still live in a world task-oriented when comes to business. As all effective changes, a good and contemporary leadership approach will happen in a slow process. One way to close the gap in the quality of our leaders, is the educational leaders (consultants, trainers, coaches, so forth) change their mindset first. Changing their selves f to be able to change organizations effectively. (Heifetz et al, 2009)

References

Heifetz,R. A., Linsky, M., Grashow, A. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for changing your organization and the world. Business Harvard Review Press.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2^nd edition). New York, NY: Routledge.