Leadership 262: Frailty thy name is ....

Leadership 262: Frailty thy name is ....: "I know I have posted my last blog topic but I have had an incident in the last couple of days which I think reflects the weakness in the lea..."

Final (Class Related) Blog

I definitely found the "predictably irrational" and "drive" books/topics to be quite interesting. Motivation was a subject I wasn't very familiar with and the circumstances involved in performance results around motivation through compensation and independent development was very informing.

My resulting conclusions were not to use the carrot and stick approach unless the tasks were simple and routine. My work uses this for nearly every task for 1/2 of the task force, but does allow a lot of self-directed work time to the other 1/2. I belong to the non "carrot and stick" group and the self directed work time is probably my favorite part of this job. I noticed that the bosses are pretty good about being cheer leaders to their group's accomplishments, and was even called up myself to the stage for an award in front of the entire company.

In following the "Drive" group's presentation, it made quite a few things clear to me about how corporations develop reward programs and where we can learn to improve our own. If I were to request that we add a particular book to the lineup, it has got to be the Army Manual on Leadership. It would be very very interesting to learn through concise statements what they will need to know (at the least) about taking a group into a life and death situation. How do you motivate someone when compensation is not an option!?!!!!!

:)

I love this class.. and I'm sad to have it end. I guess the blog will live on though. As a final lesson, I learned not to depend on what you may have seen from someone before.. they have the ability to suprise you when you least expect it!

Groups and Leadership- oops, this is out of order :)

In class, we talked about adjusting your leadership for different kinds of groups - volunteer groups, paid groups, etc. Take this time to reflect on your leadership in the different types of groups of which you are a member (even if you didn't see them all this week). How does your leadership style change? Are you more effective in one group versus another? Do you fall into a pattern such that you are in the same role in all groups? Or, as is typical in family groups, do you find yourself regressing to the same role in the family that you've always played, regardless of other accomplishments? Think about other leaders in these groups. What do they do that is effective and how can you learn from them?

Its funny... I thought about this for a bit, trying to reflect on my recent behavior when going out with friends, interacting with my team at work, and spending time with my family... and the funny truth is, I think I am pretty consistent across all of those areas. I'm going to talk through this though, just rationalize why there would be so many similarities in my style... there is a good chance that I have not delved deep enough into thinking about this, so maybe a new truth will come out as I write... :)

Within my family, I am the oldest of the 5 kids, so I while I am by no means the strongest personality, I have a kind of default position of power just based on the fact that I am the oldest amongst my siblings. Do I run the decision making... absolutely not. To be honest, my next youngest sister, who is 28, is the one who I think is the most dominant and controlling personality within our family... and I would say that more often than not she is the one who will forcefully vocalize her opinion and often get her way when it comes to group decisions. I think this is partly because she is very aggressive, which translates into being driven in her outside world, a quality which has served her greatly. But additionally, I think this is also because several of my other siblings, myself especially, have a very laid back personality when it comes to making decisions that we don't consider "vital". Whereas my sister has a voice for virtually everything and anything that comes up, trivial or not, I tend to not mind just going wtih the flow on things that don't really effect me negatively one way or another- such as choosing a location for a family dinner, deciding what group gift to get my parents for Christmas, choosing a menu for my parent's anniversary dinner that we cook them every year, etc. Additionally, aside from the fact that I genuinely don't mind just taking the back seat sometimes, I also don't think some things are worth fighting or debating over. If it is an issue or topic that matters to me, then of course I will stand my ground and fight for what I think is best.

Groups Leads

I think my leadership style changes dramatically from work to school, and from there onto family. In the family, we have strong independent folks that all have a good head on their shoulders and are used to running things. I have to use consultation and rational persuasion. Rarely is pressure, exchange, inspirational appeal, etc. going to get you anywhere. In school, you are starting usually from a blank slate for an assessment from your peers, especially when it's a group in which you aren't really friends with any of the members. You are driven to establish a standard for yourself and you may push forward consultation and ingratiation, perhaps some coalition building and rational persuasion. It's tough to use pressure in either of the previously mentioned situations, for me, but it applies perfectly to work situations. I use upward appeal in addition to the aforementioned tactics. At work, however, what you are able to push for leadership is dependent on your ranking, environmental factors (age vs. the person/people you are working with), and perception based on past work history. Here, I believe, your transformational leadership skills apply especially.

I can learn from applying particular tactics with my closest relatives (parents/sister) and move those over to application at work (since I see them, in many cases, for more hours than my own family... they somewhat resemble a second family to me). The work lessons can then be applied to class related groups, as in my opinion, it is tougher to influence those of a older generation than our peers.

I feel I am usually in the same role with family and work. And do find myself, more often in the smaller collaborative groups for school, in the same roll. As the groups get larger, however, I begin to step back more to allow more time for the appropriate skills needed towards the task and those involved to be assessed. It's useful as people that would like to take the lead volunteer more often, but I have also found the opposite to be true (blind square) when the appropriate questions are not asked and people remain ... uninvolved.

I have found that one of the most effective bosses I had at work always kept his schedule, or did his best to keep it no matter what was going on around him. This give him a consistent image that seemed approachable to most of the people working with him, and his organizational skills even championed him as being capable of taking on time to hear out his subordinates. That is probably the single most relevant observation I have made about an effective leader in our group, and something I would like to work on evolving myself.

Suprised the heck outta me

I can start this post with a simple statement - I'm very much out of tune with how I see myself and how others perceive me. There were few categories in which I wasn't even close. The people doing the assessing included my ex, my boss, my ex boss, my buddy (with a critical view of myself), my customer service lead, etc. People that have seen me in action anywhere from 2-5 years. I underscored myself entirely in EI by nearly 2 points, on average. My reasoning for picking the scores I had, for example 5.75 in Regulating my own emotions, was because I am near a stone wall with most things but (I believe) you can tell sometimes that I am overloaded when I'm running around like mad to keep up. Apparently I am a stone wall to everyone that has known me for sometime, ranking ~6.7 for regulating my own emotions.

I do not believe the ranking is because I regulate my emotions or use the correct emotions, I believe it's because I disengage from emotions easily... especially in tough situations. I may have received a 6.88 because I could use the appropriate emotion to continue the design concept moving forward, for example, not for necessarily using the correct emotional response for the situation (girl showing signs of sadness, reciprocating with empathy).

As for Influence tactics, I was more so in line with at least the skills I expected to be used more often... but then again there were some exceptions. I was quite surprised that I seemed comfortable with use of Inspirational Appeal. I'm in agreement with more use of Upward Appeal, Coalition Building, and Rational Persuasion... Not really much of a tit for tat guy when it came to work that was supposed to get done anyway, unless it's necessary.

This feedback helps me identify where I need to focus to help move my leadership skills forward/develop my leadership skills. It was obvious that I do not communicate my vision clearly enough, set a good example, push for consensus, or do well in any specific category for Transformation Leadership. I don't get good feedback at all really, the performance reviews sometimes end up really to see how well you did with routine tasks and outlanding goals. They don't really get into development as much as an assessment of this sorts would. I expect to be able to identify what I need to change about myself through this kind of review and understand these categories and their applications a bit better (when I find the key!)

Final Blog...

We've reached the end of this part of your leadership journey - and hopefully you are ready to continue on your own! In this posting, please write about what activity, topic, or reading you found the most interesting and useful. It may be interesting to see how others saw the class and what they found of value.

For me, the most interesting group activity that we did was the one on managing your emotions/emotional intelligence. I have always felt I am very keen at reading and being in tune to the emotional state of others through their facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. And likewise, I have always felt that I am fairly good at identifying and communicating my own emotions accurately through my tones, expressions, etc. However, when tasked with the challenge of reading random phrases verbatim from one slip of paper while expressing a selected emotion as listed on another slip of paper, I found this was quite a challenge for me. I think this speaks to how much of a tie there is between the words we choose to say and the genuine emotions we are feeling at the time we are saying them, as it was extremely difficult for me to try to express "sadness", for example, while reading a phrase that didn't actually evoke that emotional response from me.

Also, please briefly describe which book - other than your own - you think was most useful to learn about and if you know of other books that you think would be useful for a future class, please provide the title!

As for the books that we read/discussed throughout this course- if I had to pick the 1 with the most interest to me it was definitely the one that my group read and presented on, Social Influence. I guess we picked that book for a reason though, as I knew that it sounded interesting from the first week when we were presented with the options. If I was to choose another book aside from our's that really had an impact on my as far as what I can apply to my leadership behavior, I think it would be the book about motivation- . I think understanding what can motivate others and also what motivates one's self are vital skills in being an effective leader. I have personally learned through the years how to re-motivate myself on several occasions when my job work or school work has become stagnant or boring and I feel myself losing focus... I have struggled with the challenge of becoming bored easily my whole life, which has forced me to figure out tricks for how to re-stimulate myself and get excited and back on track rather than just giving in to my lethargy and changing jobs or doing the minimum to get by in a class.

As far as suggestions for books to read going forward... there was a book that my last company actually required the entire staff to purchase and read- it was called Raving Fans. The company was a media publisher, and we were all working in various capacities, from sales, sales support, customer retention, client services, etc. The book was sales/customer service inspired, but it could be a good one to put on the list for the class to choose from next semester- I though it was a really interesting read and appreciated being "forced" to read it as part of a company directive, as I have never been asked to do something like that before by an employer.

Motivate, eh?

In retrospect, our discussion of What do you think motivates you? Are there times when you are just trying to get by and are there times when you are striving something really great? When do you experience each kind of feeling? Which feeling are your more comfortable with?
The translation of theory in the first video most definitely struck a chord here. I think it just helped me figure out why I make simple tasks more challenging by combining other tasks with it. What he was referring to as "flow," I believe is often referred to as being in the "zone." This is also what you may have noticed in the movie "Facebook" where he puts on his headphones and just flows code. We do this in design as well as assignments sometimes. If something doesn't seem challenging enough, we may wait off and group it into a slot where it suddenly rises in priority and now has peeked out interest as a challenge (well, at least that's how I seem to sort things for now). I'm much more comfortable with the feeling of arousal and flow. It should be challenging enough to require thought, and it should require enough skill (be it the completion of a thought, within a limited period of time).

Having considered what motivates you, think about how you might motivate others. Can you shift gears between different styles and types of motivation when working with your followers? Can you use fear? Can you use anger? Can you use inspiration? How can you improve your motivational repertoire?
Hmm.. now I can't quite apply this with others. More often than not, they are buried. I have to describe the importance of something for it to be raised in priority level with them. Usually it's based on the consequences of what may happen if we do not take care of something right away, which is in the end, a form of fear. I think this would target my need for defining how I can better collaborate with my coworkers than try to inspire more so than create a task oriented, fear driven, unscheduled chaos that somehow works out in the end. I maybe overstating this a bit, as it's not really chaos, but it does not come through as a finely defined and specific requirement. Perhaps trying that and creating a more through environment will help inspire them to complete the task that was given to them with a clear definition?

I've gotta try that soon.