Journey85's Blog

My Take on the Class as a Whole…

journey85 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:24:29 +0000

When I reflect on this course, I have nothing but fond memories. First, this is one of the only courses where I was able to form social bonds with all of my classmates. I knew this would be the case when I was told that we would have retreats and informal Friday meetings. This has given me the chance to get to know my classmates and thus glean from their experiences and philosophies. There has been no other class where I was forced to work so closely with my other classmates. I’ve enjoyed it working with this great a bunch of people.

Through the readings and interactions with my classmates, I have truly learned to what it is to be a leader. My first and most notable lesson as a leader was that other people have great ideas as well (not just me) and some of them are better than mine. I’m so glad that we were able to apply everything we learned in class in our Friday meetings. Sometimes things would occur in our planning phases and I would say, “Hey, we just learned about this in class,” or, “Wow, I just read about that in the textbook,” especially what we learned about teams and communication. I’m ever grateful for this class because above all, it has taught me to be aware of my functions, influence, and responsibilies as a leader and that I should value the feelings and opinions of those that I lead. This will help me TREMENDOUSLY in my professional endeavors as well as personal relationships and I’ll be forever grateful!

Personal Leadership Plans :)

journey85 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:08:34 +0000

I think the Personal Leadership Plan was a great assignment that allowed us to systematically think through the process of defining what leadership it to us by doing self evaluations and allowing others to give us feedback on our own leadership styles. I like the plan itself because it simple enough to where you don’t have to be enrolled in a leadership class to be able to use it. The very first exercise just asks a person to identify people he/she may think is a leader and then think about the traits that makes these people leaders. From there it becomes more comprehensive and applicable to the participant’s own leadership style.

The way my view of leadership has changed is that it has become more defined. At first it was just a concept that I could only recognize when I saw it. Now I have been taught what it is, I have examined my own leadership style and philosophy, and can now share with others what it means to be a leader.

The Case for Case Studies

journey85 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:02:16 +0000

I think case studies are an excellent educational tool. They allow principles to move from lecture-learned theory to real-life application especially for a class such as this one where the terminology of the subject matter is so common that we take for granted that we know exatly what everything means. We get to see that the concepts we learn in class are real and they occur everyday. For example, the ethics lectures and subsequent case studies allowed me to put a name to what I thought were just simply moral ideas. I would hear a case on the news or hear of an occurance and think, “Wow, that’s just not a good way to conduct business but at least it’s not illegal.” I found out that even though I didn’t realize it, I was analyzing legal vs. ethical. I liked how we compared the two in class and got to see it in real everyday cases in the case studies. It was also great to that the case studies didn’t have the “correct” answer or solution and that we were forced to academically disect them and take positions. I also learned that people face these diffuclt types of decisions everyday in every facet of society and as leaders, knowing how to handle oneself in these “predicaments” is key.

We Are the World: A Breif Look at Leadership Across Cultures

journey85 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:33:22 +0000

Irrefutably, the world is getting smaller. Not literally, of course. With continued immigration and emigration, the emergence of communication technologies and with more and more companies worldwide doing business offshore, there is a high sense of global connectedness. As a leader, one must be aware of the various cultures of the people he serves and, beyond that, be proactively sensistive to their needs. If he is not, he runs a high chance of possibly creating a “hostile” environment in the organization due to simple misunderstandings and ignorance and even prejudices.

I believe that if a person realizes that their leadership style and even how they relate to others in an organization is heavily inflenced by their culture (as opposed to being the “normal” or “right” way of) he will be better equiped to recognize and handle any cultural mix-ups that may arise along that wise.

I Got the Power!! Power and Authority as it Relates to Leadership

journey85 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:26:44 +0000

Peter G. Northouse describes power as the resource a leader draws on to effect [any type of] change. A leader always has power because leadership is influence and one cannot influence anyone or anything without the power to do so. Although this is true, the reverse is not wholly true: while those who are in power are always leaders, they are not always ethical, which in my opinion, is necessary to be called a leader. To demonstrate this point we can examine two of French and Raven’s five types of power – coercion power and reward power. The ethical implications of using coercive power should be obvious. A leader who uses coercion negatively influences a follower or subordinate into doing a specific action. No one wants to be forced into doing anything and as the text says, “Leaders who use coercion are interested in their own goals and seldom are interested with the wants and needs of subordinates.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with reward power. Truth be told, rewarding one’s productivity (as well as reprimanding one’s lack of productivity) is encouraged for worker morale and the organization’s overall goal attainment. The difficulty occurs when the leader abuses this type of power and reprimands those who do not get on board with his personal objectives or unethical endeavors by threatening to not grant a promotion, for example.

Authority and power are very similar in definition. In fact, based on the definitions of authority and a survey of the five types of power, it seems as though the two terms are interchangeable. Authority, too, can be personal or positional.

Leadership: The People’s Perspective

journey85 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:39:46 +0000

Doing the campus surveys was really a great experience for me. It was interesting to see and hear people’s reactions to the concept of leadership. Our questions were really thinking questions and we forced people to define what leadership meant to them. I learned that most people recognize leadership when they see it but for them it was extremely diffucult to define. Influence, responsibility and the ability to handle group dynamics were common themes in people’s definition of leadership. Most people defined it as an action word where someone is overseeing or facilitating some function of a group. Most people responded that leaders are made as they travel through life and experience different circumstances. A few said that although some leaders are born, [effective] leadership qualities are acquired. Everyone agreed that a person does not have to be in a position of authority to be a leader although one person said that it does help. Everyone agrees that in order to be a leader one must first be a follower.

Although we did not get to ask whether everyone thought they were a leader or not or if they saw themselves as ones who could make a difference, I would venture to say that after our series of questioning and based on everyone’s responses, they would definitely think that they are leaders who could make a difference. I so boldly make this assumption because no one though that one has to be in a position of authority to be a leader and everyone we interviewed was a student. I believed that we were able to make people think about what capacity they could be leaders in.

I thought it especially interesting that one person identified the most influencial leader in their life as thier restaurant manager who introduced him a few of John Maxwell’s books in teaching him how to lead. John Maxwell is THE leadership guru of our time and focuses on effectively managing people within the organization as a strategy. Most of the people we interviewed either consciously or subconciously alluded to the notion that a good leader must have good people skills or at least be sensitive to the needs of the people within an organization. I agree!

Teamwork: Can’t We All Just Get Along?!

journey85 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:51:48 +0000

A good leader takes the time to “read” the dynamics of a group which are multifold. One very important and fundamental dynamic is that the group is made up of people. For a leader, being sensitive to and continuously addressing the needs of all involved in a group may well be the most important aspect of group success. It is very easy to focus on a deadline, yet another very important dynamic, or the individual tasks that need to be done within the group but if people aren’t being appreciated or if there isn’t a feeling of unity or cohesiveness within the group people aren’t going to do their absolute best and the project or main goal of the group will be undermined. Our book likens a group to an organism and like any organism there are phases in its life. It further outlines that there are five phases in the life of a group: the forming of the group where group members become acclimated to their colleagues and the atmosphere in general; the storming where group members start to show their personalities and conflict is inevitable; norming is where conflict is resolved and team identity emerges; in performing the group has “ironed out its kinks” and is working at an optimal level; and finally adjourning where the project is complete and the group is disbanded. If a leader is not aware that working in and becoming comfortable within a group is necessary the group will most likely not succeed.

Group success is very important to being a successful leader. Just like the members of a group need to feel a sense of importance and to be appreciated, a leader needs to feel like he or she is facilitating to the best of his or her ability. If, for example, there is constant conflict within a group that a leader has not figured out how to resolve, both the group members and the group leader will be constantly frustrated and group morale will be extremely low. The possible domino effect is that the leader may lose passion or intensity for his job and/or will not be chosen to be a group leader in the future.

To Do or Not To Do: A Conversation on Ethics

journey85 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:03:28 +0000

The subject of ethics is quite an interesting one to dissect. Ethics unlike, say, for example, the company policy on bringing your kids to work, is a much more complicated concept than just a regular “Am I allowed to…” decision. It solicits a moral response. This type of conflict usually involves having to make a decision that will inconvenience one and benefit another (either in the long run or presently) where both parties have vested interests in the outcome of the decision and either choice can possibly have heavy implications on the other party involved. It can be as national as a pharmaceutical company’s decision on whether or not to pull presumably faulty or dangerous medicines from store shelves or to stay quiet about possible danger and keep their bottom line in tact. It can also be as local as deciding whether to promote a tenured employee, who also happens to be the godfather of one of your children, or the newer employee who is of a different race who clearly is doing a better job.
The textbook outlines that we as human beings are look to peers and significantly influential people for guidance regarding ethically appropriate behavior. As a leader, the decisions made on even the smallest ethical level (taking small amounts of office supplies, for example) weigh very heavily upon the decision processes of others in the organization. It is also important that everyone on the leadership hierarchy follows the same rules and have the same ethical “mantra” in the organization because leadership and ethics go hand in hand. If senior leadership is making decisions using the ethical code and lower leadership isn’t or vice verse, it wont be long before the organization will have to address the disparity. This would most likely follow some embarrassing event that would probably cost someone their job and probably their ability to lead at that capacity in the future of their career and maybe even the reputation of the organization. All of this could be avoided with an ethically congruent leadership staff.

Laedan Retreat

journey85 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:07:02 +0000

The retreat at Winshape was awesome!!! It is one that I will remember for a long time. The highlight of the weekend for me was getting to know my fellow students in the Laedan Program. It was interesting to see everyone’s leadership style in the various activities througought the day. Everyone had great ideas for the best way to copmlete each task. I learned that my way is not the only way and allowing people to use their ideas can produce the same or even better results. As a result I have decided that I will listen to others’ ideas and entertain them whenever I’m in a group setting.

Leadership…according to Jeseth

journey85 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:31:00 +0000

When we were asked in class to define leadership I found myself writing and erasing and thinking and re-writing and erasing and thinking. It’s one of those words that you hear all your life so you think you know what it means until someone asks you do define it intelligently. After about five minutes of trying to identify what leadership meant to me, I came up with one, or, at the very least, a draft of one. With a deep here-goes-nothing sigh, I penned, “Leadership is the ability to set a good example.” I felt good about it for a little while then thought about another possible definition: Leadership is the ability to be effective in a given or assumed position. Yea. I think I like that.

Because defining leadership is so complex, identifying it can be complex, too. Immediately I think of those in positions in companies, churches, government, etc. but their position doesn’t make them a leader. Kenneth Lay was the CEO of Enron but he wasn’t a leader. I believe in order to be considered a leader your influence must be positive.

I see leadership qualities in myself when I take initiative in and am responsibile for my own progress. Being in college has really taught me that this is necessary. In the same way a leader does not sit around and wait for good things to come about. He/she makes them happen.

What I need to work on is the compassion trait that a leader should have. My leadership style in organizations is very job-oriented. In my eyes, if you are a part of the organization you have a job to do. Do it. That doesn’t always fly. Life happens and sometimes people need allowances and more time. I can be more sensitive to that.

More on this topic of leadership next week. Goodnight world!