A511.7.3.RB - Inner Work for Authentic Leadership

 Inner Work for Authentic Leadership

     One of the first viewpoints to describe the authentic leadership is “intrapersonal”. The intrapersonal perspective means that what goes on inside the mind of a leader is just as important as the actions the leader takes. Self-knowledge, self-regulation, and self-concept area all aspects of the inner workings of a leader. Another viewpoint is the “interpersonal” viewpoint; which, not only looks at the inner workings of a leader, but at the response of the followers since the authentic ‘self’ evolves out of the interactions between a leader and their followers (Northouse, 2013).

     Being about to process your experiences is a way to gain an understanding of your intrapersonal self. According to Bill George, not being about to do this is what will cause you to repeat your mistakes. In Bill George’s YouTube video, he explains that a way for you to be able to process your experiences is to either meditate, pray, or share a conversation with someone that you deeply trust.
We all have many experiences in life every day, but we don’t always take the time to process what their significance and meaning is to our lives. Things often get in the way or we get too bogged down in everyday life to take the time to reflect on the things that have had an impact on us. I have often noticed when going about my day that there are things that make me pause for a second, as if my mind instinctively knows that this is one of those ‘real-world’ experiences that will have an impact on what I think and how I feel. However, if you don’t reflect on that moment later and see how that moment fits into the big picture, then it gets lost.

     Having children is one of the most real-world experiences a person can have to help them gain intrapersonal perspective. On a daily basis my children allow me to learn something new about myself, how I act, how I respond, what I believe in and what I don’t. I am a leader to my children and the responses they have to me make me reflect on what kind of outcome am I looking for, what direction I want things to go in, and how happy they are. I parent based off what I learned from my parents, what I have learned by watching other people, and by what I have studied about. Everyone will tell you that there is not a specific way to parent a child that will guarantee that they will become a well-rounded, productive members of society one day.

     This is where the feedback comes in. Now, trust me when I say that I do not like getting feedback about my parenting, not sure anyone does, but if your authentic purpose to parenting is that you do the best you can to raise happy, healthy children, then accepting feedback is not optional. However, where your feedback comes from is. Bill George emphasized the importance of being able to truly trust the person who is providing the feedback. It is vitally important with this be the case with any feedback, because if it is not, then you will not gain the self-awareness and understanding that is needed in order to grow from the experiences.

     I personally have what I call my ‘core’ friends that I trust more than anyone (except my husband of course). There are three of them and each one provides a different viewpoint because of their different personalities and backgrounds. For example, I was having a discipline problem with my son when he was younger. I tried the traditional counting, “that’s 1, that’s 2, that’s three, you’re in time out” kind of method. He would always stop by three, but I was extremely aggravated that he always pushed it to that point. So, I tried stopping at two, but that didn’t work either. I called one of my core friends and we talked about how things were going. She had seen me with my son on a daily basis and she had seen this counting in action. I asked her why she thought it wasn’t working. She quite bluntly told me that the problem wasn’t with the method, but it was with me. She explained that after I would throw out the first count, he would still act up, but in my reluctance to put him in timeout, I would let certain things slide before counting to two, and so on. To tell me that the problem was me took me by surprise and I was a little upset. I worked very hard following through on the final count of three and that was tough for me to do because I didn’t want to put him in time out, but I did it; however, that is where the problem was.

     I took some time to really think about what she said and really pay attention to how I was doing things. Often, those moments are my shower time, or while I am on my daily walk.  I came back and asked her opinion on what I could do to make things better. She gave me her opinion and to this day it is something I follow. That feedback changed me. It changed how I disciplined my son and then later my daughter. Today, it is a method I follow when dealing with Elementary school children and even some adults.

     However, there is one specific friend that I call my “philosophical friend”, because I feel that when her and I have a conversation she is helping to be to develop my own self-awareness based off of the experiences I have told her happened to me that day or that week. She is who I call my personal therapist because she allows me to really examine why do things I do, or why I feel a certain way about things.

     I do believe that we are made out of our experiences, but if you don’t take the time to learn from them and truly understand what significance they hold in your life, then you won’t grow from them.


Reference:
George, B. 2012. Harvard's Bill George: Inner Work for Authentic Leadership. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmPu2LQ84ts
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publishing.

A511.6.3.RB - A Leader From the Past

     Principal as a Transformational Leader

     I once worked at a school where the boss, otherwise known as the Principal, is what I would consider a transformational leader. The reason I say this is because of four reasons: she worked to build the schools vision and establish goals; she created a productive school culture; she provided intellectual stimulation; and she offered individualized support.

     When Claire first got to the elementary school that I worked at, she stepped into the shoes of a previous laissez-faire leader who was highly ineffective at establishing a common goal for the whole school to work towards and who did not communicate with the staff and teachers. He operated on the premise of “their room, their way” and he let things go at that. Claire rewrote the school’s policy, procedures and revamped the school’s curriculum instructional design. She did this by holding daily meetings with all teachers and getting feedback on what they thought needed to change. She gave them her ideas and allowed them to come up with their own as to how they could incorporate them.

     After the new vision and goals were established, she continued to hold weekly meetings to create a productive school culture. She made sure that the leader of the classroom (teachers) were teaching to their highest quality standard and had improved student learning. She fostered an environment of group thinkers who maintained communication with each section and all shared one common goal.

In one of the meetings they had, some of the teachers mentioned that being able to connect their computers to their televisions so that they could show certain educational websites to the whole classroom at once would be beneficial and would help tremendously in the classroom. Claire provided that intellectual stimulation to them by using some of the school’s budget to invest in Apple TV. 

     But the best example of how Claire was a transformational leader was how she gave each teacher and staff member individualized support to help them do whatever needed to be done in order to stay on track with the school’s vision. The elementary school’s vision is, “Students are engaged individuals who shape their own successful future”. Claire not only helps teacher and staff stay on track with this vision but she does it with the students as well. 

     As for me, watching her stay authentic to the mission while dealing with so many different personalities has shown me that it can be done and done well. When I speak with the teachers, or listen to them in the lounge trying to come up with new and exciting ways to get kids involved, I can tell that they feel empowered. And then when I see those same teachers go to Claire and present their idea to her and she helps them realize their own plan of action by simply providing support, it changes how I myself go about my own work. It makes me want to be a better team player.

A511.5.3.RB - Mid-Term Review

     Relationship-based Approach to Leadership

     Itay Talgam’s video, “Lead Like the Great Conductors” really resonated with me. Having the opportunity to be a part of an orchestra I completely understand the importance of the conductor. To many, he doesn’t look like he provides much in the way of leaderhip. In fact, the last clip Talgam showed was of a Conductor who simply stood there and provided leading facial expressions while the orchestra performed brilliantly. I have had the opportunity to have several different types of conductors and truly understand the feelings that come along with the differences they each provided.

     The conductor is the leader and the player follows. Depending on his conducting/leadership style the orchestra will portray that in their music. Like the conductor who was overly excited, you could see the players moving around in their seats as the excitedly played their parts. The conductor who stood there barely making a move while he turned the pages was a bit boring, showed little interest in the players who were playing, and simply provided a steady beat. It showed in the music. 

     Leadership is like that. You get out of it what you put into it. Like the conductor with his orchestra, the leader needs to have a good relationship with his followers. The conductor also has a relationship with the music; he knows it, feels, it, and shows it through his leadership style. 

     Talgam mentioned how the players rarely looked up. I understand why. Part of it is because they can see his movement in their peripheral; they are watching, just not directly. The other part is because of the trust the player/follower has in their leader/conductor. This was shown to me once while we were rehearsing for a contest that was happening in a few weeks. Our conductor had to take a few days off due to a family emergency so a substitute conductor stepped in so we could still rehearse. We were a mess. We did not know this conductor, his style of conducting, nor did he take the time to get to know us and how we played. There was a lot of looking around at each other, relying more on what our team mates were doing versus listening to our leader. There was a mistrust there and we were all reluctant to follow him. 

     The relationship between the leader and the follower is definitely an important one. It can make the difference in how well the job gets done. When the followers have a better attitude towards their leader, they are more likely to perform their absolute best. 

     The relationship-based approach to leadership may come a little more natural to most of us. We naturally form relationships in life without trying, so when we apply it to our leadership style it has the potential to produce a great team. However, I also believe it needs to be in conjunction with other leadership styles, like transformational for instance, in order for it to not fall into the trap of alienating certain members of a team.

     After learning the different styles of leadership I think the best approach is to apply the leader-member exchange (LMX) along with path-goal theory. This leadership style would take each individual team member into account, what their leadership preference is, and base it on a dyadic relationship. There would be mutual trust and understanding and a willingness to go above and beyond expectations.