Monthly Archives: March 2012

Experience shapes and transforms a leader.  Through adversity a leader will  develop and become a bigger and better person in situations where regular people get  knocked out. Reflect, learn, and grow from adversity.

There is a French adage that says “20 fois sur le métier, remettez votre ouvrage”. It sums up perfectly chapter 7. Basically, it means try a lot, try hard, get to it until you get it right. Then, you will feel that you’ve accomplished something of value that has the possibility of changing both yourself and your surroundings. As pointed by  Northouse you have to be willing to forget about yourself, put the needs of others before, and see the greater good, the common good to become a transformed leader.

So, make the best out of everything instead of falling flat on your face when things do not go as smoothly as planned,  take the bull by the horn, take action and go on as “everywhere you trip is where the treasure lies”.  Adversity has a great deal to do with the development of leaders. Either it knocks you out or you become a bigger and better person.

Chapter 7 is about doing what is right, learning from adversity, learning from your experiences instead of being boosted by it. It’s about transformational leadership, it’s about change. But change is always associated with hope and people believe that the charismatic leader will transform their lives. But, is this at all possible? Is it fair? Isn’t it too much of a burden to place on one person’s shoulders? Aren’t we setting ourselves up for deception and disappointment? A lot of people seem to agree about the leader being some sort of a savior, but I don’t like being too dependent, so it makes me a little uncomfortable.  To me it has to be a shared burden, because titanic tasks such as the ones carried by true leaders have to be shared because it gives everybody a sense of accomplishment and responsibility.

This chapter dares us to not be afraid, take a chance and stand up for ourselves. There are great benefits associated with not being afraid and to me the best is that it makes us stronger people. We make decisions every day and sometimes, we are unhappy with them.  But, we chose to make them not because somebody told us to, but because we listened to our inner voice and it makes all the difference.

Listening to ourselves helps us form our own opinions instead of agreeing with the ones of others.  I don’t know if anybody has seen Disney’s Tinkerbell movie when they were kids. I have a little girl who loves Disney movies.  My thing is that Tinkerbell was not afraid to try different things because she didn’t want to accept the status quo. She messed up a lot, but finally she found her true calling and by the same occasion, improved the fairy world.  She might be a fictitious character, but she still is an example as she was curious, tried different things and thought outside the box. You might not become a leader in the sense everybody comprehend that word, but, you will complete a full circle of yourself. So, dream, aspire to great things, care about others, be honest, be unique and be true to yourself as it will help you gain confidence and will make you complete. To be honest, it is kind of complicated and you are not even sure you will get to get there, but nobody promised that life was easy, right?

Knowing yourself, like we’ve seen previously is very important, but the pieces of the puzzles would not fit completely if one would only by preoccupied with thyself. That is where your environment comes. People either learn through maintenance or shock but the best way of learning according to Bennis is through innovative learning.  You will learn to trust yourself and shape events instead of being shaped by them.

“In innovative learning one must not only recognize existing contexts, but be capable of imagining future contexts”.  Creativity, therefore, plays an  important role in the developmental curve of a leader and helps create a vision. You have to forget about the status quo established through maintenance & shock learning and become autonome.  You have to free yourself from the constraints of the past and move into the world, into the future, have perspective to appreciate your vision and realize it to the full extent. However, you have to fill gaps left in your education by reading and thinking. Don’t be afraid to be different, to be yourself. This is better said than done, but I believe it is a reachable goal.

I like the idea of travelling to broaden your experiences, as it is more than true. When you stay on one place you are static and can’t have a full picture.  “The stranger in a strange land sees more and sees fresh”. I still remember my first real contact when I came to the USA and how bizarre so many things looked and felt to me; still feel strange and out of place sometimes. I’ve been touched by the culture; I’ve had experiences that have changed my perspective of thing but I’m still able to see, smell things differently and have kept my individuality regardless of the “you’re so strange, so different” looks I still get.

Meeting people and going to suffering help you embrace the world.  We learn from the past and our experiences. This takes us to chapter 5 operating on instincts.

My favorite quote in chapter 7 is “We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not contemplation…. The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better.” This quote fits well into some books I have for example, Strength Finders 2.0 and fits well with the philosophy of my current employer, The Medici Group. The company encourages not only it’s clients to take action and not overanalyze, but it’s employee’s as well. The strength finders book did a great job at highlighting individual strengths and making sure that readers focus on developing their strengths instead of their weaknesses.

I have always found that continuing to analyze things paralyzes a team instead of helping deliver results. Yet it is difficult for even the most competent teams to determine how much analysis is enough. This is where great leaders come in and drive the team in the correct direction.

“People begin to be leaders at that moment when they decide for themselves how to be.”  This first quote in the beginning really stuck out for me in the chapter. I think its absolutely true.  You cannot be a leader when you are still following and being largely influenced by others.  I believe that understanding yourself… your strengths, weaknesses, passions, and despises, all enable you to be self-aware hence becoming a better person and a better leader should you want to be a leader.  Knowing yourself allows you to take advantage of situational leadership (as discussed in Northouse), because only you will know in what situations will you rise or fail in.  If you know that you are good at communicating and relating to others, if a leadership role requires such abilities you could take on that role knowing that you will succeed, whereas if you knew that you were not good and seeing tasks through and delegating responsibilities to others, you would not put yourself in that leadership position because you would be setting yourself up to fail.   Understanding yourself aids in the path of finding what it is you truly want to do with your life, may it be becoming CEO of a major corporation or a housewife and parent of X amount of children.  I believe this because it creates clarification of your goals and aspirations.

“Noone- not your parents not your teachers nor your peers- can teach you how to be yourself.”  This is another quote that stuck out to me because many people let others mold them into the people they want them to be and they never truly break out of the mold and express the person they really are.  I think we are always growing and changing and who we are today could be different from who we were yesterday.  Others will always have their judgments, criticisms, and ideas of who we ‘ought’ to be but that doesn’t meant that is who we ‘are’ or we we feel we ‘should be.’  That is something that you find on your own through reflection of your own experiences.  Others teach you things in a way to have you learn the information as they have presented it to you, rather than using the Socratic method, where one uses their own critical thinking abilities to find their own answers/solutions.  The socratic method allows one to think for themselves and allows them to reach within themselves to find solutions to their problems, answers to their questions, they didn’t know they had before.  I think using this method also aids people in finding and understanding themselves better.  You realize that you had the ability to find the answer yourself the whole time.  You learn to be independent of others, and you can begin to rely on yourself.  I think this when you learn to rely on yourself is the “moment you decide yourself how to be” as was stated in the beginning of this blog.

Reflection, Desires, and Strategic Thinking are very important factors when mastering ourselves. Leaders have ambitions, but measuring and testing those ambitions will make them real. Our desires are just desires if we dont do any actions. Leaders are capable of putting ideas in context and perspective. When we have ideas that we consider a good ones, we should communicate to others to make them happen and be real, because if we dont, it will stay just as an idea. When we attract and convince people of how good are our ideas, we are being successful and leaders at the same time. Leaders have inspiration, vision, and empathy which makes them have a better judgment on their actions.

In terms of Team Leadership, it has become very popular in organizational leadership. Teams that are well structured habe better chances of meeting their goals and being successful. Based on the chapter, team leadership is critical to achieving both affective and behavorially based team outcomes, so its very important to understand the functions of leadership. Effective team leadership falls into the leader’s mental model. One of the strenghts of the team leadership model is that it provides a cognitive guide that helps leaders design and maintain effective teams and specially when performance is below standards.

Deploying ourselves and knowing some tools to help make decisions in a team is very helpful to achieve our goals.

Chapter 6 of “On Becoming a Leader” fits really well with Northouse’s chapter on Authentic Leadership. Throughout Chapter 6 we learn of the basic elements of a leader such as strategic thinking, desire and testing and measuring, essentially providing us with a guide on how to become a leader. Chapter 10 exposed us to the only form of leadership that can be learned up to this point according to Northouse. Two concepts that seem to fit well are Robert Terry’s Authentic Action Wheel and Bennis’ Test and Measures. Specifically Bennis’ third test, knowing what your values and priorities are, knowing what the values and priorities of your organization are and meauring the difference between the two. You can use the action wheel to determine any underlying problems or differences and then figure out how to solve to solve the problem.

Both readings were very insightful and I enjoyed both equally.

I’m going to skip blogs for Chapters 4 and 5 and add them a bit later. In this blog I’d like to summarize yesterday’s discussion of Chapter 6.

It was great to hear all your opinions and examples on the subject matters presented. I especially enjoyed learing of your fear battling techniques and our discussion on whether its a crippler or a motivator. I have also enjoyed very much hearing about how having an ambition creates all esle to follow and fall into place. The toughest question yesterday was of course, a discussion of full self-expression, which is an essential elelement of becoming a leader according to Benis. Many of you expressed great ideas on what it means for you to fully self express. For your future reference, I’m pasting in here the document I’ve prepared for the class discussion and hopefully you can come back to the “wizdom” of these quotes in your near future and find them usefull:

1. Reflection leading to resolution
2. Resolution leading to perspective
3. Perspective leading to point of view
4. Point of view leading to tests and measures
5. Tests and measures leading to desire
6. Desire leading to mastery
7. Mastery leading to strategic thinking
8. Strategic thinking leading to full self-expression
9. The synthesis of full self-expression = leadership

QUESTIONS

1. What were some big fears you’ve had and how did you overcome them?
2. Fear for most leaders, is less a crippler than a motivator. Why do you think it is so?
3. Give an example to prove that having an ambition will have all other things fall in place?
4. Why do you think that knowing where you end up is important?
5. What is your definition of full self-expression?
6. Give an example of you taking a leadership role and others following you. What did you do to make that happen?

REFLECTION

“Freud: analysis is to make unconscious conscious”

“We are more shaped by negative experiences than positive.” Why?

“We remember lapses, rather than triumphs”

“Work your depression out by starting the day of thinking of ten things that bring pleasure”

“When you’re down, think of the things you have to look forward to”

“Mistakes contain potent lessons, but only if we think them through calmly, see where we went wrong, mentally revise what we’re doing, and then act on the reservations”

“Most of us are paralyzed by our failures” True?

“Just as writers turn experiences from their lives into novels and plays, we can each transform our experiences into grist for our mill”

“Too much intellectualizing tends to paralyze us”

“To do anything well requires knowing what it is that you’re doing, and you can only know what you’re really doing by making the process conscious – reflecting on yourself, reflecting on the task, and coming to a resolution”

“There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood.  The opposite of a great truth is another truth”

PERSPECTIVE

“Leaders don’t necessarily have to invent ideas, but they have to be able to put them in context and perspective”

1. When you consider a new project, do you think firs of its cost or its benefits?
   Profit higher than progress = short term perspective
2. Do you rank profit or progress first?
3. Would you rather be rich or famous?
   Famous rather than rich = more ambitious
4. If offered a promotion that required you to move to another city, would you discuss it with your family before accepting it?
   If discussing before accepting = more humane, than ambitious
5. Would you rather be a small fish in a big pond, or a big fish in a small pond?
   Big fish in a small pond = may lack the drive

“Perspective is your frame of reference, without it you’re flying blind”

“If you know what you think and what you want, you have a very real advantage”

“Everyone who wants to express him- or herself fully and truly must have a point of view”

TESTS AND MEASURES

“Have ambitions in terms of the way you want to live your life, and then the other things will flow out of that.”

“Expressing yourself fully is the most basic human drive”

How to best express you? Tests:

1. “Knowing what you want, knowing your abilities and capacities, and recognizing the difference between the two.”
2. “Knowing what drives you, knowing what gives you satisfaction, and knowing the difference between the two.”
3. “Knowing what your values and priorities are, knowing what the values and priorities of your organization are, and measuring the difference between the two.”
4. “Having measured the differences between what you want and what you’re able to do, and between what drives you and what satisfies you, and between what your values are and what the organization’s values are – are you able and willing to overcome those differences?”

“Whatever it is you want to do, you shouldn’t let fear get in your way. Fear for most leaders, is less a crippler than a motivator”

“The greatest opportunity for growth lies in overcoming things you’re afraid of.”

DESIRE

“The difference between desire and drive as the difference between expressing yourself and proving yourself”

“If you hold your ground and make your conviction known, people will come around.”

MASTERY

1. Competence
2. Ability to articulate
3. Level of human sensitivity, tact, compassion and diplomacy

“The path of master is built on unrelenting practice, but’s also a place of adventure”

“If you love something and want to make it happen, you can convince other people to go along with you”

“If you had a good idea yesterday, its going to be a good idea tomorrow, an just because you haven’t convinced anyone to go with it today doesn’t mean you won’t convince someone to go with it tomorrow”

STRATEGIC THINKING

“Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”

Steps:

1. Know where you’re going to end up”
   “Mountain climbers don’t start climbing from the bottom of the mountain. The look at where they want to go and work backward”
2. Flesh out those routes, elaborate them, revise them, make a kind of map of them, complete with possible pitfalls and traps as well as rewards
3. Examine this map objectively, as if you were not its maker, locate all its soft spots, and eliminate them or change them.

“Develop a corporate planning system in which planning and management were synonymous”

SYNTHESIS

“Leaders differ from others in their constant appetite for knowledge and experience, and as their worlds widen and become more complex, so too do their means of understanding.”

“How you attract and motivate people determines how successful you’ll be as a leader.”

“Leadership without mutual trust is contradiction in terms.”

“Vision, inspiration, empathy, trustworthiness are manifestations of a leader’s judg

Chapter 5, I find to be very interesting. One of the more interesting points is the concept of instinct being driven by right brain qualities. Apparently these right brain qualities are what employers seek in candidates “As an academic administrator, Alfred Gottschalk looked for right brain characteristics when he hired” (pg. 101). Gottschalk is quoted saying he looks for someone who has imagination, can inspire trust, perseverance and steadfastness of purpose. All of the traits are not only on right brained but can be considered a person’s core values. In my Intro to Entrepreneurship Course, we just learned that it is always better to invest in someone who has the right values, over someone who just delivers results without values. Values or Right Brain characteristics are what guides our instinct and the decisions we make. Yet, it can be difficult to trust your instinct at early point in life because your instinct may not be fully developed.

I personally beleive in operating on Instinct because I usually  listen to my gut. Most of the times, I can feel when I’m right on doing certain things. Some people dont like to act by impulse, but as long as you know what you are doing and the consequences coming along with, its fine. Several business people and entrepreneurs act by instinct, and those actions have made them successful. As Bennis states on the book, “No leader sets out to be a leader”, people live their lives as their own, and the results of their actions will determine their leadership. We should use all our energies and skills to do our best. It is not about being a leader, its about being ourselves, stated by Bennis.