Some authors make their case for evidence-based advice and sound research. I appreciate it where I can find it. I also submit that personal experience is an additional form of evidence.
Some replies to my posts have asked for citations about me adding my opinions. My life experiences have informed my current way of thinking and it continues to change. I am not in the business of doing academic studies at this stage of life. I am living it and trying to teach my own kids to do it too.
Those that find a ring of truth in what I say are welcome to use it. Those that think I am way off base, are free to ignore what I say and follow their own opinions. I am open and constantly looking for what works in life, whether it is researched and cited or just off the top of someone's head.
I often form a hypothesis about a particular leadership idea, test it and let the results I observe inform whether that idea or method goes into my leadership toolbox or not. My results are within my own sphere of influence and are necessarily limited. I have conducted many such 'experiments' in the 'laboratories' of organizations whether volunteers or paid. I have been in organizational leadership roles for years and have tested much. Leadership is a big subject and has many situational variances, so not all ideas apply in all situations, but as I have searched for truths that transfer across specific situational boundaries and applied the knowledge I have found some things more effective than other things. This is what I hope to share over time. Some of my posts will be less useful than others, I'm sure.
Documenting fully with statistically valid sample data sets is for others to do. The children are growing too quickly for that full process right now. For now, I am time constrained. So I'm not opposed to the research of others, I just don't have the time to be as rigorous in my own experiments.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
12 ways of leader thinking - does this apply to kids? Some of it.
There was an interesting post in the Harvard Business Review called 12 Things Good Bosses Believe.
It lists 12 ways of leader thinking that are in addition to skill and knowledge.
To try to put it in terms older children may better understand, I will modify his 12 a bit. Most kids leadership is not based on organizational position, and even when it is, it is more strongly affected by interpersonal influence.
1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to be led or influenced by me.
2. My success — and that of followers — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but don't focus so much on them that you forget to encourage small wins that help people to make a little progress every day. This is how you get to the goal together.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my leader role is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough. This takes time to get right.
5. Sometimes I have to keep my followers focused when other things distract or affect them.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I can lead, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I may need to convince others I am right, and also listen as if I am wrong. As I get better at leadership, I teach followers to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my group — is "what happens after people make a mistake?"
9. Part of my role is to encourage followers to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. Then I help to winnow the many down to the few we can or should do. This means dropping the bad ideas and most of the good ideas, too.
10. It is important to eliminate the negative and to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I lead, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.
With kids, it may be more feasible to ask them to watch for manifestations of these beliefs in leaders within their sphere of influence such as teachers, coaches, youth group leaders, parents, friends parents, and so on. Then after letting them share what they have noticed, ask what they plan to do when they lead or influence. This is more sowing stage than reaping stage with children, in my opinion.
It lists 12 ways of leader thinking that are in addition to skill and knowledge.
To try to put it in terms older children may better understand, I will modify his 12 a bit. Most kids leadership is not based on organizational position, and even when it is, it is more strongly affected by interpersonal influence.
1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to be led or influenced by me.
2. My success — and that of followers — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but don't focus so much on them that you forget to encourage small wins that help people to make a little progress every day. This is how you get to the goal together.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my leader role is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough. This takes time to get right.
5. Sometimes I have to keep my followers focused when other things distract or affect them.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I can lead, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I may need to convince others I am right, and also listen as if I am wrong. As I get better at leadership, I teach followers to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my group — is "what happens after people make a mistake?"
9. Part of my role is to encourage followers to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. Then I help to winnow the many down to the few we can or should do. This means dropping the bad ideas and most of the good ideas, too.
10. It is important to eliminate the negative and to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I lead, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.
With kids, it may be more feasible to ask them to watch for manifestations of these beliefs in leaders within their sphere of influence such as teachers, coaches, youth group leaders, parents, friends parents, and so on. Then after letting them share what they have noticed, ask what they plan to do when they lead or influence. This is more sowing stage than reaping stage with children, in my opinion.
The Leader in Me - Seven Habits for Kids
So we've kept it to one of Stephen Covey's habits per week because we want to keep their attention for 20 minutes. We have been pleasantly surprised at how much of it the children take in. It seems to have helped the teenager's perspective a bit and the younger children seem to take as much in as they understand.
Some weeks we have not gotten back to it due to all the other things going on in life, but it has worked out well so far. We're up to habit 5.
Some weeks we have not gotten back to it due to all the other things going on in life, but it has worked out well so far. We're up to habit 5.
Watching 12 and 13 year old boys plan a campout
In Boy Scouts a few weeks back, the challenge to the youth was to plan the menus for their camp out later that month. It was really entertaining to watch the back and forth as some offered really complicated meals, but when the duty roster for clean up was worked on, the menu changed to less complicated meals too.
This is worth seeing!
1. The Youtube video I'm linking you to is a great talk about motivation that applies to kids just as well as adults. It is aimed at leaders of organizations, but it is a good talk of itself. The subject is about reward systems and how the science shows that pay for performance works mostly with physical skills, but with cognitive skills it doesn't work as many think. The focus instead is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
2. The person who did the video based on the talk edited their cartoon drawings to match the speaker's voice and timing. What an engaging method of delivering information! My kids might even watch something like this and get something from it. It is like a mind map happening at speaking-speed (from the viewer's perspective).
2. The person who did the video based on the talk edited their cartoon drawings to match the speaker's voice and timing. What an engaging method of delivering information! My kids might even watch something like this and get something from it. It is like a mind map happening at speaking-speed (from the viewer's perspective).
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Leader In Me
After reading a book called "The Leader in Me" by Stephen R. Covey about elementary schools teaching the seven habits to five year olds and reading of the success they were having with elementary grades I remembered that I had read his 7-Habits of Highly Effective People back in 1991 and thought well of it. The stories of teachers and principles working together to teach leadership to elementary aged children inspired me to develop such a program for our home as a means of teaching my children leadership.
So I put together power point slides and we had a family meeting. We only were able to cover the introductory materials because we try to keep these meetings to 20 minutes because they have homework and other responsibilities too. The paradigm shifting stories were well received. They seem to be OK with learning the material. We had our 18 year old, our 16 year old, our 14 year old, our 9 year old, and our 5 year old around the table with a 28 year old guest too. It seemed to go over well. I gave them a hand out of the elementary school version of the 7-habits because the language is more to the point and clear without business jargon for the kids to stumble over. We'll see how this goes. So far, so good.
So I put together power point slides and we had a family meeting. We only were able to cover the introductory materials because we try to keep these meetings to 20 minutes because they have homework and other responsibilities too. The paradigm shifting stories were well received. They seem to be OK with learning the material. We had our 18 year old, our 16 year old, our 14 year old, our 9 year old, and our 5 year old around the table with a 28 year old guest too. It seemed to go over well. I gave them a hand out of the elementary school version of the 7-habits because the language is more to the point and clear without business jargon for the kids to stumble over. We'll see how this goes. So far, so good.
I watched a Conductor lead 95 kids in amazing music
In March, on of our daughters had two Japanese students stay with us for a week. It was great to see them absorb how different their cultures are from one another. Anyway, the Japanese band students and the US band students practiced together with American conductor Robert W. Smith. When the evening came for all the community to go see the joint Japanese-American concert, it was fascinating to watch Mr. Smith lead the 95 members of the band in amazing renditions. The way he asked for more from certain sections of musicians with body language and the way they responded and the wonderful music was a wonderful example of leadership in action.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Follow up from Feb 28th post
As the Do part of the plan-do-check-adjust Deming cycle, this post is a follow up to the Feb 28th post. The boy leaders did well today. They invited the others to join in the reading program. They explained it to the other boys, and they had a discussion about how they wanted to reward themselves if they continue until the end of the year. In the end, all ten of them decided on a paintball game if they consistently performed. Some that did not seem too interested at first decided to join in too. We'll check up on their progress next week. It is a daily commitment.
Monday, March 8, 2010
What Can We Learn from Military Leadership (this one is not aimed at kids)
The United States military has a bit of an advantage over most small to medium businesses in how it develops leaders. Perhaps very large companies can afford to have extensive leadership training, but most companies do not seem to prioritize leadership to the same extent that the military in the USA does.
For example, the military had a long history of effective leadership. New people entering the organization see the examples all around them in a myriad of situations. They can observe various styles of leadership in various situations and put some of these methods into their own leadership toolbox.
Another example is the leadership schools used by the US military. They have the organizational structure and budgets to operate their own school system. These include basic and advanced leadership training at the direct leadership levels (tactical) and go all the way to indirect leadership (leading other leaders) and to enterprise-level (strategic) leadership for organizations. Most profit and non-profit organizations do not allocate this level of resources to leadership training in their organizations. Instead of building their own leadership schools, many non-governmental organizations will either create in-house or license pre-made courses for facilitators to use or for web-based training. Learning management systems are starting to be more common in medium-sized organizations. For smaller organizations, open source LMS systems like Moodle can be used too.
Another advantage the military has is that they split up leadership into two areas. Commissioned officers focus on collective performance of the entire organization (platoon, company, battalion, brigade, etc.) while non-commissioned officers (NCOs) focus on individual performance. This separation of roles is not common is the commercial realm or that of non-profits. This teamwork between multiple leaders in an organization can make a huge difference in the success of the unit under the stress and strain of combat. In most non-military organizations, one leader focuses on both the individual performances and the collective performance of the organization.
Part of the reason for the emphasis on leadership in the military is that they have to prepare people to succeed in combat. Combat is one of the most (if not the most) unstructured and chaotic situations people have to operate in and leadership in combat requires practiced effective leadership, sometimes called "in the muscle", rather than checklists or a new book, or ponder-as-you-go that might succeed in a slower-paced environment.
Teaching leadership is one thing. People do need the theoretical background. However, much more important is skill transfer to the job. This requires opportunities to practice and receive feedback in many different situations. This is another advantage the military has over most other organizations. The military system is designed to move people into various roles and assignments that provide opportunities for leadership application, feedback, and improvement. Some companies like General Electric in the US do this too, but many small to medium sized businesses hire people for their specific job skill set and use them in that role until they leave the organization. Although such specialization can be effective for specific performances, it sometimes robs the organization of the leadership talents of their people. In many hiring situations, leadership is not even acknowledged or suggested as hiring criteria by human resources groups. Individual hiring managers will select for leadership on their own depending on their personal experience and background. In some organizations, with poor leadership histories have started to improve when a person with leadership ability gets into a key position with hiring/firing authority and starts including leadership as a criteria for hiring, promotion, and reassignment. They may or may not have the full support from supporting business processes like human resources functional groups. They may make these improvements on their own until a momentum starts to build. This can take time, months or years.
So non-military organizations can learn from the military leadership system and apply the parts that seem applicable to their situation.
Here are some suggestions.
Leadership is too vast of a subject for any one article to be comprehensive. Hopefully this has given you some ideas. How you improve is up to you.
Effective leadership is one of those intangible abilities that when present helps organizations in any endeavor.
For example, the military had a long history of effective leadership. New people entering the organization see the examples all around them in a myriad of situations. They can observe various styles of leadership in various situations and put some of these methods into their own leadership toolbox.
Another example is the leadership schools used by the US military. They have the organizational structure and budgets to operate their own school system. These include basic and advanced leadership training at the direct leadership levels (tactical) and go all the way to indirect leadership (leading other leaders) and to enterprise-level (strategic) leadership for organizations. Most profit and non-profit organizations do not allocate this level of resources to leadership training in their organizations. Instead of building their own leadership schools, many non-governmental organizations will either create in-house or license pre-made courses for facilitators to use or for web-based training. Learning management systems are starting to be more common in medium-sized organizations. For smaller organizations, open source LMS systems like Moodle can be used too.
Another advantage the military has is that they split up leadership into two areas. Commissioned officers focus on collective performance of the entire organization (platoon, company, battalion, brigade, etc.) while non-commissioned officers (NCOs) focus on individual performance. This separation of roles is not common is the commercial realm or that of non-profits. This teamwork between multiple leaders in an organization can make a huge difference in the success of the unit under the stress and strain of combat. In most non-military organizations, one leader focuses on both the individual performances and the collective performance of the organization.
Part of the reason for the emphasis on leadership in the military is that they have to prepare people to succeed in combat. Combat is one of the most (if not the most) unstructured and chaotic situations people have to operate in and leadership in combat requires practiced effective leadership, sometimes called "in the muscle", rather than checklists or a new book, or ponder-as-you-go that might succeed in a slower-paced environment.
Teaching leadership is one thing. People do need the theoretical background. However, much more important is skill transfer to the job. This requires opportunities to practice and receive feedback in many different situations. This is another advantage the military has over most other organizations. The military system is designed to move people into various roles and assignments that provide opportunities for leadership application, feedback, and improvement. Some companies like General Electric in the US do this too, but many small to medium sized businesses hire people for their specific job skill set and use them in that role until they leave the organization. Although such specialization can be effective for specific performances, it sometimes robs the organization of the leadership talents of their people. In many hiring situations, leadership is not even acknowledged or suggested as hiring criteria by human resources groups. Individual hiring managers will select for leadership on their own depending on their personal experience and background. In some organizations, with poor leadership histories have started to improve when a person with leadership ability gets into a key position with hiring/firing authority and starts including leadership as a criteria for hiring, promotion, and reassignment. They may or may not have the full support from supporting business processes like human resources functional groups. They may make these improvements on their own until a momentum starts to build. This can take time, months or years.
So non-military organizations can learn from the military leadership system and apply the parts that seem applicable to their situation.
Here are some suggestions.
- Many organizations have implemented succession planning, but often stop there without the follow-up of developing the people they identified further.
- Watch for who effectively gets things done with others, getting both the results and keeping the group morale high. Offer them an additional project or two to confirm your observations. Then put them in charge of a more challenging situation or group. Support them with additional leadership training.
- Be careful that your actions to develop are not perceived as exploiting them until they burn out and leave. This can be done most effectively by sincerely feeling this way. People see through insincerity quickly.
- Pull together the executives who demonstrate the most effective leadership and ask them to help build the organization’s leadership capability. As a side effect, the organization will end up with a leadership development program. Focus on business objectives first keeps everyone focused on the best organizational outcomes.
- Key individuals can start to use effective leadership as criteria in their advancement choices when vacancies open up or when re-structuring occurs. Not all supervisors and managers know how to do this. Start with those who do and begin and get some successes. Then focus on training others on how to accomplish this. However, you’ll have more results from focusing on those that already know how and having them coach others than you will get trying to start from those with the least demonstrated leadership abilities. Apply Pareto analysis to figure out what 20% of your leaders get 80% of the results and begin with the 20% group.
- Human resources groups can provide hiring managers behavioral interview questions that include leadership questions for supervisory and manager positions. Most people can spot effective leadership, but many don’t know how to go about assessing the degree of its existence. Job aids like this can help.
- Executive hiring should always include leadership criteria.
- Supervisors and managers at all organization levels can be provided training on providing opportunities for less experienced people who demonstrate above-average leadership potential.
- However, manage expectations carefully with such a program so that people understand they are getting horizontal opportunities, not necessarily vertical opportunities. Some organizations have counted on specialized skills sets and have kept people in their same roles for 5, 10, 15 years. This does not typically offer promotional opportunities, but rather project opportunities.
Leadership is too vast of a subject for any one article to be comprehensive. Hopefully this has given you some ideas. How you improve is up to you.
Effective leadership is one of those intangible abilities that when present helps organizations in any endeavor.
Who Else Can Help?
NOTE: I found this article by someone else a long while back and I did not record the source at the time. The ideas are not mine. They are important for teaching leadership to children.
How do you find a way of leading that doesn't demand more than it gives back in return, that doesn't lead to burnout, or unfulfillment, or alienation, or drift? How do you teach a child to do the same?
You can't do everything yourself. If you do that, then why is a 'leader' of others even necessary? In addition to asking "How?" ask "Who?" Assume you're not the answer. Most of us ask "How?" How can I (or we) get this thing done? We begin assessing what it would take to turn the idea into something real. We begin thinking and planning. Many times we get overwhelmed. (All those details to handle! All that know-how required!) And we conclude, not unreasonably, that the idea can't be done. Or if it can be done, then usually the personal price paid by the leader — the knower of the answers — will be high.
But what if, instead, the leader presumes they can't do anything, at least not as well as someone else, and definitely not on their own. Instead of considering for a moment that you might be the person to execute the plans or projects that arise in the course of business, always assume there's a better option.
Instead of asking, "How can I do that?" ask "Who can do that?" "Who knows how to do that?" "Who can help me get that done?"
Management analyst Jim Collins (author of Built to Last and Good to Great: Why Some Companies
Make the Leap... and Others Don't ) likens the leader of an organization to the driver of a bus, Collins says that the bus driver's job is not to decide where the bus should go or how to drive it there, but to get the right people on the bus in the first place -- as well as to get the wrong people off the bus, and ultimately to get the right people into the right seats. The right people then will help the leader figure out where to drive and how to drive there. What's more, the right people will attract other right people and inspire them to stick around, diminishing the burden and anxiety felt by leaders who are in the position of having to motivate their flock by themselves. Although his example is more about hiring and staffing, it still has impact on project implementations.
By observing the who-not-how guideline, the leader is liberated to imagine. Since you don't assume you're the one who's going to have to do things -- or even that you're the one who has to know how to do things -- you're not limited to considering only the things you know you can do. Start thinking Who?, and the results are exponentially reinforcing: Once you find you can make things happen that you couldn't dream of doing yourself, you believe you can do anything. And so does everyone in or involved with your company, each of them able to see that the possibilities aren't bounded by their own know-how or even their leader's.
Don't try to be a super hero. Be a part of something. Resist emotional temptation—because the adulation that comes with charismatic leading is seductive. And when you stop building a charismatic organization, what you will lose is easy to see: You don't get to be a hero anymore. You'll lose something else, too, though. You'll lose your isolation. Do it together. Ask the right questions. Stuff doesn't have to be so hard."
If what you lose is obvious, then so is what you gain: Give up being a hero and, suddenly, you don't always have to perform like one anymore. Not only don't you have to supply all the momentum, all the know-how, all the emotion, you also don't have to fear that if you stop, so will everything else. When it's all about you —the cult of the charismatic leader—you're separated from others. Being a hero is lonely. Be a part of the organization you've created. You get to be fed. You get to be part of a community. You can be renewed while getting more done.
Find out the following.
How do you find a way of leading that doesn't demand more than it gives back in return, that doesn't lead to burnout, or unfulfillment, or alienation, or drift? How do you teach a child to do the same?
You can't do everything yourself. If you do that, then why is a 'leader' of others even necessary? In addition to asking "How?" ask "Who?" Assume you're not the answer. Most of us ask "How?" How can I (or we) get this thing done? We begin assessing what it would take to turn the idea into something real. We begin thinking and planning. Many times we get overwhelmed. (All those details to handle! All that know-how required!) And we conclude, not unreasonably, that the idea can't be done. Or if it can be done, then usually the personal price paid by the leader — the knower of the answers — will be high.
But what if, instead, the leader presumes they can't do anything, at least not as well as someone else, and definitely not on their own. Instead of considering for a moment that you might be the person to execute the plans or projects that arise in the course of business, always assume there's a better option.
Instead of asking, "How can I do that?" ask "Who can do that?" "Who knows how to do that?" "Who can help me get that done?"
Management analyst Jim Collins (author of Built to Last and Good to Great: Why Some Companies
Make the Leap... and Others Don't ) likens the leader of an organization to the driver of a bus, Collins says that the bus driver's job is not to decide where the bus should go or how to drive it there, but to get the right people on the bus in the first place -- as well as to get the wrong people off the bus, and ultimately to get the right people into the right seats. The right people then will help the leader figure out where to drive and how to drive there. What's more, the right people will attract other right people and inspire them to stick around, diminishing the burden and anxiety felt by leaders who are in the position of having to motivate their flock by themselves. Although his example is more about hiring and staffing, it still has impact on project implementations.
By observing the who-not-how guideline, the leader is liberated to imagine. Since you don't assume you're the one who's going to have to do things -- or even that you're the one who has to know how to do things -- you're not limited to considering only the things you know you can do. Start thinking Who?, and the results are exponentially reinforcing: Once you find you can make things happen that you couldn't dream of doing yourself, you believe you can do anything. And so does everyone in or involved with your company, each of them able to see that the possibilities aren't bounded by their own know-how or even their leader's.
Don't try to be a super hero. Be a part of something. Resist emotional temptation—because the adulation that comes with charismatic leading is seductive. And when you stop building a charismatic organization, what you will lose is easy to see: You don't get to be a hero anymore. You'll lose something else, too, though. You'll lose your isolation. Do it together. Ask the right questions. Stuff doesn't have to be so hard."
If what you lose is obvious, then so is what you gain: Give up being a hero and, suddenly, you don't always have to perform like one anymore. Not only don't you have to supply all the momentum, all the know-how, all the emotion, you also don't have to fear that if you stop, so will everything else. When it's all about you —the cult of the charismatic leader—you're separated from others. Being a hero is lonely. Be a part of the organization you've created. You get to be fed. You get to be part of a community. You can be renewed while getting more done.
Find out the following.
- What do they know how to do?
- What knowledge or information do they have?
- Do they know how to get other resources?
- What would be helpful to know?
- What are their special skills?
- Their past experiences?
- Their hopes and fears?
- Their weaknesses as well as their strengths?
- Their goals and their attitudes?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)