Leading and Managing Today

This lecture describes 2 key concepts on your journey to becoming an Organic Leader.

In this lecture, you'll discover the five things that Empowering Leaders to in order to bring the best out of people.

REFLECTION: In what ways are you an Empowering leader? In what ways are you a Controlling leader?  Which of the five points of being an Empowering Leader do you think will be the most challenging for you to put into practice? Why? 

ACTION: Write a goal and a simple action plan to address the most challenging point you identified.

To be an effective and authentic leader, you need to know who you are as a leader. That's why this module has focused on the importance of self-awareness. This lecture will outline the five characteristics truly authentic leaders demonstrate on a regular basis. Research is increasingly showing the importance of being an authentic leader which is why we've include the word authentic in our metaphor "DANCER" in being an Organic Leader.

REFLECTION: Which of the five characteristics do you currently demonstrate at work? Which ones do you believe you need to   develop further?

ACTION: What's one thing you can do to feel more authentic at work?

This lecture is about the importance of "Self-leadership" and the 3 tools you can use to become better at self-leadership: Self-awareness; self-reflection and self-regulation.

If you want to see an extended discussion about self-leadership, I've included a link to a Tedx Talk by Lars Sudmann which you'll enjoy.

REFLECTION: Think about the best leaders you’ve worked with. Why do you consider them to be good leaders?

ACTION: Try practicing one new self-leadership behaviour using one of the "self" tools

A crucible is a situation or series of trials or events, where different pieces come together to create something new. For Organic Leaders, it’s the key events in our lives that have helped define who we are, our values and our leadership style. This lecture is about helping you understand YOUR STORY so you can may better understand the influences on how you act as a leader and what you might need to do to change.

REFLECTION: Think of your life story as a timeline. Which events have defined who you are as a leader or potential leader? What have you hidden?

ACTION: What steps can you take to "unhide" that part of of your story and become an Organic Leader?

This is the first lecture in the Module on Leadership Styles. It's about the characteristics that make for great leaders.  In the video, I'll talk about the 4 attributes that Fortune Magazine distilled in their recent "Top Leader" list: Courage, Empowerment, Resilience and Adaptation. You'll note that these 4 attributes are included in the DANCER metaphor within the Organic Leader framework.

REFLECTION: Which of the 4 attributes do you already have the most of? Which one will you need to develop further?

ACTION: What's one step you can take to address the attribute you need to develop the most?

Leadership style refers to the general manner, outlook, attitude and behaviour of a leader, particularly in relation to his or her colleagues and team members. This lecture introduces the three main categories of leadership style: Personality and Behavioural; Situational; and Action-Centred/Contingency.

REFLECTION: Think about a recent situation that required you to take a leadership role. What does that tell you about your natural leadership style? Is your default leadership style: personality/behaviour, situation or action-centred?

 ACTION: What's one thing you can do to make your leadership style more adaptable?

This lecture explores the personality or behaviour approach to leadership style. In particular, it looks at the perennial question "Are leaders born or made?" After you've watched the lecture, take a couple of minutes to read a blog I wrote about Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach. Not only was Lombardi a great coach, he was ahead of his time as a leadership expert.

REFLECTION:  In your experience are leaders born or made? Why?  

ACTION: Based on your experiences, how important is personality in leadership?

This lecture introduces you to situational leadership. After reading the article, please watch the short video with Ken and Scott Blanchard in the Resources section. Then take a couple of minutes to answer the Reflection question and plan your next steps.

REFLECTION: Have you had a similar experience to that outlined in the video where you thought everything was going well but then found out it wasn’t?

ACTION: What can you do differently to improve your communications with your team?

This lecture introduced the action-centred contingency approach to leadership style developed by John Adair. In Adair’s model, effective leaders attend equally to task needs, group needs and individual needs and place balanced importance on all three aspects.

REFLECTION: How well do you balance Adair’s three circles in your day-to-day leadership activities? What could you consider doing differently?

ACTION: What’s one thing you could do differently in each area to achieve greater balance this week?

Although personality clearly plays a role in leadership style, my experience shows that leaders can learn to better manage their inherent personality traits to become more effective leaders. This lecture describes research by Korn Ferry, a leading global organisational consulting firm found 7 key factors that determine an individual's leadership potential.

REFLECTION:  Which of the 7 factors do you believe you already have or are easily capable of developing? And which of the factors will you find the hardest to develop? 

ACTION: Set yourself a goal and a short action plan on how you're going to address the factor you need to develop the most

In the final lecture in this Module on leadership styles, I've going to talk about a very visual model for how leaders can adapt their style to suit particular situations. Developed by Bolman and Deal, the adaptive leadership style is easy to remember because of the visual images it uses: Factories, Families, Jungles and Theatre/Temples. These metaphors provide you with clues as to what leadership skills are important to apply in these given situations. Later in Module 5, you'll have a chance to do a quiz on them!

REFLECTION: Which of the 4 frameworks best describes your leadership style? What lessons are there for you moving forward?

ACTION: What’s one thing you could do differently to adapt your leadership style?

This lecture is about the differences between leadership and management, 2 concepts that are often used interchangeably but focus on different parts of your role as a leader.

In this lecture, I introduce the idea that some parts of your role are distinctly focused on management and some parts are distinctly focused on leadership but other parts or your role require you to wear BOTH your management and leadership hat at the same time.

REFLECTION: Is it possible to be a manager without being a leader?  Or is it possible to be a leader without being a manager? Why?

ACTION: If you're already a manager or leader, how would you motivate your team using both a management and leadership approach at the same time? And if you're studying to become a leader, what advice would you give your manager on how s/he could motivate their team better by using both a management and leadership approach?

In this lecture, I talk about the challenges of creating a balance between being a leader and a manager. Once you've watched the lecture, spend a couple of minutes going through the reflection and action questions below.

REFLECTION: Think about how you spend your time creating a balance between leading and managing people. What do you need to differently to create a better balance?

 ACTION: Set yourself a goal to take one step towards creating a better balance leading and managing.

This quiz tests your understanding of the difference between what managers do and what leaders do. Simply click on whether the word describes a management action or a leadership action.

This is the first lecture in the final section of the course. The focus in this section is on the "HOW" you can apply what you've learned to your everyday activities as a current or aspiring leader. In this lecture, I'm going to talk about the importance of knowing YOUR leadership story as the key starting point in being an effective 21st Century Organic Leader.

REFLECTION:

Review your leadership timeline from earlier. What does your story tell you about yourself? In what ways do you think your leadership principles and values will change going forward?

ACTION:

Make a goal for yourself on what you’ll start doing differently so that when you review your timeline again in a few years you’ll be proud of how it reads.

Besides knowing your leadership story, it's critical to be clear on your preferred leadership style. It's also important to know what your options as a leader are when your preferred leadership style isn't appropriate in order to achieve the outcomes you're looking for as a leader. This lecture will review the 4 leadership styles that were introduced in Section 4 so that you can be really clear about your options moving forward.

REFLECTION:  Think about your own leadership style and experiences.

·      What steps do you need to take to become a more authentic leader?

·      How can you build on your personality/behaviour strengths and overcome your weaknesses?

·      How can you learn to modify your style in different situations?

·      What do you need to do to achieve greater balance between task, group and individual needs?

ACTION:  Describe some of the training, reading, learning that you have already done to help you ‘Know Thyself’ and become a more effective leader?

The adaptive leadership framework created by Bolman and Deal introduced in Lecture 18 has four approaches to it: 

·       The Structural Frame (Factories)

·       The Human Resource Frame (Families)

·       The Political Frame (Jungles)

·       The Symbolic Frame (Theatres or Temples)

I've created a quiz outlining eight situations you might find yourself in as a leader. Take a minute to read and think about each situation and then decide whether addressing this situation requires you to focus on detail (Structure), interpersonal relationships (Human Resource), power and conflict (Political) or culture (Symbolic).

Here's an opportunity for you to rate your own level of empowerment at work. After all, if you're not empowered, it makes it that much more challenging to empower others! The article for this lecture contains 8 quiz questions for you to answer.

Now that you've got your scores, I'll spend a few minutes talking to you about what the scores mean.

REFLECTION:  How did you go? What stood out to you about your score? Was there one particular area where you have the most scope for becoming more empowered?

ACTION:  Briefly summarise your results. What 2 actions can you take back at work to increase your level of empowerment?

Well done for completing "The Organic Leader: Learning to Lead from Within" course. This last lecture summarises what learning outcomes you've achieved and makes recommendations on the next step in your leadership journey. I sincerely hope you enjoyed the course and look forward to seeing you again on future courses!

Best wishes

Richard