What am I going to do with this?

Story telling

The following article reminded me of the importance of storytelling highlight by the Bennis and Lincoln readings:

Heroes Wanted in Climate Science Story

Some thoughts

These are just some of my thoughts moving forward after class Thursday:

Leaders need to be able to inspire others to believe in their message. In trying to understand how to inspire students to be good leaders I must admit a top down approach is one that I have been using as a crutch. I have found that identifying a truly bottom up approach to engaging student leadership has been proving itself to be a challenge.

Inspiring leadership on campus needs to be about empowering students and the campus community. The students need to be engaged with and on campus. Engaging and empowering students with the soul of the university is important to achieving a positive culture on campus.

The soul of the university is its underlying common goal, the message that it is trying to get its community to embody. It is more than just graduating people with degrees. It is about instilling values and understanding, and empowering students to become responsible professionals that value their experiences. The soul is what makes alumni give back, and encourages students to get involved. With-out soul any organization is going to fail. Without soul a university becomes a factory for producing trained people with debt.

Who's group is it anyway?

Bennis was right when he said that as a society we have refused to give up on the idea of “great men.” “Our mythology refuses to catch up with our reality,” Bennis states to sum up who American cultural views on leadership. Although collaboration has grown and expanded into more and more aspects of organizational structure it is still under recognized by our mythos. We look for individuals to “save the day” in a crisis and for a scapegoat when things go wrong. We ignore the value and ability of what groups achieve, focusing on the individuals that play tiny parts.

Bennis describes an affective group as like-minded creative think-tanks working towards a tangible goal, with its leader perceived as one among equals. This reminds me of something mentioned on the first day of class, improv comedy groups. When reflecting on the reading it became apparent to me that the way Bennis describes the affective group’s operations is very similar to the way an affective improv group operates. Transparency abounds, as nothing has been prepared before hand and the audience is privy to the actor’s creative process. The leader of the group often plays an equal role in the charades on stage. The group recognizes each of it’s members greatness. The show would not go on if the members of the group as well as its leader did not believe in their ability to achieve their dream.

Scott Snook describes a triangle that sums up the support structure of our addiction to heroic individual leadership. How do we challenge this triangle? How do break it authoritarian hold over the idea of greatness in our society? I am not sure. A good place to start would be to lift the veil of our heroic mythos. We need to explain that the heroes and great people of our past present and future do not act alone commanding lesser people from a tower built of bureaucracy and ideology. Instead, good leadership happens among equal peers. When people can join forces to not only accomplish common goals but to innovate and create fascinating new ideas.

Leadership and Budget Cuts

Steven Sample’s response to “Searching for the ‘Perfect’ University President” compared an individual’s wanting to be president and wanting to do president. This is a big distinction in leadership at any level. Many people want the prestige, the glory, and all the other “perks” of being seen as the leader. Sample argues that not all of these people want to do leadership things. Leaders often have to make hard and stressful decisions, decision that conflict with what they see as their identity. Bennis takes a very existential approach to identity. He explains a way of self-knowledge that is dynamic and always changing with the choices and experiences. Wanting to do leadership can have a big impact on shaping identity.

Recently President George Philips announced the University’s plan to cut three language programs, as well as the theater and classics programs at UAlbany. These cuts have not been received lightly. Ffaculty, students and people across the country have been weighing in on the decision. This decision, I hope, was not an easy one for the University and the President to make. Was it necessary? Some argue that a research university with the motto “The World Within Reach” should not elimate programs in the humanities. An article in the Times Union suggested the University should amend the saying to “The World We Deem Necessary Within Reach.” Was this the most transparent decision, no. Is this the best move for the university, we will have to wait and see. The fact is these are the decisions leaders have to make. They are the same decisions that many people would never want to have to consider. Facing budget cuts and limited resources, a good leader can see past picking and choosing who is going to suffer the cuts. A good leader sees decisions that need to be made and suffers the consequences. These are the kind of decisions that every leader has to be ready and willing to make, and in searching for a good leader groups must be willing to see through who wants to be leader and who wants to do leader.

Learning to Say "I'm Sorry"

In reading Drucker’s chapter on picking people, one of the aspects of being a leader that he acknowledges is being able to admit when you have made a bad decision. I have experienced examples of leaders not admitting they have made a bad decision and not doing anything about it to avoid confrontation.

As Drucker points out not acting to correct a bad decision can be very detrimental. I witnessed this first hand in my experience of working as a legislative aide and office manager in the New York State Assembly. During the search for a person to take my position (I was leaving the position to focus on school) the Assembly member did not follow Drucker’s principles for hiring. The Assembly member hired someone only after four interviews and had contacted the candidate to tell them they had been hired less than an hour after the interview. During training it quickly became apparent that the candidate was not living up to our expectations and was relying heavily on my explanation and re-explanation of routine office tasks. In my last two weeks, I went to the Assembly member with my concerns and she said that she agreed with me. However, I was told to continue acting as a crutch for the newly hired person as long as I was there. A week after I left the office permanently, I received an email from our intern saying that my replacement had been fired over the phone by our chief of staff. The Assembly member violated another of Drucker’s principles and avoided confrontation of the situation. Although the office was able to hire someone shortly after, there was a period where there was no full time staff and no one was available to train the newly hired person. This put the newly hired person in a difficult situation in which they were expected to adapt.

I believe that this scenario is the antithesis of Drucker’s lesson on hiring. Although admitting a mistake and taking action to correct it is never easy, it is almost certainly easier to correct a problem when it becomes apparent rather than waiting and letting it inevitably grow. Leadership is not only about knowing how to make the right decisions. It is also about knowing when you have made a mistake and knowing how to take that mistake and not only fix it but turn it into a learning opportunity. Drucker points out that mistakes are an opportunity to take a unique problem and turn it into a learning experience. Once a unique problem is solved it becomes generic problem and is easily solved when it arises again.

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