Personal Philosophy of Leadership Part 3. Golkonda, Jyothi

Transcription

1 Personal Philosophy of Leadership Part 3 Golkonda, Jyothi 6 / 2 /2013

2 Contents Personal Philosophy of Leadership... 2 Abstract... 2 Introduction... 2 Leadership Core Values... 3 Leadership Assumptions... 6 Personal Leadership Beliefs... 7 Conclusion... 9 Annotated Bibliography

3 Personal Philosophy of Leadership Abstract This paper will reflect my thoughts of leadership the responsibilities of leader and summary of what I ve learnt in this class on leadership theories, practices, values, assumptions, vision, beliefs, behaviors, diversity, team building, dealing with change, and ethics. What makes a leader more effective and successful? The ethical responsibilities of a leader, the principles of leadership and the qualities a leader must have. Importance of self-awareness, trust, relational transparency and balanced processing in a leader. Leaders must be value-centered, selfdisciplined, passionate and compassionate. A leader must be able to adapt their leadership style to the situation at hand. They must be attuned to the situation and the needs of their subordinates, some situations may need the leader to be directive while some situations may need the leader to be supportive. Introduction "A leader isn't limited to those with positional authority. Leadership, instead, is defined alternatively as someone who influences others to achieve a common goal. This would represent the work and contributions of anyone who serves in this capacity." -- Barbara Steel, senior vice president of leadership effectiveness at Zenger Folkman and co-author of "How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success by Magnifying Your Strengths" (McGraw-Hill, 2012), "A leader is someone who actually listens. Someone who takes advice and implements it. Most leaders need to listen more and talk less." -- Jeffery Hayzlett, CEO of The Hayzlett Group 2

4 "Leadership is the willingness to speak up when it's easier to stay silent, hold yourself accountable when you have excuses at the ready and inspire without intimidation or the fear another will surpass you. A leader shows more empathy than ego and remains dedicated to the betterment of the whole and not the advancement of one." -- Brenda Della Casa, director of online content and community at Preston Bailey Designs. To me leadership is an interpersonal process of influencing your team towards the organization s goal. Leadership is about listening to your team, recognizing their effort and standing up for them. Leadership is about building a collaborative environment within the team. A leader must be honest, clarify values and set an example for their team. Another important aspect of the leader is to envision the future Leadership Core Values I think the core values of leadership are honesty, integrity, influence, motivate, recognition and trust. Honesty According to Northouse honesty is not just about telling the truth. It has to do with being open with others and representing reality as fully and completely as possible. Sometimes telling the complete truth can be destructive and counterproductive. The challenge for leaders is to strike the balance between being open and candid while monitoring what is appropriate to disclose in a particular situation. Similarly there may be organizational constraints that prevent leaders from disclosing information to their subordinates. Honesty is about not promising what cannot be delivered. 3

5 Integrity Integrity and honesty go hand in hand. Integrity is taking responsibility for your actions, respecting others and respect for self. Leaders with integrity inspire others since they can be trusted to do what they say. Subordinates are constantly observing their leader. Leaders with highest standards of character and integrity set higher standards for the group by playing a role model. Leaders with integrity are loyal, dependable and not deceptive. Leaders must exhibit the same morals and ethics that they seek in their subordinates. Influence Influence is how a leader affects their subordinates. According to Terry R. Bacon author of Elements of Influence people try to influence other by using ten positive influence techniques: logical persuading, legitimizing, exchanging, stating, socializing, appealing to relationship, consulting, alliance building, appealing to values, and modeling. Leader s influence their team mostly by role modeling, having higher standards and values and gaining the trust of subordinates. Motivate According to Northouse motivation is an important skill in a leader. Leaders must be selfmotivated and must motivate their subordinates to work hard at achieving their goals. Leaders must make their subordinates feel that they are performing an important work that is necessary for the organization s well-being and success. This motivational aspect drives them to achieve their goals. A leader must step into the shoes of their subordinates and view things from the subordinate s perspective. Empathize with their subordinates during difficult times and make them stronger mentally and emotionally. Motivation can also be accomplished by recognizing subordinates for their effort and rewarding them. 4

6 Recognition Recognition is the process of reinforcing desired behaviors, and recognizing individuals and teams in a timely and effective way, for their exceptional contributions. Recognition is an important part of leadership. Recognition not only brings emotional lift to the individual who was recognized but also encourage similar behavior with everyone else. Trust Trust is built based on character and competence. Character includes the leader s integrity, motive and intent with their subordinates. Competence includes the leader s capabilities, skills, results and track record. Both these qualities are very essential for a leader to build trust within subordinates. A leader who is honest and sincere but is not capable of driving the results will not be trusted by their subordinates. Similarly a leader with very good talent, skills and good track record but is not honest will not be trusted by their subordinates. Stephen M R Covey lists 13 Behaviors of High-Trust Leaders Worldwide 1. Talk Straight 2. Demonstrate Respect 3. Create Transparency 4. Right Wrongs 5. Show Loyalty 6. Deliver Results 7. Get Better 8. Confront Reality 9. Clarify Expectation 10. Practice Accountability 5

7 11. Listen First 12. Keep Commitments 13. Extend Trust Leadership Assumptions According to Dr. Stephen R Covey s leadership must be centered on a set of moral principles. He believes that these principles are interdependent and must be practiced together in leadership to be effective. Covey also suggests that leadership should focus on aiding individuals who need to be listened to, understood and empowered. The principles listed in Principle-Centered Leadership support the servant leadership model which believes that effective leadership emerges from a desire to help others. Although the characteristics of a principle-centered leader are definitely traits of some people in leadership roles, there do not appear to be any one trait that every effective leader falls into. The foundation for authentic leadership is the moral and ethical values that the leader believes in and the leader s positive psychological qualities and self-awareness. A leader must also be transparent, open and truthful. Balanced processing is a self-regulatory behavior of authentic leader is balanced processing. Balanced processing is about being fair and having an open mind and exploring other people s opinion before making a decision. It is about objectively considering others perspective but at the same time using one s internal moral standards and values to guide their behavior and not being influenced by outside pressures. It is about aligning passion and vision to the vision of the organization, and doing the right thing for the leader, follower and the organization. 6

8 Personal Leadership Beliefs Right after school I started my first job at Nortel and worked there for 8 years before I moved to EDS (now HP) in Nortel is over a hundred year old company which was founded in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing. It supplied telecommunications equipment for Canada s fledgling telephone system. Since then Nortel has grown as a global leader in the telecommunications industry. At its peak in 2000 Nortel had 94,500 employees worldwide, with 25,900 in Canada. Nortel's stock crashed in 2001 and they had to let go 60,000 employees (two thirds of its workforce). After the layoffs and restructuring, the company seemed to be slowly turning around. In the first quarter of 2003 an unexpected return to profitability was reported a quarter too early, which triggered a total of $70 million in bonuses to the top 43 managers. The accounting scandal hurt both Nortel's reputation and finances, as Nortel spent an estimated US$400 million on outside auditors and management consultants to retrain staff. Nortel could not recover from that accounting scandal and finally in June 2009 Nortel announced that it no longer planned to emerge from bankruptcy protection. That was the end of a company that was more than 100 years old. This is a perfect example of how a wrong step at higher levels of leadership can cause devastating impact. And hence Honesty, Ethics and values play even bigger role in leadership positions. I now work for GE and I appreciate the effort and support we get from our legal department. The emphasis on being honest to our customers and placing customer needs first. Every new partnership or project is completely vetted with the legal department. The biggest lessons for me in life are lessons learnt from events that were not positive. I once had a conflict with my manager on a process we followed in the team. My thoughts were 7

9 completely different from the thoughts of my manager and my skip-a-level manager. My previous manager who moved out of that role a few months back had a very different leadership style than my then current manger. He had an open door policy and would listen to everyone s perspective. My then current manager had a very different leadership style. More of the power oriented style. I make the rules and you follow sort of leadership style. Long story short I received a negative performance review that year and was placed on performance plan. I never had such bad performance review in my 10 year career. It was devastating. She was not my manager for 75% of the year yet she got the chance to do my performance review. I decided to find another job and leave the company. Before that I wanted to talk to my mentor (our operations director) and get her opinion. She gave me the best advice for which I am thankful even today. She said take this very seriously. Look at your performance plan carefully and note your action items. Make sure you follow up on all your action items. She coached me on how to pull myself out of the situation. When I bought up about the fairness in my performance review she offered a listening ear. She offered me her personal number so I can call her over the weekend if I wanted to vent out. I also talked to my HR manager and our senior executive director. Everyone suggested that this was just a bump in the road and should not impact my career in GE. I did not believe the later part of the sentence was true at that time. But I decided to face it and prove myself. Few months later I found another position within the company and moved out of that group. I thought my performance review would have negative impact for the new position but to my surprise they considered it positive since I was willing to face my weakness and fix it. The self-awareness for me with this incident was my interpersonal communication skills. It is very important to understand the personality and style of the person you are communicating with. You need to adjust your communication style based on who you 8

10 are conversing with. I also started to pay attention on avoiding conflicts. After that I had five different managers and the consistent feedback I got from all of them is that I am a pleasure to work with apart from other good feedback on my leadership style and my can do attitude and my technical skills. I believe that what makes us better leaders is what we ve learnt from the bad experiences we overcome. I learnt the importance of emotional intelligence. i.e. the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skill. Conclusion Successful leaders are continually learning. They use their experiences as lessons learnt for improvement. They read, take classes or training and listen to others and use their eyes and ears to continually expand their competence and improve their skills. Leaders must spread positive energy within the team through their enthusiastic and hopeful believes. Good leaders are service oriented and believe in their subordinates. They don t over react to negative behaviors, criticism, or human weaknesses. They don t feel built up when they discover the weakness of others. They believe in the unseen potential of all people. They feel graceful for their blessings and feel naturally to compassionately forgive and forget the offenses of others. They regularly exercise the four dimension of the human personality: Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. They exercise their minds through reading, creative problem solving, writing and visualizing, emotionally they make an effort to be patient Leadership is about seeing change that is needed and acting before the change is mandatory. Self-awareness is the most characteristics of a leader. Giving and receiving feedback helps 9

11 promote self-awareness within the team. A leader must facilitate an environment for effective teamwork and collaboration. A good leader is a visionary. A leader motivates people by connecting the dots between the work they do to the over goals of the organization. People who work of such leaders usually motivated and take pride in their work and contribute their one hundred percent towards accomplishing the collective goals. A good leader clearly communicates the goals, sets a good example by being a role model, inspires, supports and encourages their subordinates to perform their best. They focus on the interests of the team and recognize the team for their accomplishments. 10

12 Annotated Bibliography 1. Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Planning on covering all the concepts covered in this book throughout the quarter. 2. HBR's 10 Must Reads: On Leadership. (2011). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 3. Covey, S. R. (1992). Principle Centered Leadership. Fireside PRess. Principle-Centered Leadership, is a long-term, inside-out approach to developing people and organizations. The key to dealing with the challenges that face us today is the recognition of a principle-centered core within both ourselves and our organizations. Dr. Covey offers insights and guidelines that can help you apply these principles both at work and at home -- leading not just to a new understanding of how to increase quality and productivity, but also to a new appreciation of the importance of building personal and professional relationships in order to enjoy a more balanced, more rewarding, more effective life. 4. Regina Eisenbach, Kathleen Watson and,rajnandini Pillai. (1999). Transformational leadership in the context of organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(2), Retrieved from This article bridges the gap between change management and transformational leadership and qualities enabling leaders to successfully enact change 5. Kotter, J. P. (1991). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. In Harvard Business Review on Change (pp. 1-20). Harvard Business School Press. According to Kotter an organization has at least two opportunities to reduce their errors in design and implementation of a successful transformation process. One is at the point of design, the other at the point the error begins to occur. This article lists eight primary reasons why organizations are unsuccessful in implementing change. 6. Ciulla, J.B (2004) Ethics and Leadership Effectiveness in J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo and R. J. Sternberg(eds), The Nature of Leadership (Sage, Thousand Oaks/London/New Dehli), pp

13 This chapter covers ethics of leadership in various dimensions. The ethics of a leader as a person, which includes things like self-knowledge, discipline, and intentions, and so forth, ethics of the leader/follower relationship (i.e., how they treat each other), ethics of the process of leadership (i.e., command and control, participatory) and ethics of what the leader does or does not do 12