Week Four — Leading Self

Posted on February 4, 2014 by tayamcastocker

This week we focused on the idea of leading self, and how that might look. This is a topic that is particularly important to me in the course, as I feel I could definitely gain skills in the realm of self leadership. My goal for the course is to improve my personal leadership. Common aspects we discussed in class, of how to successfully lead oneself include: setting goals, self monitoring, knowing when to let go, developing self discipline, understanding your personality and strengths, patience, understanding personal barriers, saying true to who you are, and understanding self reinforcement or punishment (creating consequences for your actions).

I brought in an article called 12 Rules for Self-leadership, to class by ROSA on Lifehack. From this article there were a couple of items that really resinated with me and I think are ideas I will use in my journey to stronger self leadership.

They are:

“3. Take initiative. Volunteer to be first. Be daring, bold, brave and fearless, willing to fall down, fail and get up again for another round. Starting with vulnerability has amazing ways of making us stronger when all is done.”

“6. Live in wonder. Wonder why, and prize “Why not?” as your favourite question. Be insatiably curious, and question everything.”

“8. Believe that beauty exists in everything and everyone, and then go about finding it. You’ll be amazed how little you have to invent and much is waiting to be displayed.”

Other ‘rules’ include being a lifelong learner, be compassionate, and be an optimist.

The whole article can be found at : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/12-rules-for-self-leadership.html

Although this is not a scholarly article, I believe these are very important qualities that I would love to work on and keep in my mind as I live my life.

As I am rounding up my degree, and now a third into my final semester, I am finding myself lacking self-leadership and find myself struggling to stay motivated and on top of all my work, while maintaining the healthy lifestyle I want. As I begin to look closer at what my strengths are and what qualities I posses, I am bringing to develop a sense of self awareness, but I believe I have a ways to go yet. I think self awareness and a sense of confidence in who I am as a person and why I am doing what I am doing are the most important things I need to achieve before I can truly consider myself a self-leader. Although I have grown tremendously in the past four years, the past year in particular in terms of confidence and self awareness, I am not quite to the point I wish to be at yet.

Video

January 22 Meeting with Local (and not so local) leaders

When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’

– Lao Tzu

Today we were very fortunate to sit down and meet with leaders in our community. The class was broken down into small groups each to meet with one person at local coffee shops around town. The group I was apart of met with Stephen Wearing, a professor at University of Technology Sydney, or UTS. Stephan’s approach to leading centres around facilitation, encouragement and serving others. He believes that the best way to serve (his students) is to understand what their needs and objectives are and do what he can to support that, rather than telling them what to do.

Stephan’s biggest challenge has been working with students who do not have the ability or motivation to finish their masters or PHD. Trying to let a student down, without crushing their self-esteem is a daunting task.

In terms of self leadership, Stephan would consider himself laissez faire. He sets goals for himself, personally and professionally but he is not strict with himself in following them.

One of the comments that he said that stood out to me was to lead with enthusiasm in what you are doing and be comfortable with who you are.

The most innovative thing Stephan talked about was the school system he teaches in in Sydney. He uses learning contracts, students spend nearly a year learning, and developing learning contracts about their goals and plans for what they want to learn from their degree then spend the rest of their degree away from the university working independetly to get exactly what they want and need out of their education.

The following is a TedTalk that Stephan shared with us about leadership.

Richard St John – 8 Secrets of Success

January 15

Posted on January 18, 2014 by tayamcastocker

We started off class today listening to my personal ‘theme’ song. I chose Waka Waka (This time for Africa) by Shakira. In the process of choosing songs for this class, I was going through my iTunes library and had about seven different songs picked out as possibilities, then I saw Waka Waka and put it on, and instantly knew that was the song I wanted to use. First of all, I don’t believe it is possible to listen to this song and not want to dance, or move or just be in a better mood. Secondly the lyrics resinated with me. Its a genuinely positive song, “Today’s your day/ I feel it / You paved the way / Believe it” Is an example of the message the song gives. Although it is slightly cheesy, I find it quite motivating to get up and get moving.

Next up was quick warm up exercise given my Jessica and myself to get the group moving a bit, while engaging in a group activity. We choose a class juggle, where the group had to stand in a circle and toss a number of bean bags in the same order each time. I love starting classes of with an opportunity to get moving and interact with each other. We are in a leisure program, yet we see so little of it in practice within our program. I believe it really helps the classroom dynamic and our ability to pay attention and retain information.

The bulk of class was spent looking looking back at the models we each created in the previous class. It is so interesting to me to see the variety of ways people took this, whether that be adding to an original model, creating your own entirely or adapting and combining models as I did. Each student took on a model is such a unique way, yet they all still portrayed a message that could be carried to one situation or another, one person or another.

One of the big take aways from this topic was the application in real life, and the idea that models are not always perfectly applicable, and can sometimes be used unconsciously, can be altered, and do not fit every person or every situation. On the other hand there is times, when models can intentionally and directly applied.

We finished class distinguishing a manager from a leader. The main distinction I saw, was a manager is a position, or a job which is appointed my your superiors, where as to be a leader is a choice, and it is up to the followers. Ken suggested perhaps the terms are interchangeable, and we need to stop trying to define the two terms, and focus on the fact that everyone has the potential to be a leader. We looked at a quote by Mintzberg:

“. . . Instead of distinguishing managers from leaders, we should be seeing managers as leaders, and leadership as management practiced well.” (Mintzberg, p. 9)

My first thought went I heard this was disagreement. Not so much with the statement but I felt from this Mintzerg was implying that in order to be a leader you need to be in a management position. I think I was over thinking it though and not looking at the real message, that rather then constantly focusing on creating leaders, we need to once again remember a leader in a management position still needs to be successful at the management part of it too!

January 13

Posted on January 14, 2014 by tayamcastocker

My take aways from the day: the meaning of leadership and the way it looks is vastly different from person to person; the models, theories and styles of leadership evolve overtime as our body of knowledge grows.

GOLDEN-CIRCLE

Today we looked at various leadership models, including Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle.” Sinek’s model suggests why companies such as Apple are so successful, and able to gain followers. In order for someone to buy into what you are doing, they must understand why you are doing it. Starting with why, in Apple’s case to be revolutionary, then the how and then finally with what — a phone, computer, TV a captive audience will buy in regardless of the product, because they identify and contact to the why, the reason behind the idea. This is one one of the models that resonates with me.

Another model we looked at, similar to the “Golden Circle” started with a centre circle of leading self, moving out to leading others and finishing with the outermost circle, lead the organization.

These are the two models I based my personal one one, combing a centre or starting point with leading self through: asking why, discovering a sense humility and understanding your passion then moving to an outer circle, leading others by: asking how, developing honest conversation and treating others with respect.

We were also asked to bring in a resource today. I brought in Leadership: A Personal Journey, an executive speech given by Frederick W. Hill at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Harvard Business School African-American Alumni Association in 2003. Hill is the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communication at J.P Morgan Chase & Co.

Hill’s speech follows the theme: “Leadership and Reinvention in Times of Uncertainty.” Through first the successes of his grandfather and father, followed by his personal journey Hill describes the key themes of how he has witnessed leadership.

His first point: regardless if you own your own company, or work for an established corporation, the world we live in is ever changing, and filled with uncertainty. It is in the times of changes, great stress and turmoil that a strong leader who can face the challenge is called for. Hall distinguishes a leader from a manager by pointing out that while management is about dealing with complexity, leadership is about coping with change. According to Hall,

“Leadership is intimately tied up with human drives and desires, frailties’ and weaknesses… [its] is about raising the hopes, calming the fears, firing the imagination, and strengthening the resolve of real people.”

Through his personal story, Hall describes the more challenging moments of his career as a leader: changing his team’s mindset, and changing attitudes inside and outside of is organization. To change the mindset of his team he changed their perspective from looking at their company as failing, to looking at it as a good company, becoming a great one, while encouraging people to take risks and be great on their own. As for changing the attitudes outside the organization, Hall made his objective to humanize his organization (McDonnell Douglas) settling for no piece of advertising that did not “make the hair stand up on the back of his neck.”

Hall finishes his speech with his observations of leadership in corporate America: