Just a thought...

I came across this quote the other day and really liked it and wanted to share it with all of you =)

"Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them" –Stephen Covey

Apollo 13: Leadership Analysis

 

TJ Transformation

So, since I'm apparently technology incompetent and can't get a slideshow to appear on my blog.. here is my "pretend slideshow" of what I feel transformational leadership looks like....

 

Both the Leaders (Youth Center Builders) and Followers (TJ children) are inspired by each other.  They motivate each other and influence others to give back to the community. 

Mr. Burns

Mr. James MacGregor Burns was born on August 3, 1918.  He was a scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.  Burns was also a Pulitzer Prize- winning Presidential Biographer and served as combat historian in the Pacific Theater.   In 1956 & 1971 he received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his two “Roosevelt” books.  In 1997, he was the co-chair of the Salzburg Leadership Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.  His work has inspired leaders all over the world. 

Burns wrote the following books:

·         “Government by the People: The Dynamics of American National Government”

·         “Government by the People: The Dynamics of American State and Local Government”

·         “Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox”

·         “Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom”

·         “The American Experiment” Volume 3

·         “Leadership”

·         “The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America”

Burns defined Transformational Leadership in his books.  His book, “Leadership”, is considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies.  He believed that Transformational Leadership “occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality." 

The Blind Side- A True Transformation

 

The Blind Side, as mentioned in one of my previous posts, truly represents a transformational leadership experience.  According to James McGregor Burns, Transformational Leadership is "The Process of engaging with others to create a connection that increases motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower." These video clips show how Michael Oher (follower) and Leigh Anne Tuohy (leader) engaged with each other to create a similar transformational leadership connection.  They may have had a "Mother-Son" relationship, but they still learned from each other and increased their morality and motivation as both a leader and a follower.  At the end of each clip, Leigh Anne's friend states, "Honey, you're changing that boy's life," and Leigh Anne replies back with, "No, he's changing mine."  This just shows how two people can come from two completely different areas of their lives and be transformed into better leaders and followers.  This movie is based on a true story that has inspired viewers everywhere to be better people. 

Blanchard's Model

This picture portrays Blanchard's views on the relationships between supportive and directive behavior in a leadership setting and competence and confidence in an individual.  As you can see, the four types of leadership styles are: DIRECTING, COACHING, SUPPORTING, & DELEGATING.  If you are:

High on the Directive end and Low on the supporting end = Director.
High on the Directive end and High on the supporting end = Coach.
Low on the Directive end and High on the supporting end = Supporter.
Low on the Directive end and Low on the supporting end = Delegater.

I feel as if my leadership style is similar to a Coach or Supporter.  Because I am a relationship-oriented leader, I have a high supporting end, and depending on the situation, I can be high or low on the task-oriented side. 

I can recall a specific incident in my life where one of my other past employers showed her Director skills.  When I first stared working at the job, she was very directive in the way she would tell me to do certain tasks.  As long as I got my work done, she was happy.  With this, however, she was never very supportive what was going on in my personal life.  Because of this leadership style, I never felt connected to her on any level.  Then one day, an emergency arose in my personal life and I had to come into work all shaken up.  I was too scared to ask my boss if I could go home because I didn't think she would be supportive enough.  After talking to my other co-workers, and receiving encouragement from them, I worked up the courage to talk to my manager.  It was at this point that I saw her move from the Directing side of the model to Coaching/Supporting side.  I feel that this situation "matched" the model for my manager in that it provided a good generalization of who she is in the workplace.  However, I felt that it was also "mismatched" in the sense that it gives a false idea of who she might really be.  She might naturally be a coach/supporter (high on the supporting scale) but in work situations, she came off as being someone that didn't care about her employees beyond the tasks they were to perform.

Contingency Theories Unveiled

After reading the wiki article on the Fiedler Contingency Model, I found myself disagreeing with his theory.  I immediately thought of one of my past employers when it asked to think of someone that you had worked least well with.  I could recall a specific situation where my manager was very upset with me for taking time off in the summer to attend a family wedding out of state.  I had previously mentioned it to him, but he, of course, didn't remember that incident.  After throwing a temper tantrum in front of my other co-workers and guests, he threw a binder on the floor in front of me and played the silent treatment game with me for the rest of the day.  Now, if you ask me... this doesn't seem like a place ANYONE would want to work at.  He is definitely my Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC).  After rating him on the scale,  I gave him a score of 17 out of 32.  Fiedler believed that people who are "indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner."  This was not true in my situation.  I know that I am a relationship motivated person, and I do not describe my LPC in a positive manner.  Because of this disagreement, I relate best with the critics' points of view.  After reading further, Fiedler explained the differences between a task-oriented leader, a blue-collar worker, and a relationship-oriented leader.  I saw myself relating best with "The Considerate" (Relationship-oriented) style of leadership, and I saw my previous manager as being task-oriented.  This might have been why we never really got along. 

In comparison to the first article on Fiedler's Contingency Theory where he believed that people were either task-oriented or relationship-oriented, the article "High Task-Low Relationship Management: Is It Right for Payroll?" suggests that a person can have a combination of both task-oriented leadership and relationship-oriented leadership.  This is, what I found to be, the main difference between the two articles.  The second article allows a person to be low in one area and high in the other.  They divided up the different areas into 4 categories or titles (Telling, Selling, Participating, & Delegating).  I relate to this article more because I think that depending on the situation I am in, I can be more task-oriented rather than relationship-oriented.  This is also true in the above story about my past manager.  He may have just acted out of anger in that particular situation, but he doesn't necessarily always act that way in his everyday life.  One main similarity between the two articles is that they both discuss the possibility of your leadership style differing depending on the situation you are in or the environment that you are surrounded by. 

Different People. Different Styles. Same World.

So, after reading through over half of the class's blogs, I've come to one conclusion....I am very unique.  I couldn't find a single person that had the same leadership style as me!  After reading Krystal's blog, I learned that she was inspired by Erin Bartle's compassion towards others.  DING, DING, DING... then it clicked.  I decided to take a look at Erin's blog, and sure enough.. we had two very similar PMAI archetypes (Lover and Caregiver).  Even after reading her famous quotes, I knew we had a lot in common.  Erin is all about compassion and making a difference in peoples' lives.  We can both fall into a trap of focusing on other peoples' needs before our own.  We both worry about other people and how they are feeling and try to fix whatever problems exist in those relationships.  She admires generous people, and so do I.  She also mentioned a movie called "Freedom Writers" and how it represented her leadership style.  I had totally forgotten about that movie until now.. and I remembered how much I loved the idea behind it all.  I loved Hillary Swank's encouragement and compassion towards her students.  She portrayed a truly admirable leader in the movie, and that's something I strive to be in my everyday life.   

Because I was only able to find one person that had a similar leadership style as me, it was very easy to find someone who had a different one.  After reading Rachael Harris's blog, I knew I wanted to write about our differences.  Rachael focuses more on trait-based leadership, whereas I focus more on relationship- based leadership.  I also learned that her PMAI archetypes were completely different from mine.  She is a Ruler, Jester, and Warrior; whereas I am a Lover, Destroyer, and Caregiver.  I found it funny how, despite all of our differences in leadership, we have never had a problem working on group projects together!