After studying leadership for the past 15 months and living
it for the past 5 years, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t be surprised when things
go in a direction I didn’t think they would go.
Case in point: the quiz at the beginning of chapter 10. I thought I knew about how to take a hands
off approach to leadership however apparently I didn’t really understand what
that meant. My scores weren’t too bad: I
had one 1, two 2s, seven 3s, and six 4s, however I still am a little hands on
in some respects but I also don’t quite understand what exactly the author is
trying to get at with others.
Before entering the class, I would have classified myself as
a rather hands off leader – if you show me you are capable of doing your job, I
will leave you to get it done how you see fit. If you show me you need supervision, I will
also provide you with plenty of that.
This class has definitely shown me that the further I can slide myself
towards being hands off, the better things should turn out. As a result, I would say that had I taken
this quiz at the beginning of this class, I probably would have had less 4s
than this time and probably more 1s and 2s (speaking of which, taking this quiz
week one and week 7 might be an interesting way to judge how people have
changed over the course of the class).
With that being said, I must not fully understand the extent to which
the author wants us to take our hands off approach. On a couple of the questions, the “4” answer
had us do nothing at all. In some
situations I bought that, however when things are already tanking, I personally
think that letting it tank further might not be the best option (especially for
reasons expressed later). Even further,
I have got to question the “4” response to question 15 which asks when do you
step into a team that is getting ready to quit due to poor performance. The 4 response is to let a person quit before
getting involved. Other than the fact
that you are saying you purposely aren’t going to get involved for complexity
sake, I just don’t see how acknowledging there is a problem and asking them for
plausible solutions isn’t the better route to take. Team performance aside, I know I wouldn’t
look to highly on someone who let another person quit before stepping in to
stop the madness – anything they did after that would appear to be reactive
rather than proactive (I understand that part of complexity is reacting vice
being proactive but this scenario almost has the air of Nero watching Rome burn
– at what point do you quit playing the fiddle before you get a bucket of water
to put out the fire – do you wait until half of Rome is burning or do you put
it out when it is just smoldering).
With respect to significance of this self-realization and my
future leadership goals, I think this has solidified my belief that empowered delegating
is key, and letting people go through things themselves is also good, but at
some point you need to at least get involved as a leader – you just need to do
so in an effective manner. In the quiz,
I scored 13 out of 16 in the 3 or 4 categories.
This showed that I am hands off but when I do get myself involved, I am
using a low structure behavior type of style, whether it be coaching,
democratic, or affiliative. I would
agree that I am more of a puller than a pusher, and this quiz showed that. It also showed me that I can improve on this
as I scored a 1 on question 11 (it was with only the most noble of intentions –
I just wanted to ensure my guys got the training they needed!). I also learned from this exercise that you
have to be very careful with how hands off leadership can be viewed (or at
least I viewed some of the 4 responses as being too hands off). Perception is reality and to an untrained eye
the hands off approach can sure look like someone who isn’t really doing much
except worsening the situation through inaction (in the Navy especially we are
taught to at the very least make a decision/act – indecision is the worst
decision and I really think that someone could perceive letting complexity run
its course as indecision). I think if I
chose to further my education in this field (which I am interested in), looking
into how complexity approaches towards leadership are viewed might be an
interesting subject matter – especially in the military.
On a side note, I sure would like to see what my full
breakdown is off this quiz. The book has
you go to their website however it costs 125pounds to get the full report – any
chance we can work out a deal with them to get the results?
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