Transformational Leadership is in the can.

Transformational Leadership – Week 6 Weekly Summary

Evaluate the knowledge of leadership as you write your summary and how you have grown in your leadership style and/or skills over the last six weeks.

This week was a good cap on the previous five, particularly with the problem solution paper as a way to integrate that information.  The focus of the discussion questions on recapping and assessing what each person would recommend has provided a good opportunity to reflect on the class overall.  My usual “work flow” for approaching the problem solution paper was a little differently than previous papers, primarily due to portions having been done for week 4, so that provided an unexpected twist in my work schedule.The weekly summary posting suggested that we evaluate “how you have grown in your leadership style and/or skills over the last six weeks”.  First and foremost, my awareness is higher- I can honestly say there were several theories of leadership, and plain old ideas on leadership, that I simply was not aware of prior to the class.   {snip} And now a message from the author…

These weekly summaries are the actual content posted to the class.  Week 6 of 6 is always a bit lighter on the academic details, focusing instead on recapping, what was good, what was bad, etc. I’ve snipped this one off and will instead fill you in on what is really going on this week.

The real news in the last week of a class is who is continuing on, who is taking a break, and who is ending their participation in the program.  I was disappointed to see some of the folks taking a break this time.  A few people I recognized from a previous class, a couple of the people taking breaks were people whose comments I always looked forward to reading and would actively seek out when checking in with the class.  They will be missed as I move on to Human Capital Development.

Envision, enable, empower, energize

Transformational Leadership – Week 5 Summary 

Another interesting week.  The discussion questions on adapting leadership styles to the situation (or changing the situation) seemed directly applicable to the Intersect scenario.  The leadership values and 4Es discussion question provided a good opportunity to examine the leadership concepts discussed in class in a different context by evaluating behavior of historical leaders against leadership theories.  The third discussion question related to new organizational structures seemed to be an odd tack on to this weeks activities.  This week also brought out another team assignment, which was a great opportunity to see the variety of companies different team members brought to the benchmarking activity.

Positive and Negative Inequity

Transformational Leadership – Week 4 Summary 

Today wraps up what may have been the most interesting week of the course.  Discussion questions on positive (and negative) inequity and performance feedback are clearly part of transformational leadership, but I didn’t expect them to be as interesting as they turned out to be.  I’ll chalk a good part of that experience up to the contributions of the class members and our professor guiding the discussion.  The third discussion question on systems mode of change and resistance to change was very appropriate to the assignment this week.  Reviewing the Intersect investments scenario alone may have left me wondering if this was a realistic situation, but coupled with the discussion question and dialog in the forums brought home two points; (a) yes, problems like this do exist in business and (b) good managers can do something about it.

Finally, the post for weekly summaries have repeatedly included comments from the professor to the effect of “Have you started putting your leadership style down on paper?”  These not so subtle reminders have had the desired effect, I spend more time thinking about this than in the past.  I’m a big advocate of the Covey Seven Habits, and feel those elements are interwoven into how I conduct myself at work, at school, and at home.  Covey’s advocacy of developing a personal mission statement dovetails nicely with the professor’s recommendation of writing about your own leadership style, and in that regard I began writing this down a long time ago but not on paper, I use a palm PDA .  

Structure & culture, and their impact on leadership style

Transformational Leadership – Week 3 Summary 

The discussion questions had an added variation to them with no specific reading assigned this week.  The broad topics of each question left the opportunity for the discussion to go in many different directions.  As has been the case in the past, the class discussion provided the majority of the learning experience for the week. 

The problem solution paper provided me with a pleasant surprise.  I started the paper thinking I was going to end up with one particular solution, but as I completed each section of the paper a better solution appeared.  I’m pleased to say the problem solution process worked very well for this paper.

In considering how the information presented this week would impact my leadership style, I believe the discussion of organizational structure and culture was most insightful.  It doesn’t directly apply to cultivating a leadership style but rather provided an awareness of some aspects of the relationship between structure and culture that I simply did not have before.