Observations of leadership

I am re-reading the book, Leadership Jazz, by Max De Pree. I highly recommend it.

De Pree says, “A jazz band is an expression of servant leadership. The leader of a jazz band has the beautiful opportunity to draw the best out of the other musicians. We have much to learn from jazz-band leaders, for jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.”

He goes on with, “Leaders certainly need to know where they stand. But how do leaders stand? A sound philosophy isn't enough; we all need to connect voice and touch. So much discussion these days talks of ethics as a legal line in the sand, a prohibition against certain actions. But leadership is constructive, the right actions taken in the context of clear and well-considered thinking. The active pursuit of a common good gives us the right to ask leaders and managers of all kinds to be not only successful, but faithful.”

As we look at leadership in our external contexts, what do we see? How is leadership conceived in these contexts, how do we "see" the function of leadership in these organizations? How do these leaders connect "voice and touch"?

Transactional / Transformational Leadership

From Bernard Bass. 2008. The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications, 4th Ed.

"A leader of the transactional kind,

1. recognizes what it is we want to get from our work and tries to see that we get what we want if our performance warrants it,

2. exchanges rewards and promises of reward for our effort, and,

3. is responsive to our immediate self-interests if they can be met by our getting the work done. (Bass 1985b, 11)

"A leader of the transformational kind, however, motivates people to do more than they had previously expected to do. This is accomplished

1. by raising our awareness, our level of consciousness about the importance and value of designated outcomes, and ways of reaching them,

2. by getting us to transcend our own self-interest for the sake of the team, organization, or larger policy, and

3. by altering our need level on Maslow's hierarchy or expanding our portfolio of needs and wants (Bass 1985b, 20)

These descriptions provide us with a picture of HOW certain types of leaders function.

Which of the four Bolman and Deal frames do you think is the primary frame for each of these types of leaders? How might we predict what the culture or "how we do things here," plays out with each?

Organizational Culture

If culture is about "how we do things here." Maybe we could add that organizational 'climate' is "how it feels here." Then we might also consider organizational 'context' about "how it looks here." And finally, we might say that organizational 'content' is about "the tools we use here." Add these to Bolman & Deal's (2008) four frames and you can start seeing patterns develop.

The challenge of changing how we think

Leadership is always about the conversations we have with others. The words we use, the stories we tell, the topics we discuss, the ideas we challenge - these are the ways we lead. Let's never forget that. Every conversation we have provides a leadership opportunity. Leadership is not necessarily about followers but how the listeners hear what we say. Thus each conversation we have, each story we tell, each relationship we have offers an opportunity for us to "re-think."

In class we talked about the fact that written language is constructed from symbols (letters) that were developed from images. These symbols have a long history of development that is well described in this article:

http://ilovetypography.com/2010/08/07/where-does-the-alphabet-come-from/

Let's remember that written language is a product of our need to describe a picture or thing that we already know. It only makes sense then that in learning kids need the picture before the words (comprehension before decoding). This makes the primary task of teaching more about building the pictures, images and concepts first - then teaching the letters (symbols) that describe them. Thus, we use symbols, pictures, stories, and experiences to shape language skills, not the other way around.

Behind the curtain....

Paul Thomas, writing for the UK based Guardian newspaper, has, in my opinion, "pulled back the curtain" on the smoke and mirrors of the corporate/political "wizard" of education in the U.S.
He talks about the numerous leaders in education that have no academic or educational experience - Arne Duncan, outgoing and incoming Chancellor for New York Schools Joel Klein and Cathleen Black, Michelle Rhee who recently left Washington D.C. And, clearly educational policy is not written by educators.
He goes on to assert: " The standards, testing and accountability movement is built on a claim that education can change society. The corporate support for the accountability movement and the "no excuses" charter school movement seeks to reinforce that claim because, otherwise, corporate America and the politicians supporting corporate America would have to admit that something is wrong with our economic and political structures."
We are currently struggling to "see the future" and are trying to design, define and develop concepts by which we can affect the future in education. The piece that is missing is what Thomas points out -
"The real failure, which is the message being ignored here, is that one of the wealthiest countries in the world refuses to face the inequities of its economic system, a system that permits more than 20% of its children to live in poverty and to languish in schools that America has clearly decided to abandon, along with its democratic principles."
True Leadership in education is our only hope.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/15/education-schools

Reading another blog today, I found this article:

The Top 10 Leadership Qualities

By David Hakala on March 19, 2008

In the middle of the list of ten were the following two. What struck me was, after the conversation about making change might get someone fired, I came to realize another reason why now is as good a time as ever to change our thinking. In order to have a boss or supervisor be able to "OPEN" to new ideas they have to have the trait of openness. And, it is openness to creativity that , for now, is our final frontier in education. Our problem is that we don't have enough leaders with these two leadership qualities. That is what we are doing right now.... building those leaders!

"Openness means being able to listen to new ideas, even if they do not conform to the usual way of thinking. Good leaders are able to suspend judgment while listening to others’ ideas, as well as accept new ways of doing things that someone else thought of. Openness builds mutual respect and trust between leaders and followers, and it also keeps the team well supplied with new ideas that can further its vision.

Creativity is the ability to think differently, to get outside of the box that constrains solutions. Creativity gives leaders the ability to see things that others have not seen and thus lead followers in new directions. The most important question that a leader can ask is, “What if … ?”

From:

http://www.hrworld.com/features/top-10-leadership-qualities-031908/