Has your own attitude to
leaders changed in your life, and if so how?
This subject
has always been interesting to me. During my undergraduate years, I heard many
professors agree with students who said, “Leaders are born, not made”. I was
always unsure whether or not a leader could be made. Reflecting back on the
qualities I had believed made a leader and now learning more about leaders and
leadership with the MSLD program, I believers leaders can be made. I also used
to think that all leaders would act or react the same on a given situation but
as I see now there’s more to a leader than someone just barking orders or
instructions to other employees. It’s about the passion you have for your job
and for doing what is right, confidence, honesty, and the ability to
communicate among other qualities. It’s not just about telling others what to
do but also about training, teamwork, helping employees grow, empowering
employees to make their own decisions, and so on. Therefore, yes my view of
leaders and leadership has changed in the recent years.
If we take as
a starting point the attitude of those in authority/leaders as held by your
grandparents, and then look at those attitudes held by your parents, and then
by you, and then by the younger generation, is there a changing trend? If so,
what is it?
If I compare my starting point
(grandparents) authority/leaders to the new generation, yes I believe there is
a changing trend in leadership styles. For example, when I was young I always
heard my grandparents tell me “never show anyone what you have learned because
they will climb above you”. But it’s not about retaining all that knowledge to
yourself into the day you die. It’s about helping the employees around you grow
in order for the company to continue growing. In my opinion, this could by why
wisdom is lacking. More often the elder generation would know how to
successfully run a company but once this key person left, the company would
take a dive in sales, stocks, or even morally as a company.
Imagine
that you are the only person that knows the ins and outs of a project and what
needs to get done in the entire company. Now lets add that your child is in the
hospital. How do you think you’ll be able to complete this very important
project on time and still be next to your child in the hospital? Can you
imagine the pressure you will be in? Do you think you’ll be able to handle both
situations successfully? Do you think you’ll be able to concentrate at work? If
there’s a team, can the team successfully handle the project without your key
knowledge? To me this is what it’s about. It’s about teaching others, passing
that wisdom down to others, keeping the information open for anyone to seek out.
Of course, we are humans and we tend to keep certain things to ourselves but
wouldn’t it be better to not have this pressure that you must be present at all
times in order to complete all those tasks. Wouldn’t it be better for you to
delegate some of the responsibility to your team? From my experience, this
empowers employees to make decisions, it relieves me to tackle other tasks that
I made need to get done as a manager, to keep a more open agenda where I’m able
to jump in when needed and for me to work alongside the rest of the employees
if we get behind. It’s not about keeping a title; it’s about helping each other
grow with the company.
Why do you
think that this has occurred?
Well, I think that just as
technology has changed our environment has changed, which in turn has called
for new forms of leadership. For example, the place where I grew up not a lot
of people seemed concerned about the environment at the time. I visited about
two years ago and people seemed to be more concerned about the environment than
ever before. Some drove electric cars and some drove hybrids cars. I think that
in order for us to continue growing and evolving in life, new steps have to be
taken such as with leadership. Without the environment changing, people
wouldn’t probably be as concern about it as they are now. In order for
businesses to continue being successful, new goals had to be planned out that
followed along the lines of the evolving environment and sometimes for companies
to do this new leadership has to be formed.
Additionally,
while we live in a world with more information about leadership and leadership
practices why is it that we have an apparent gap in the quality of our leaders
and how do you think we can close this gap?
As mentioned in one of the above
examples, I believe the reason why we have this gap between information about
leadership and leadership practices is because the elder generation has kept
their wisdom about the business to themselves. They haven’t let other people in
on their secrets per say. So when this elder generation leaves the company,
there’s a wisdom gap (quality of leadership) that must be filled by someone who
hasn’t made those same mistakes as the person leaving. It’s like starting off
from the beginning. It takes a couple of years for that new person to make
those same mistakes and to learn those same lesson the elder person learned, in
order for that new person to be close to the same wisdom that the elder person
had.
In
my point of view, there are many interesting ways to close this leadership
quality gap. A leader can help teach the employees about the lessons he/she has
learned so the same mistakes aren’t made. A leader can empower employees to
take initiatives, make decisions, learn how to problem solve, how to work in
teams, teach them how to find information, how to use the resources available, and
so on. Therefore, if the current leader leaves, there is no apparent or huge quality
gap of leadership between the current leader and the new leader.
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