We say over and over again “Leaders are always on the stage.” Why? Because someone is always watching. Someone is always taking the leader’s behavior to inform their impression of her or him and as an example of how to behave. Good or bad, it’s OK. We think, if it works for her or him, it’ll work for me; if he or she can get away with it, so can I.
There are informal leaders in every organization. These are the people in the organization who, without formal title or authority, get things done, and done well, show others how to do them, and have a large network interconnecting many people in a variety of teams and organizations across the entire organization. Often we do not even know who these people are nor recognize their importance in our organization’s success or understand the breadth of their networks.
Someone asked the other day, “What do you think?” and I wondered, is this a time to coach or a time to mentor? In our interactions everyday we may have the choice to adopt one approach over the other. Yet we need to be able to make the distinction between coaching in contrast to mentoring. When is coaching the better path; when would mentoring be a better option?
Yesterday was the 240th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This document announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule, and instead in a new nation, the United States of America.
This year’s spring graduation season has come to an end. About 4,700 degree granting public and private, two and four year institutions awarded some 2.8 million degrees at their commencement exercises. And, every one of these gatherings had speakers that spoke of not giving into the darkness and despair of the day, of celebrating a major accomplishment, of being resilient, not fearing failure, listening, being generous, being ready, taking risks, focusing clearly, finding your own path, and a long list of
Sue Workman, Vice President Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer, Case Western Reserve University, keynote video for the 2016 MOR Leaders Conference.
Today’s Tuesday Reading, Who I think about as “My Leader,” is an essay by Paula Torres, Senior Educational Design Technologist, Global Learning and Innovation, NYU Information Technology. Her essay first appeared as a program reflection last year.
The one person I think of when I think of leadership was not my manager, supervisor, or even coworker. She was an adjunct professor whose class I took at Teachers College.
You can find many lists of leadership competencies. Some result from a careful examination of the work in a particular job family or from role descriptions. Some come from discussions about what it takes to be a really good leader in a mid-level position at, say, an education institution. Other lists are developed based on a particular leadership model. Still other lists are represented by 360 feedback instruments such as the MOR Associates instrument used in the Leaders Program or the Zenger Folkman model described in their Harvard Business Review article, Making Yourself Indispensible
The first in a series of case studies supporting our clients as they think about the process of engaging others to move ideas forward in their environment.
Enjoy! And thanks to Evan Silberman from NYU for partnering with us on this write up.
NYU-Case-Study-Building-Leadership-Community.pdf
