Tuesday, March 24, 2015

A Reflection on Leadership - Past, Current and Future

Introduction   

This week’s MSLD520 blog is about my personal attitudes and generational trends I have witnessed towards leadership during my lifetime and how I perceive the younger generation’s attitude towards leadership. I will also answer the following question presented in the course material “…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?"


Personal Attitude Toward Leadership – Then and Now

          Let us start this examination of my own personal attitude of leadership at adult hood, which started at Lackland Air Force Base Texas, summer of 1981. Leadership was not to be questioned during Air Force Basic Training. We were trained to do as you were told. The leadership style for new recruits was old fashioned oligarchical, no frill and certainly no back talk. Not one person on record during the summer of 1981 ever had the courage to give a Technical Instructor an attitude that did not fall in-line with yes-sir / ma’am or no-sir / ma’am. Lip was absolutely not tolerated.
That experience left an impression to last a lifetime as was probably intended to do so. Not much happens by accident in the military. From basic training we entered the “real” Air Force where we were exposed to a kinder and gentler form of leadership. A leadership that showed concern for our well-being and that was nurturing in many ways. After eight weeks of hell in basic training, we really appreciated our leaders actually showing that maybe we didn't make a mistake. At each promotion, more responsibility was delegated until when during the 3rd promotion when we ourselves became supervisors. The Air Force did a wonderful job of training the basics of leadership and how to be a participative leader. With each promotion came additional leadership training. With each promotion came more coaching in the skills of leadership. The Air Force was a wonderful place to learn the basics of leadership and where I grew my appreciation for participative and interactive leadership. Rolling up the sleeves and getting down in the trenches (okay, flight line trenches) became a weekly routine and the airman really responded well to a Master Sargent rolling up age equipment and hauling tool boxes with them.
Retirement from the Air Force has been rewarding, but landing another managerial position has been difficult, hence my enrollment into Embry-Riddle’s Masters of Science in Leadership Development (MSLD) program. The exposure to the world of civilian leadership has been eye opening to say the least. By comparison, the Air Force was much more consistent in providing sound leadership that could be trusted. Most civilian managers have had little to no professional leadership training.  


Leadership – Generational Perceptions

          My father also was a 20 year man in the Air Force and his experience was similar to mine with a few differences, mainly he experienced less participative and interactive leadership. We have had some pretty lengthy conversations about this and in my father’s words my experience was a “kinder and gentler” Air Force than what he experienced, but the formal leadership training was a mainstay even in the 60's and 70's. Today’s generation of airmen have even more opportunity to participate than ever before with the rules becoming more lax and personal freedoms being extended. One example of more freedom is the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy evolving to same sex relationships allowed. Don’t necessarily agree with the change in policy, but one would have a hard time defending the position this change in policy doesn't provide more personal liberty.


Conclusions – Evolution of Leadership and How Do We Close the Gap?

            My personal experience with leadership evolution falls in line with Nick Obolensky’s thoughts about the effects of technology on leadership. He describes in Chapter 2 of Complex Adaptive Leadership, that advances in technology has caused more uncertainty “The more we know, the less certain things become” (p. 16). With this uncertainty comes more reliance on educated followers
…the scale and pace of change means that those who are led are now
more aware, more informed and have higher expectations than ever
before. The old way of leading by command, control, directions and
charisma through superior knowledge and personality does not really
stack up an more, as increasingly better educated followers know faster
than leaders what is happening and often what needs to be done. (p.18)
            Followers find themselves in possession of more power than ever before mainly in part because followers are generally much more educated than ever before and the natural barriers leaders had at their disposal to keep information out of the hands of followers have been reduced by information technology advances. The power of education and information has leveled the playing field between leader and follower and the leader who recognizes this and embraces the idea of power sharing is likely to be more successful in many corporate leadership positions today and in the near future.

            With the pace of technology and information changes out dueling and the pace of leadership evolution, what remedy can be put in place to bring them together? One word. Training. Training leaders to handle the challenges of tomorrow is the best way to close the gap and keep leadership evolution on the same pace as technology and information changes. In just one week, the skills developed are preparing to meet the challenges of today. The material covered this week included an introduction to Taoism, Cynefin framework, resource allocation filtering and polyarchy and I feel as though I am well on my way to adapting to the type of leader needed today and tomorrow. 

            For example, we implemented some new metrics this year, and they have been the source of undue stress because my team was getting ever so close to not meeting our objectives. Now I can see the wisdom of lesson of resource allocation. If resources are not being allocated (headcount increase not coming) then I need to change my perspective on the metrics and I have no problem sharing my new perspective with others. “Understanding and controlling the criteria by which day-to-day resource allocation decisions are made at all levels of the organization, therefore, is a key challenge in managing the process of defining and implementing strategy.” (Christensen & Donovan, n.d., p. 3). Because the headcount I was promised when I made my production forecast is not coming and a change in strategy was made, I am more comfortable with not meeting the goals originally planned. This may seem odd, that I had to read it from a text book to relax a bit. The reason that this is so is that it was never communicated that missing the target would be understandable, so I believe the expectation was to still meet the target. I received the feedback I needed from the text Christensen & Donovan provided. And so the MSLD633 journey begins!


Reference:
Christensen, M., & Donovan, T. (n.d.). The Process of Strategy Development and   Implementation.  Retrieved from http://www.innosight.com/documents/The%20Processes%20of%20Strategy%20Development%20and%20%20Implementation.pdf.
 Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing Company.