Taking Charge Flashcards
Work of Leadership
Enabling those you are leading to arrive at the intended destination. This includes focusing people on a compelling objective, enhancing and deploying their talent, igniting and coordinating their efforts, and developing myself to be able to do the work.
Leadership start point
Clarity and purpose in every situation about what we are setting out to accomplish with our actions and how I want others to experience my leadership.
Roles of Leader
Fostering mutual learning; engaging people interpersonally; encouraging collaboration to get technical tasks done; helping diverse groups maximize their productivity.
Identity as a leader
Less about your individual accomplishments, and more about the accomplishment of the group. You have to derive satisfaction from others accomplishing tasks rather than accomplishing them yourself.
Leadership Tools
Direction, relationships, design, process, and self.
DR. DPS
Direction
Providing people with a vivid and engaging vision of the destination where the team is headed along with a clear sense of purpose.
Relationships
Meeting people, establishing connections, and opening lines of communication/exchange. This will allow me to remove obstacles and gather resources so my team can complete its work.
Design
Establishing the systems, structures, and practices that will enable units/teams to function well.
Process
Setting expectations of how people interact to get their work done: how I run meetings; how information is shared; how to walk people through plans and feedback.
Self
Using myself as an instrument for mobilizing my team and developing them to get things done.
Compliance vs. Commitment
Leadership is less about compliance, and more about commitment.
Compliance
Ensuring people do what they are told
Commitment
People develop their own internal desire to do the work and do it well.
Leadership stumbling blocks
The urge to do the work of an individual contributor
The urge to focus on compliance vs. commitment.
Why is self awareness imperative in leadership contexts?
You need to see yourself as a leader and grasp that your role is more to mobilize others to action.
You need to be thoughtful of the experience you want others to have of your leadership.
Why is growth and learning a key tenet of leadership?
You will likely encounter situations as a leader that require you to learn and grow at the very moment others expect you to be an authority.
You will inevitably make mistakes in the introduction to leadership, don’t be embarrassed. Do what it takes to learn the role.
Leadership learning matrix
Top: wrong thing and right thing
Left: Well and poorly
If you do the right thing well, great. As you step into new situations, you’re going to execute. You may do the wrong thing well, the right thing poorly, or the wrong thing poorly. When you do the wrong thing or the right thing poorly, you will feel discomfort and need psychological support. When you have this, you’ll be able to learn from your mistakes through instrumental guidance from peers, subordinates, and supervisors. As a leader, you will also ask others to follow this path, and as such, you need to understand your role in establishing a culture of psychological support and instrumental guidance.
Psychological Support
Patience, tolerance for mistakes, encouragement of risk taking, and willingness to share experiences.
Instrumental Guidance
Helpful, instructional input on how to do things better.
What are ways to enhance self awareness?
Adopt a learning orientation to enable yourself to understand who you are and how others perceive you.
How do you build your credibility as a leader?
Take time to understand what you’ve inherited.
Balance your diagnosis of the context with the reality of where the people in the organization are.
Identify, build, and draw upon key relationships and sources of support.
Understanding what you’ve inherited
What context are you stepping into?
What is the culture of the organization/team?
How does the culture influence the way work gets done?
Balancing personal diagnosis with context
Ask questions and listen to appreciate the situation. You have to understand the experience of those you’re working with and combine it with your diagnosis to round out your perspective.
Emotional intelligence
the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions effectively in ourselves and others.
Four major facets of emotional intelligence
Self-awareness; social awareness; self-management; relationship management
Self-awareness
Ability to understand personal emotions, drives, strengths, and weaknesses. It enables you to sustain your emotionally and socially intelligent behavior over time, despite setbacks.
Social awareness
Contains competencies of empathy (your ability to sense others’ feelings and perspectives) and organizational awareness (your ability to understand the power relationships in your organization).
Self-management
Includes four competencies referred to as the “fire and brakes:” achievement orientation, positive outlook (the fire) - the drive motivation and provide momentum; emotional self-control and adaptability (the brakes) hold back destructive or counterproductive responses to change or pressure.
Relationship management
Five competencies: coach and mentor, conflict management, influence, inspirational leadership, and teamwork. Relationship management is how you take awareness of yourself and others and channel it into how you interact with others.
What are two key levers in relationship management
Social awareness and self-management because to be effective with others, you need to have a handle on your emotions and be able to channel them in an effective way.
Topics for Taking Charge
Stepping into a new leadership role; the work of leadership is different; the necessary change; building self-awareness
