Notes #42 The Leadership Challenge

The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner is now in its fifth edition (2012).  It’s proved to be a very popular work, spawning workshops, a conference, and various support materials, including a 360 degree assessment tool (the Leadership Practices Inventory) and a journal, a workbook and activities book.  It’s even lead to a version developed for students, which can be used in high school or college level programs.   The Student Leadership Challenge (2nd edition, 2014) has its own LPI and support material. (I plan to look at this in depth in a future Notes)  Information on all this can be found at the website www.leadershipchallenge.com, which has a variety of material available.

The authors of the LC set out to research and interview leaders about leadership itself.  From this research, which included leadership in both business and non-profit groups, they developed their model of leadership.  They make a big point that their work is based on 25 years of research.

Notes #41 Communication & Presentation

As leaders we need to be communicators.  This is important for many aspects of leadership.  As leaders we should develop a vision.  But what good is that vision if we are unable to convey that vision to those we lead such that they accept and buy in to that vision.  In leading people, we must be able to communicate with them, and that includes finding out what they need and want.  This communication could be one on one or small groups.

 Too often communication is seen as being totally separate from leadership.   There are programs and classes on speech and communication, but divorced from leadership.  On the flip-side, sometimes people think that leaders must be great orators.  Well, yes, some have been, for good or bad.  But there have also been quiet people who are great leaders as well, but they still were able to communicate.

And always keep in mind that communication can be written as well as verbal.  Can you organize your thoughts, put them down in a form that others can understand?  This, too is important.

Notes #40 Leadership at the Movies I

Most people probably love to watch movies.  They can entertain.  Make us laugh or cry (or both).  Many of them have a lesson to teach.  It’s in those we want to look at.  Often times with leadership, being able to show our students examples of leadership (sometimes good, sometimes bad) can be a powerful way of helping them understand leadership.

Movies are a great way to do so. In several leadership courses I've been involved in over the years, movies (or selections from movies) have been part of the program.

In your own group or organization, showing movies can be very useful, not just for the entertainment value, but from the lessons they show.  This will hopefully be the first of several Notes to illustrate movies (and maybe tv shows) that can illustrate lessons of leadership.  Doing so should not be strange.  In doing some of the research for this Note, I found a few books that are about that, such as Movies to Manage By and Reel Lessons in Leadership. (I have not reviewed these books, but would hope they could be valuable resources).

Notes #39 Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits

There are those works which are so popular that many people just blow them off.  The works of the late Stephen Covey fall into that category.  They've been around for so long that too often people overlook them.  And like most popular works, he has his detractors, who are put off by numbered lists and charts (6 these and 5 those and the like).  While his works seem to principally focus on managing your time, which is a skill that all leaders need, there is a lot more to his works then that.  There is a lot to his works that require more than a superficial reading. 

Notes #38: More Games (Sam Sikes, Chris Cavert, Jim Cain and more)

So here we have one more (maybe final) Notes on games (cooperative, initiative, etc).  This one, unlike the prior one, has LOTS of resources.  I guess that makes up for the dearth of that one.  Here I give a very high level overview of several resources and authors I have come across (not all I have used and read, but when I see the same peoples’ work available from several sources, I have to think it should be of value).  So who are these people?  In no particular order.

Notes #37: Servant Leadership Redux I

Every so often in this series I will revisit concepts, maybe delve into them deeper or provide new (or newly found) resources.  Servant leadership is a topic that is still expanding with new works or has works that should be explored further.  So here are some additional works and some I mentioned too briefly in the past.

First off, here is a great video I found on Greenleaf and the Greenleaf Center: 

Notes #36: Team Assessments

We are all part of groups of people working together, whether at work or the various organizations we are part of.  But is that group a team?  And how good of a team is it?  How can you assess that team?  Here are a couple of different, but similar models.

Blanchard et al (authors of the various situational leadership concepts we've touched on in past Notes) uses the PERFORM model.