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Crisis Leadership – You Have a Crisis Heading Your Way!

If you are a leader, you have a crisis coming. Can you prevent it? If not, how prepared are you? 

 

Who is the most impressive leader you worked with in a crisis? Did they make crisis leadership look easy? It looks easy because this crisis is not their first rodeo. They have spent hours preparing and honing their skills prior to the crisis. 

 

How about you? What are you doing to prepare? 

 

As you read this, think of yourself in your leadership context. Think about your team, the organization that team is in, and the industry of that organization. A crisis at any of those three levels will likely require crisis leadership from you.  

 

To grasp the big concepts let’s revisit a crisis we are all familiar with: the terror attacks on 9/11.

 

Did the United States have preventive measures in place to thwart a high jacking? 

 

Absolutely.  There were airport security procedures, terror watch lists, and government agencies constantly looking for threats. 

 

Were we able to prevent it? No.

 

Once it happened, how prepared were we for it? 

 

We weren’t. We were unable to prevent the attacks and once the attacks commenced, we were unprepared to stop them. 

 

What about now? We have much better prevention in place and preparation if the prevention fails. Locked cockpit doors and armed air marshals on board are a couple of preparedness measures. 

 

Now think about your leadership position. What would be a crisis for your team? 

 

A common crisis is a single point of failure of a critical capability within the team. 

 

“If we lost Julie and her capability, we have no way to complete her tasks or quickly replace her.”

 

Do you have a similar situation on your team? If so, what are you doing to prevent losing that capability? First, losing Julie, second losing her capability? 

 

Do you have a good idea of Julie’s career plans? What are you doing to retain her? Those are steps to prevent her from leaving. 

 

To prepare for the event she leaves, you may start succession planning. That may be developing several others “in-house” or having a plan for a temporary solution such as contracting in the event she walks out the door. Your preventive measures are to stop the event from occurring.  Preparations are the planned actions or responses in the event of the crisis. 

 

Another common crisis; a problem with Information technology (IT) infrastructure and data. What are you doing to prevent losing your data or having an IT crisis; policies, procedures, training, hardware, and software are all preventive options. 

 

What if prevention fails and an event causes a data loss or compromise? How prepared are you? Preparation may be cyber insurance that has a cyber response team to assist. Having backups offsite that allow you to rebuild your system are preparedness actions.

 

We cannot prevent a hurricane from occurring. However, we can put measures in place to prevent catastrophic damage. We can also prepare for the worst case to be able to respond automatically rather than figuring out a plan in a time of crisis. 

 

Effective crisis leaders don’t just show up in a crisis and are great.  They first work to prevent the crisis and second to prepare for the crisis occurring. Prevention and preparation make them effective. 

 

What are you doing to prepare for your next crisis? You do not know the exact crisis however; you can easily prepare for a likely crisis. Your next crisis will likely have something do with people, finances, or operations.  A good starting point is identifying the most catastrophic event that could happen each of the three areas.  Work to prevent the event and prepare your response if it does occur. This will increase your odds of being an effective crisis leader. 

 

Sully Sullenberger, as an airline pilot, planned and practiced his response to a dual engine flameout that occurred shortly after takeoff. The result of his preparation; the successful ditching of his airplane in the Hudson River with zero casualties. 

 

Crisis leadership is a practiced skill.  

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Seasons for Your Organization

How Effectively Do You Lead Your Team Through its Seasons?

Every team, industry, or organization has seasons. How much of an expert are you at leading your team through its seasons?

First, what are the seasons for your team?

They may be defined by specific dates on the calendar or the actual seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. Or, similar to sports seasons; preseason, in-season, postseason, or out-of-season. Name the seasons for your industry.

What expertise do you need in the following three areas for each season?

  • Industry – knowledge of the cycle of the industry
  • Metrics – what and how to measure performance during each season
  • Planning – the knowledge and skills to effectively plan for what is next

Let’s look at a few examples. As we examine the examples, consider your leadership role and how this applies to you.

Education

We are all familiar with the distinct seasons of education. During Summer, school is not in full session, often scaled-down summer programs. Fall semester and spring semester These are also dependent on the level of education.

Real Estate

Depending on location real estate has several forces setting seasons. It can be driven by the calendar, seasons, weather, and market conditions.

Retail

A major sector of this industry revolves around the holiday retail season. Automotive retail revolves around car shows, new model introductions, and seasonal sales. Tech retail often focuses on development cycles

Let’s get started with how you lead your team through its seasons.

Name and define the seasons for your team and state the specifics that distinguish each season. Such as business development, marketing, clearing or creating inventory, ordering, or strategy development

Step two is to establish the metrics for success for each season. What are the metrics and how will you measure them?

Examples of metrics. Industries with periods of concentrated customer interactions require a hiring phase. Think about delivery services during the holiday. Important metrics may be: the number of applicants, returning seasonal employees, and predicted volume of sales.

For other industries, ordering inventory, monitoring supply chain performance, expenditures, cash on hand, predicted revenue, or assessing market conditions may be the important metrics.

What are the important metrics for your industry during the operation of each season?

You now have the seasons defined with their specifics and the metrics to evaluate performance. The next area of expertise to evaluate is the planning and preparation phase. For each season to be successful, there is a planning phase leading up to that season. The expertise required to plan for a season may be significantly different than the expertise to run the operations of a season.

Industries with high seasonal labor requirements come to mind. The planning phase for construction is much different than the labor requirement when the construction starts. Hospitality and retail are similar.

To be a successful leader the mandate is to lead the organization in operations for the current season while simultaneously planning for the next.

How does this model inform you for your professional development?

For most leaders, this provides a broader perspective of their organization and inspires development for them and their team. It often affects hiring and staffing processes as they realize the experience and skill sets required for planning and operations are often significantly different.

To lead both functions requires you to have planning and operational skills.

How well are you leading in both tracks? Leaders cognizant of executing well on both modes deliberately shape their organization. They develop themselves and their teams based on the requirements to plan and execute in each season measured against the right metrics.

How would this methodology inform your path forward for your team?

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Are Your Strengths Potentially Derailing You

Are your greatest leadership strengths actually derailing you?

Play to your strengths, find your strengths, and spend as much time as possible in your sweet spot.

Is it possible that advice is derailing you?

Let’s go through a scenario and see if that’s a possibility for you or members of your team. Think about yourself and someone on your team you are developing,

Bring to mind, your top three to five leadership strengths. We are going to use those strengths to work through an example.

My top strengths are consistency, ability to see the big picture, developing others, and collaboration.

Number 1, I am very consistent. I get 360 feedback reinforcing I am strong in this area. My reaction, I think this is great. A strength recognized by me and others only has positive consequences. How could consistency be negative?

Every strength has an opposite pole that shows up as a weakness. For consistency it might be, a lack of flexibility, no wavering, or the inability to change. The impact on my team; they do not bring forward change possibilities. I am inadvertently suppressing innovation.

“Don’t bring that to him. He will not change his mind. Once he sets something in his mind, it is a done deal, don’t waste your time.”

Whoa, that sounds harsh. However, that opposite pole could be hurting my effectiveness.

Next one, think about the big picture.

“Oh yeah, he has the big picture. Always knows what’s going on at the highest level. However; sometimes we need him to understand the details, and we can’t get him there. He does not represent us well when he does not know the nuances.”

Collaboration. “He brings us together to ensure we all have input. Then we spend a lot of time, building consensus. If we do not have consensus we don’t move forward. He is indecisive. I wish he would just say, okay, I heard from everyone and got your points. This how we are moving forward.”

Last one, developing people. “Oh yeah, he develops people. He spends a lot of time getting to know individuals’ strengths and weaknesses. He knows where they want to go and works to develop their skills. Often, his focus on development is at the expense of production results. He cannot develop everyone. Sometimes he needs to cut some people loose so we can meet our goals as a team.”

I gave you examples of how my strengths could be derailers. What are your strengths or the strengths of a subordinate you are leading, and how could they be weaknesses?

Put this to work for you and the members of your team. First assess yourself then assist members of your team to assess themselves. Start by identifying the top 3-5 strengths and acknowledge how they make you a solid leader. Then take each one and assess how that strength may be derailing success or diminishing effective leadership.

What most leaders find is; the strengths for a high percentage of the time, make them effective. It is only a small percentage of time that our strengths cause problems. Mostly when overused or being unaware we are leaning too heavily on our strengths. This is often when one is under stress or complacent.

This exercise raises our self-awareness on what is needed to make us effective.

There are times we need to move away from our strengths to be a stronger leader.

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Entrepreneurship (3): The Single Most Important Action to Start Your Business

What single action will move your business forward?

Writing a business plan.

In the research phase you were researching yourself. How difficult was it for you to determine your drivers, set a vision of what you are looking for, and nail down the business you are after. I get a wide spectrum; some folks struggle others nail it down quickly. Time to take action to put your business in place.

Action

There is still a lot of research in this phase however, it is very active, faces external to you, and it centers on developing your business plan.

What comes to mind when I say business plan? I am hoping commitment. When you put things in writing you are making a commitment, even if it is only to yourself.

The plan is your educated prediction of the future. It communicates your plan and is a tool to measure progress.  Are you ahead, behind, or on track? What is causing the deviation and how do you need to adjust.

Your business plan also communicates to partners, lenders and investors your justification for their support. It articulates why you are in business, what you are doing, who you are doing it with, and how you plan on executing it. If you require funding or the partnership of anyone, they are going to ask for you to share your plan. That’s the reasoning now let’s put it together.

Parts of the Plan

How big and detailed does this need to be? It depends. You can google one page business plan and find templates for single page plans. You can also google templates for business plans for the type of business you are creating. Generally, for a small business you will find plans are between 10-15 pages of written material with an appendix showing your financial projections. Everything you write has the purpose of supporting your financial projections.

If you want a good place to start, go to SBA.gov and find one of their templates. You are going to start with “Why” and follow with “What”, “Who” and “How”.

You did all the work up front on why, so that part is easy. Next, what problems are you solving and for who. This is where the external and very active research takes place. At this point you are creating a marketing plan which is embedded in the business plan.

Who are you solving the problem for? Who is your ideal client? Having a coach as a partner in this phase is extremely valuable. Challenging assumptions, pushing for validated data, and providing alternative perspectives helps you move from a framework of a business to a solid structure. This leads to the most important part, your financial numbers.

What numbers do you need?

You need the startup costs and revenue projections for years 1-3. “How am I ever going to do that?” You ask.

Through active research, websites, meetings, networking, getting estimates. “Where should I start” is your next question.

Here is a “back of the envelope” exercise I do with my clients. It is simple yet very enlightening. First, I ask them how much money they want to take home after taxes from their business? Second, what do you think you need to gross to make that happen?

I often get a quizzical look. Next questions: What do you think your expenses will be each year? Followed by, what is the self-employment tax you will pay?

In 10 minutes, they have a rough set of numbers and are usually surprised. The question then becomes. “How much of your product or service do you need to sell at what price to generate that income?

That generates action to research markets, revenue, expenses, and building their financial model. All reflected on spreadsheets. As the spreadsheets become more detailed and accurate so does the written portion of the business plan.

This begins to reflect reality. Which generates some soul searching; will you be able to execute your original vision? Options are considered such as; a pivot, raising money, scaling down, or growing more slowly. Other considerations are for the entrepreneurs to keep their day job rather than leaping completely into the business.

How valuable would it be to have an objective sounding board to help you work through these challenges? A coach’s only agenda is assist you in coming to the right decision. One that is aligned with your values.

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What is Your Return on Investment for Time Off?

How does taking time off increase your productivity?  Is it 10%, 20%, or more? Give yourself an estimate.

When you gave that estimate, what was the amount of time off you needed to get that percentage? Was it a couple of hours, half a day, a long weekend, a week, or multiple weeks?

Now assess, how well your routines allow you to take that amount of time off to increase your productivity.

How close are you to hitting the mark?

If you are like many other leaders, it is difficult to take time off.

Now put on your leadership hat and think about your team; as a whole and the individuals within the team. How much time off does your team need to increase its productivity? How about the individuals on the team?

How do you ensure the team and the individuals are meeting that need?

This is one of those dilemma’s we create for ourselves.  We know time off is good for us and the team, yet we don’t take it. Kind of like sleep. What would be the return on investment of time off if your team regularly took it?

In the words of Stephen Covey; “Are you too busy chopping with your ax to sharpen it?”.

Want to do something about it? Consider two areas; culture and innovation.

 

Culture

What is the culture within your organization around taking time off. How are colleagues treated when they regularly take time off?

“Can you believe she is taking another Friday and Monday off? She is never here.”

Have you heard conversations such as the one below in your organization?

Manager #1: “I have 25 vacation days on the books, I don’t have the time to take vacation.”

Manger #2: “I am in a similar situation; I have 32 days.”

“I am looking for everyone to take at least 10 days of vacation over the next six months. You are all more productive after a break.”

Add comments from your organization that accurately reflect its culture about time off. What do those comments tell you?

If you want a particular culture, be deliberate and take specific actions to establish the culture. Set the expectations and enforce them.

If you want taking time off to accepted; reward and recognize those who do. Pay attention to the amount of time off individuals are taking and make a point of noticing those who are not taking the time. How can you make taking time off more acceptable.

 

Innovation

Here are some of the ways companies are innovating to get their employees to take time off.

  • Unlimited vacation days – with some date restrictions and only general guidance to act in the best interest of the company.
  • Floating holidays – workers can select when they want to take certain holidays to be able to string several days together.
  • Made up holidays – organizations make up a holiday to generate several days off a year. Such as the last “Final Fridays”. The last Friday of each quarter.
  • Organization shutdown – the business closes for specific dates forcing everyone to take the same days. Thanksgiving week or a summer shutdown.
  • Vacation stipend – corporations pay a stipend to individuals taking two continuous weeks of leave. Think of being paid $2000 extra to go on vacation.
  • Paid leave prior to your first day – new hires are paid to take the first two weeks off come to work ready to go.
  • Paid sabbaticals – popular in academia, some corporations are allowing professionals to do the same. All to refresh and make workers more productive.

Productivity and efficiency may be exactly what your organization needs to get to the next level. A key step to getting there may be taking a break.

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What Must End for You to Make Progress?

“I took on this new role in my organization but, I still have people coming to me for answers from my previous position. Because of the time they take up, I feel like I am pulling a trailer up a hill and cannot make any progress in my new role.”

Ever have this feeling?

To progress – we must have endings.

Not stopping or ending something may be all that is holding us back from achieving our long pursued goal.

Dr. Henry St. Cloud in his book Necessary Endings has explored endings in depth. I want to look at it from the perspective of you as a professional and a leader and make it very practical.

When I think about endings, I consider three elements; what needs to end, when it needs to end, and how it needs to end.

What Needs to End?
Consider a transition you are currently working through or expect in the near future. Typically transitions to consider are: promotions, career progression/transitions, starting a business, moving to or from the government and private sector, or retirement.

Name the transition you want to assess.

If this is an ongoing transition, how is it going on a scale of 1 to 10. If it is not a 10 what factors are holding you back.

Be rigorous and brutally honest with yourself. What specific actions are you taking that are holding you back? In the example above, you are still providing guidance, time, and support to your previous team.

The time and energy spent assisting your previous team, may be the impediment slowing your transition? If so the relationship with your previous organization needs to end.

Another example: You started a business and entered into low paying contracts with your first round of clients. Now, two years later you spend significant time and effort negotiating contract renewals with this group. Why, because they expect lower pricing. The time, effort, for the profit margin is frustrating you.

What has to end here? Probably the long negotiations.

A thought on identifying what needs to end.

You may be overlooking clear signals on what needs to end and misinterpreting them. Think about events that “trigger” you. Triggers are signals. Consider the above events and what triggers you might be receiving.

Every time you see an email or phone call from a member of your previous team, what is your reaction?

How about when someone talks about the contracts with the early clients? How do you feel? If you are triggered, it is time to think about what the triggers are telling you.

When Does it Need to End?
Next consideration is “when” the ending takes place. For the first example, when should the assistance to your previous organization have ended? The day you left, 7 days, 30 days, or should it be ongoing?

What about those early clients. When should the special pricing end?

How Should You End the Relationship?
Last consideration is “how” the ending takes place. How you end a behavior or relationship can have significant impacts, positively or negatively.

Abruptly ending the relationship with your previous organization or loyal early adopters can damage your reputation. The key consideration I have seen make endings work is; transparency. Being tactful and direct with what is ending, when it is ending, and how.

Transparency is not always easy. However, it will make the transition easier as you will have released a drag on your performance.

Here are potential considerations of the above examples to ensure an ending takes place well.

On leaving the team. Letting them know you will meet with the replacement lead twice in the next month for an hour to answer any questions. After that the new lead is on her own.

It is clear the help is ending, when it is ending (over a month’s time) and how it will end (with a couple of one-on-one meetings to assist with loose ends).

With your early adopters. Sending a letter three months prior to contract renewal with the details of the price increases on their upcoming contract. The contract thanks them for their support and loyalty as well as the reasoning for the increases.

What is ending, when it is ending, and how are all included in this method.

What are some behaviors, relationships, or practices you need to stop to move forward?

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Case Study: Should I resign?

Bob has been in this career field for 30 years with 8 years in this particular organization. For the last 6 months he is not feeling good about the leadership of his organization. He operates as a satellite of 5 people away from the home office.

Here are his most pressing concerns:

  • Lack of support from the main office. Sporadic communication and conflicting direction.
  • Failure to support his desire to move an employee off his team who is not a good fit
  • Forcing the team to operate with less equipment by denying requests for upgrades
  • Feeling burned out
  • Feels the leadership is not being fully truthful with him
  • Leadership reacting to complaints from clients without asking for clarification from him

These concerns are weighing heavily on him and he is seriously considering leaving. The focus of his coaching is to gain clarity on what to do next.

We started with two overarching questions:

  1. What is the impact you are making or want to continue to make in this position?
    1. How are the current conditions affecting those goals?
  2. What would you regret if you left now?

These questions have gotten him off to a good start in defining what is important to him in this position and his career.

He wanted to dig deeper and sought out guidance from a moral perspective. We did find some guidance from J. Patrick Dobel in his book Public Integrity. There, Dobel explores the moral criteria for resigning from public office, which we found useful in this instance.

Dobel develops the construct of three domains to consider for resignation. In each domain individuals must be able to:

  1. Maintain their personal moral capacities and commitments
  2. Live up to the obligations of the office
  3. Remain effective

If an individual is compromised in any one area, trust is damaged and provides strong moral reasoning for resigning. If compromised in two areas there is a moral obligation to resign.

Interestingly, working through this has provided significant personal insight along with insight into the organization. No final decision at this time however, he has implemented new behaviors, strategies, and boundaries as triggers for action.

Think of a situation where you were considering resigning. How easy was it for you to rationalize your reasoning to stay, even though one or more of the above criteria was met?

A reasonable exercise may be to deliberately define the threshold in each category. For example.

What does it mean to be unable to maintain your moral capacity or commitments?

A violation in that domain may be your inability to push back against leadership decisions in areas you are morally obligated to act. Maybe you have been cut out of meetings or committees because the leadership knows you will disagree on moral grounds. Or, your organization is taking on a new line of business you disagree with morally.

What about a violation of living up to the obligation of the office?

Suppose your role is to provide unbiased expert input. If opportunities to provide input have been eliminated or your leadership ignores the data because of their agenda, that is probably a violation.

Lastly, remaining effective.

This may manifest itself by being “sidelined” by new policies, procedures, or restructuring that renders you ineffective in your role. Your job is to do X and a new arrangement has created so much distance from the decision making you have little to no influence.

You are ineffective.

Have you ever experienced or witnessed a situation such at this? If so, you probably found it frustrating, stressful, and at times consuming your mental capacity.

When we witness a peer in this situation, we usually see a tendency to rationalize not resigning. They think they can do more from the inside. As an observer, we will think this is a no-brainer – it’s time to go.

These are not easy dilemmas to analyze when you are immersed in a situation. It is difficult to work through your thresholds for each domain, based on your specifics. Individuals need time, space, and an object sounding board to assist.

What are your thoughts on criteria or questions to guide someone through a resignation decision?

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On Memorial Day Remember the Those We Lost & Support The Families Left Behind

I was having a conversation years ago on Memorial Day with a colleague who lost her brother during the Vietnam War. She expressed the intense sadness and loss she has every year at family events. She said she tries to picture what he would look like and what his life may have been. He was killed when he was in his early 20’s.

When they take family photos, she tries to picture him in those photos, thinking that he should be part of this. She feels the tragedy of his shortened life with each missed celebration. The birthdays, graduations, holidays, and simple family gatherings.

When she shared this with me, he had died over 40 years ago. I was taken aback by how much his death still had an impact on her. It made me think about my family events and what if I or another family member was not in the photos. How different would life have been for all of us?

On Memorial Day, it is important to remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country.

It is also important to remember and support the families who have lost loved ones. They pay a price daily. What would you want if you were in their shoes carrying the invisible and unique burden of loss?

Have a Happy & Safe Memorial Day Weekend!

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Leadership Journey Lesson 6 – How Did the Era Affect Your Leadership?

What would you call the leadership style or theory you are experiencing in your current work environment?

When I ask that question, I get all kinds of answers.  Mostly, are a description of their current work experience and interaction with their supervisor.

“We are a remote team with a leader responsible for our daily production.”

“I am an independent contributor to a design team. As long as I deliver my requirements on time, I have very little interaction.”

“I work in a totally hierarchical organization with my Program Manager responsible for production. He is continually on us to meet our metrics. Fortunately, we have incentives when we are ahead of schedule or exceed our production and quality standards.”

The trends of the times have an impact on many parts of our lives; fashion, politics, and even leadership

Think about your leadership journey and the leadership trends you experienced the last two years. My guess is it was different than previously experienced.  Did you work remotely, hybrid, or in person but distanced. Some of us were ignored by colleagues and bosses while others suffered through micromanagement to include software monitoring.

Look at the leadership trends that influenced how you led and were led. Start from your current position and go back to your first.

Here is look at leadership practices that were in vogue over the past 40-50 years. Compare your experience to the times.

The 2000’s

Most recently leadership theories and practices center around complexity, inclusivity, and servant leadership.

Have you heard about the requirement for leaders to adapt our VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous)? Leaders are mandated to be inclusive and transparent in how they lead. Include followers in the leadership process while serving those they lead. Servant leaders work for those they lead, providing the environment and resources for success.

Shared, Collaborative, and Collective Leadership are the practices from the early 2000’s. These attempted to reduce hierarchy by making organizations flatter and more collaborative. The person best suited for leading a particular task was designated the leader, rather than always having the same team lead. 

Agile program management was popularized. It allowed teams to prototype, move quickly, and be flexible. Teams became able to adapt to stakeholders and market conditions. 

The 1990’s

In the early 1990’s there was transactional leadership followed by transformational as coined by James McGregor Burns. Transactional leadership focused on leaders incentivizing work through transactions. Pay for performance, benefits, bonuses, over time. There was little focus on the individual.

Transformational leadership, was concerned more with the relationships between leaders and workers. Quality interactions between the leader and workers provided inspiration, positive results, and fulfillment. Both the leader and those being led benefited from the relationship and cared for each other.

Prior to the 1990’s

There were the contingent and situational leadership models. Leaders were taught to adapt the style to the context of their environment.

Behavioral leadership focused on actions and skills of the leaders, which was preceded by trait theory and the Great Man theory.

The Great Man theory; leaders are born not made. Trait theory: identify, and develop the traits and characteristics of effective leaders.

Leadership has evolved extensively from being about the leader to being about those being led. Though there was a time frame where a particular leadership theory or style dominated, all survived to some degree.

If you have worked with folks who were in the workforce prior to 1990, you have experienced leaders imbued with the Great Man Theory. They were born leaders, have all the answers and lead from the top.

Some fields of work have been difficult to change. Think a traditional versus modern style manufacturing facility. Traditional may feel very top down with one person in charge. Modern; collaborative, inclusive, flexible, and operates with input from the folks on the line.

Your Analysis

How has the leadership style you experienced over time affected you? What leadership style was popular in your first position and what is in place now?

Have you progressed or are you clinging to practices that worked earlier in your career?

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Your Leadership Journey Lesson 3 – How Your Leaders’ Impacted Your Leadership

Who was the leader you most enjoyed working with? Who was the leader you least enjoyed working with?

What was the impact of their leadership on how you lead today? That is the focus of lesson 3.

Review

You built a timeline starting with your first professional position through your current position and identified each stop on your journey.

At each spot you have identified the following elements of your leadership:

  • Your Role
  • How you got to that position
  • How you led
  • How effective you were

You followed that short analysis with insights about yourself at each stop.  Then you ventured to write your definition of leadership at the beginning of your journey and what it is now.

In lesson 2 you went deeper by adding more detail on your leadership. You assessed four elements of your leadership:

  • Transactional – How much of your leadership was as a transactional leader?
  • Transformational – How much of your leadership was transformational?
  • Power/Authority – Where did you get your power and authority from in each position?
  • Relationships – What were your key relationships at each stop?

Today’s Activity

Up to this point this has been about you. Now let’s examine how your leaders impacted you. Who was your leader at each stop? You may have had several leaders depending on your longevity at each position.

For each leader assess them on the following:

  • Transactional – What portion of their leadership was transactional?
  • Transformational – What portion of their leadership was transformational?
  • Power/Authority – Where did they get their power and authority?
  • Relationships – What were their key relationships?

You may want to document an example for each item to solidify the behavior you observed. This is all from your perspective. On Power/Authority think about how much came from those being led.

Reflection and Insights

What insights can you draw from the leaders who led you?

Some considerations. How did you feel when you were around that leader? Did they invoke certain emotions such as inspiration or stress? Maybe you were not around them very much or avoided them. Those insights may mean something.

What about values? How aligned were your values with those of your leaders? How did you know the leaders’ values?

Are you still in touch with them or how would a chance meeting with them feel?

Last insight. Reflecting on your leadership today, how did the leader impact your current leadership today?

You may want to have a single page for each stop on your journey.

 

 

 

 

 

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