The simple question "Why"? relates to cause and "Greater Goal."
Think about a leader who has inspired you. Was the person inspiring as an individual, or did you respond more to the cause to which the person enlisted you?
This week's module was very eye-opening to me. There has always been a gut feeling about leaders vs. managers and how one does not always equal the other but I couldn't necessarily define why I felt that. The TED video with Simon Sinek was very enlightening; you could apply his theory of "Why" to almost anything as a litmus test of why there was or was not success in the results. He kept saying, "People don't buy what you do but why you do it." I think that is going to be my mantra! I think that Sinek's statement is why I felt the way I did about certain leaders/managers. I didn't buy what they did and didn't know why they did what they did so I certainly didn't care to help them succeed, I put in my time and collected my paycheck and felt nothing at all. In my current position, I'm expected to follow processes that don't make sense and are not based in any logic that will benefit our organization. When I listen to our director speak, all I want to hear is the "why" but all I hear is the what and frankly, I don't care...because I don't know where it's coming from. I think my entire team could get on board if the director lowered his ego enough to share with us why he thinks these processes will work, why it is important to him. We'd at least give it a good try! Sinek also talked about authenticity in another video and it seemed to make sense that the authentic leader is going to share the why of the product/plan/whatever because he or she is passionate about it and believes so completely in it. The why and authenticity go hand in hand.
In our text, Yukl discusses the differences between managers and leaders. Managers "seek to produce predictability and order, whereas leading seeks to produce organizational change." (Yukl, 2013) Predictability and order is expected and does help when running a department or team but doesn't have to be an independent thing from wanting organizational change. If a director explained the why, he is exposing the systemic thinking behind his goals. Suddenly, everyone is looking ahead and thinking about what role they will have in making that change a reality. If predictability and order is needed to accomplish this why, then teams will work for those things as well. The what and the why have become a singular idea and people are energized because they get it. They see the whole picture and that (mostly) eliminates the apathy and drudgery of ambiguity.
Has there been an individual who inspired me? Was it the person or the cause? Eleanor Roosevelt has been an inspiration to me because of her dedication to human rights. As a First Lady, she could have been an advocate for many things but she chose human rights and was an activist her whole life. She was involved with FDR's New Deal, women's rights, civil liberties, the Works Progress Administration to name a few. As a woman, she was aristocratic and had famous relatives, but her causes endeared her to the common people. Her why was the people and her what included civil rights and jobs. She had an integral approach that included a lifetime of servant leadership that made people trust her. Eleanor Roosevelt inspires me to not forget about compassion and in this era, I feel like that is so very important.
Resources:
http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&feature=share&list=PL42F8562DCD3CCEA8
Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
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