A633.1.2.RB -
Leadership Gap
Chapter 1 of the
Obolensky text begins with a reflective exercise. Create a reflection blog that
responds to the questions asked in this exercise.
Obolensky Reflection
Questions:
·
Has your
own attitude to leaders changed in your life, and if so how?
o
Yes, my attitude has changed over time…but then
again, parts of it hasn’t. I was raised to not question authority, my parents
being the first authority figures. We grew up in a loving and warm household
that had expectations and repercussions for breaking the rules. When I was in
high school, I joined the Air Force Junior ROTC program and really thrived in
that environment…maybe it was the familiarity of structure? I was also in band
so that demanded discipline as well. As I’ve gotten older and had many, many
bosses…I see that managers, of all levels…even CEOs…are just people like me.
They have doubts, and questions…they have to answer to someone, and they just
want to do a good job. As I was told at my first job…(loosely quoting – it was
over 20 years ago) “We do our best every day. If we wait until some general
manager or VP shows up to clean or fix things, then we are doing a disservice
to our customers. We should be doing the right thing all the time, not just
when we might get a corporate visit.” So
to me, I can respect a person’s position and understand the hierarchy of an organization,
but I question decisions, the CEO isn't intimidating me because I should be doing my best work regardless. However, I need to know the context, the goal, and the vision.
Otherwise, I’m really not motivated to just do work for the sake of doing work.
·
If we
take as a starting point the attitude to those in authority/leaders held by
your grandparents, and then look at those attitudes held by your parents, and then
by you, and then by the younger generation, is there a changing trend? If so,
what is it?
o
Changing trend? Absolutely. It is inevitable.
o
A couple classes ago, I wrote about what I saw
as the generational differences I noticed in my organization. There is
definitely a changing trend and it’s actually not bad. I think that it could go
too far to one side or the other (Theory X
Vs. The Buddy System) but if we find the right combination of
methodology and collaboration of the generations, I do think something magical
can occur. The older generations need to put down their scorn for the youth and
the youth need to get over themselves and accept that the older generation has
more experience in life which is extremely
valuable.
o
But this is a battle of the ages (literally and
figuratively) because for all time the old have shaken their heads at the folly
of youth (forgetting that they too once were the reckless ones) and the youth
have shucked off the warnings of older people. I can remember writing in my
journal as a teenager that my Mom just couldn’t understand…she would never
understand…! (Ah…teenage angst.) But the reality is that she was once a teenage
girl who also thought that her Mother couldn’t possibly understand her
feelings. Every generation is the same…once we reach a point where we have
things mostly figured out…we are old and can do very little about it. There is
no way I would have believed that when I was 15 or 16 though. No way. And so it
goes. I think it is just in our DNA.
o
Our grandparents came from a generation who had
a more rigid set of socially acceptable behaviors and consequences if those
behaviors weren’t adhered to. Our parents rebelled against these social norms
and had the “Summer of Love” to prove how different they were from their
parents. My generation, Generation X, came up being considered the slackers…the
grunge scene being synonymous with our anarchist belief systems and values. Now
we have the Millennials – who essentially were raised by us Gen Xers. We taught
them that kindness matters, to be curious, to treat everyone with respect…and
now that they are adults, or mostly adults, they are trying to live these
values of equality and compassion only to be criticized for it by the very
people who perpetuated these ideas.
·
Why do
you think that this has occurred?
o
Each generation sees authority differently
because each generation has been through different experiences. Our grandparents
had the Great Depression, both World Wars, which created heroic leadership in
our countries…Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc….they were men who saved our
country and brought about programs like The New Deal so people could work and
feed their families, saw the Berlin Wall go up, brought an end to the Korean
War, and helped us enter the space age. They were men to look up to for this
generation. Our parent’s generation grew up in the Cold War, bomb drills in
school and worried about “The Bomb” annihilating the entire world. Then they
saw the first man step foot on the moon and then thousands of their brothers
and sisters killed in Vietnam. They lost John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby
Kennedy as well as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and then John Lennon – people whose
music had changed the world. They saw a President impeached and lost faith in
those in charge. These are the people who raised who were to become Generation
X…they taught us to challenge those in charge, that war was evil, and that money
meant power. My generation, the slackers, were also born in the Cold War but it
had mellowed out some…we saw the Berlin Wall destroyed, the first Desert Storm,
then we entered what now seems like a naïve season of security (the 1990s) that
was then completely obliterated on 9/11/2001. Everything changed. Everything.
There are kids learning about 9/11 who were not alive then. To them, it’s just
another date to learn…like my generation did with Dec. 7th. This is
getting very long but basically, what I’m saying is that each generation is
shaped by the world and what is going on while they are younger…their values and
belief systems are challenged during times of struggle and times of peace.
Today’s youth are inundated with information ALL THE TIME. They are constantly
plugged in and I have no idea what that will do to their views on leadership.
What kind of leaders will they be? What kind of leaders will we allow them to
be? Only time will tell.
·
Additionally,
while we live in a world with more information about leadership and leadership
practices 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?
o
We have an apparent gap in the quality of our
leaders because we cannot come to a consensus about what we want as a corporate
entity. We are constantly changing and adapting…competing to be the best which
leaves little time to develop leaders, develop strategies that make sense, or
even talk about what leadership means within our individual organizations. We
can easily point out the shortcomings but have no time, in our race for fame
and glory, to set it right. We are on a speeding train, heading for a mountain
side, worried about the cost of fuel and if our competitor is gaining on us in
the market.
o
I’m not saying that being competitive is a bad
thing but we have to be intelligent about it and as the world is changing, so
must corporate strategies. I honestly think that even Henry Ford would freak
out if he saw that his production system had barely changed in the last 100
years. He would have expected better.
References:
Obolensky, N. (2015). Complex Adaptive Leadership. Farnham,
Surrey, England: Gower Publishing Limited.
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