A633.7.3.RB - Leader Follower Relationship

A633.7.3.RB - Leader Follower Relationship

Complete the exercise at the beginning of chapter 10 and use the scoring table at the end to assess your responses.

Reflect on what this assessment means in terms of you as a leader and your relationship to your followers.

The results of the exercise at the beginning of chapter 10 for me are as follows:

Strategy 1 (Tell) = 3

Strategy 2 (Sell) = 0

Strategy 3 (Involve) = 9

Strategy 4 (Devolve) = 4

The sum of my S1 and S3 score is higher that S2 and S4 which according to the text means that I may be taking a too direct an approach. The sum of my S2 and S3 is higher than my S1 and S4 and that could mean that I’m working too hard. Obolensky states that it also might be someone who finds letting go and being separated difficult. (Obolensky, 2015)

I guess I don’t understand why my high “tell” and “involve” score means that I could be taking a too direct approach and if so, why that is a bad thing. Since the “involve” score is the highest by far…that should be a fairly good thing. Since I have no true management/leadership responsibilities right now…not even training new people since I’m the newest person in my group, my frustration with not being allowed to be involved in decisions about my statement of work is probably what prompted my answers.   

This course has continued to change the way I’m thinking about being a leader and a follower. I thought that I was a fairly critical thinker, and I am, but not when it comes to systemic, complex leadership. It’s like digging deeper into a system that I thought was less dynamic and more stagnant than it is.

My future leadership goals include growing confident in my ability to tear down walls and ask the important questions for better or worse (hopefully better). In my experience, questions force people to think about what they are doing or telling others to do and that isn’t always easy to do. As we all know, a lot of direction given to subordinates is just parroting direction given to the managers when they were subordinates. We need to ask these questions so that we really understand what and why we are doing what we’re doing to make sure we are doing the right thing in the right way.

References:

Obolensky, N. (2015). Complex Adaptive Leadership. Farnham, Surrey, England: Gower Publishing Limited.