Friday, January 13, 2017

A641.1.3.RB - What is Great Leadership


A641.1.3.RB - What is Great Leadership

View "What is Great Leadership" by Dr. Richard Boyatzis. Dr. Boyatzis explains the impact most effective leaders can have on you. Stop the video when he asks you to complete his exercise. Complete the exercise and then watch the rest of the video. Finally, write up your results as a reflection blog. 

In the video, Dr. Boyatzis asked us to stop and think about a leader for whom or with whom you worked – one that brought out the best in you – and that you would gladly work with again. He also asked us to think about a leader that you try to avoid, left you wishing for more, and would help your organization more by working for a competitor. (ha!) The two people who came to mind were both part of the same organization. One was a team lead for the industrial engineering team I was part of and the other was a senior leader for the Lean group.

Rick Jones is one of the best people I know outside of my immediate family. I started with the organization as a contractor with a 90-day contract. When I was getting toward the end of my first 90 days, I had been assigned to a project that would extend past the expiration date on my badge. I asked him if maybe I should step back since I may not be here to see the project through and he said, in the most encouraging way possible, “Don’t work like you have an expiration date. Just work.” He was right. I stopped worrying about the next 90-days and the next. In fact, that 90-day contract got renewed every 90-days for two and a half years until I could graduate with my Bachelor’s degree and get hired on permanently.

Throughout this entire time, I was never treated like a contractor or temp. I was always, from day one, treated like one of the team and I know this was attributed to Rick’s and our manager’s genuine leadership. When I think of why Rick was such a resonant leader, the things I wrote down were: Optimistic, encouraging, always wanting to improve, inspired growth and worked on team development, compassion, shared his struggles and successes, respectful, collaborative, passionate about the work he did, saw value in teaching people, reliable, challenged and believed in me. Rick was and still is my unofficial mentor and coach. He not only didn’t resist change and doing the right thing, he instigated and incited change! It was an honor to get to work with him for almost five years and I try to emulate those qualities in him that I admire to my new team.

When I left Skin & Spar in WA, it wasn’t because I wanted to. I would have stayed there and gleaned every last bit from Rick and my teammates that I could have. Unfortunately, I also felt that the organization was starting to stagnate and I needed to be somewhere I could pave my own way and expand my career. The opportunity to try for a lateral transfer to the 787 came at the perfect time and I went for it. At the going away party they had for me, Rick stood up and read me a list of “Rick-isms” that completely brought me to tears. I printed them out and to this day carry them with me everywhere on my clipboard at work. These Rick-isms included many gems like, “Remember, the first one through the wall is always the bloodiest.” And, “Never let anyone know how much you know or how much you don’t know.” His favorite thing to tell me was, “It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” (He is a little mischievous too!) You know what great leadership is. (Boyatzis, 2017) I will always hope to work with someone like Rick again but more than that, I’m so honored to have even met him in the first place.

(I really should have started with this next person so that I could have ended this post on a positive with Rick.) Pamela Johnson is a senior manager and when I first met her I was excited that such a strong, empowered woman was this awesome manager who was an advocate for her team. Then I got to know her. The things I wrote when I thought about her were: cruel, judgmental, not trustworthy, would try to humiliate anyone who opposed her, would also humiliate and belittle people just to make herself seem better, bully, inconsiderate, insincere, no empathy or compassion, demanding, disrespectful, super hostile.

Whew…that was brutal. The things I experienced with this woman made me want to scream at her that she was destroying everything women had worked for in this industry. She made us seem petty and insipid. I was in a meeting with her where she actually started talking about one of her employee’s disabilities and was mocking him and making fun of him. He was a crane operator who only had one arm. It was disgusting and she did it in a room of her peers and subordinates.

Personally, I was responsible for facilitating the “Tier III” senior management meetings every morning. It was all senior leaders and me. The meeting was supposed to be 30 minutes long and everyone was to get 2 minutes to talk their “help needs.” This meeting turned into 90 minutes of status reporting. So the director, Pam’s boss, asked me to use a timer to help folks understand what two minutes felt like when they were talking and to help redirect topic when needed. After a couple weeks, I asked him if I could add in an actual alarm that would go off at 2 minutes and he said it was a good idea. (People were just not getting my non-verbal cues.) One day we were in the middle of a really good discussion. Unfortunately, it was cutting into other manager’s time. So, I waited for a good pause to politely interrupt to let them know that it had been 7 minutes and did we want to take a vote as to whether or not to continue here or continue off-line. So, at the suitable moment, I spoke up. All I got out was, “Hey everyone, it’s been seven minutes and before we…” Pam stood up, slammed her palms on the table, looked at me and yelled, “This is NOT your meeting.” She continued to yell at me like I was a petulant, idiot child in front of my manager, all of the senior managers, her boss and everyone within earshot of the conference room. I started to say something when I looked at my boss and he gave me the “Time Out” hand signal and I just stopped. The 30 minute meeting lasted two hours that day. I will never forget how little and insignificant I felt that day. I hope that she does go and work for Airbus someday…Boeing would only benefit from that. There are other egregious examples but I think you get the picture.

People that we’re exposed to day to day aren’t very good at [leadership], and yet who do we try to emulate to try to fit in or do a good job? (Boyatzis,2017) This was such a valid point in Dr. Boyatzis’ video…we see the bad leadership, the bad behaviors, and yet we are under the impression that this is what we have to be in order to be leaders in an organization. These behaviors get rewarded and bad leadership is perpetuated. I had never really thought about it on that level before. I knew that managers have the ability to influence the culture of their teams negatively and positively by perpetuating certain behaviors but thinking of it from the bottom to top…I mean…of course! I know this post is extremely long already but this idea made me think of how liberating it was when as an adult with my own house, for the first time I realized that I didn’t have to do everything exactly as my Mom had done. I love and respect my Mom, and I learned behaviors from her. Most of these were good behaviors, but I can tell you…if I do happen to leave dishes in the sink overnight, the world will not, in fact, stop turning! Ha! It’s that same feeling with the idea that what we see as examples of leadership in our organizations can be both good and bad…we need to be critical thinkers, be brave, and explore what leadership looks like coming from us. I think Pam thought she had to be a bully to be in the same league with the “Good ‘ol Boy” network. That idea isn’t unheard of in corporate America. Rick wasn’t a bully. He knew what being a leader meant for him and his organization. No one wants a sad copy…they want the integrity of the real thing.



References:

Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant Leadership. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School.



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