Chapter 10 - Strengthen Others
Chapter 10, Strengthen Others, of Kouzes & Posner is the second chapter in the Enable Others to Act section of the book. The premise of the chapter was that after fostering collaboration (see chapter 9) a leader needs to ‘Strengthen Others’. This is broken down into two essentials:
• Enhance self-determination
• Develop competence and confidence
The first essential deals with handing over more responsibility to your constituents because “you become more powerful when you give you own power away.� (251) I took two main points away from this essential. The first is that people strive to achieve when they feel they are in control of their own situation and if there is accountability and a feeling of personal responsibility everyone benefits. The second point was as a leader you are much better off with a group constituents that are engaged and feeling a sense of personal responsibility because it frees up your time to focus on helping the organization move forward. You can start planning the next steps. This makes me question the concept of managers versus leaders, because if done right wouldn’t being a leader fully encompass the role of a manager?
The second essential is an obvious portion of strengthening others. You need to help them develop by first giving them the training they need to gain competencies and then the confidence to act on those competencies. I felt K&P didn’t thoroughly explain how exactly you were to help foster self-confidence, but they did say showing faith in your constituents by letting them lead would help them gain self-confidence.
I enjoyed this chapter in K&P because it reminded of something I had read previously, an article on servant leadership. Servant leadership was a term coined by Robert Greenleaf. You can read more here: http://www.greenleaf.org/whatissl/index.html. I saw someone else posted a verse from Lao Tzu and The Tao Te Ching, and I saw another one on Wikipedia when I was rereading about servant leadership (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership):
FORTY-NINE The greatest leader forgets herself And attends to the development of others. Good leaders support excellent workers. Great leaders support the bottom ten percent. Great leaders know that The diamond in the rough Is always found “in the rough.�
I remember someone in class was doing an MLS or Innovation Studies project on the credibility of Wikipedia. Again the quote was on the site but I was unable to verify, perhaps because it’s a translation. Nevertheless, the message remains the same.
I was thinking while reading this chapter about leaders I’ve had and how strengthening others is not just getting out of their way. I’ve had bad managers; leaders that K&P would describe as powerless managers with serious control issues. I actually find those managers to be easy to deal with, you get a new job. The leaders that present the most problems for me are not the powerless managers or the really great leaders, but the managers that are neither. It’s these situations where I feel trapped because it seems like there is support but it takes a long time to figure out there isn’t.
Another thing caught my eye while I was reading this chapter: “…exemplary leaders strengthen others. They enable others to take ownership of and responsibility for their groups success… by listening to their ideas and acting upon them….� (250) Currently, I’m involved with a group in my organization to create a way for everyone in the organization to submit ideas. My concern has been the ‘acting upon them’ part. Probably beyond the scope of this course, but I’d love to learn more about developing innovation pipelines.
A criticism of K&P that has been raised before is that much of the book seems to be targeted directly at the manager who would have the options and opportunities to implement these changes. This would be a great chapter to have a piece on getting the leaders you work under to strengthen others. What would be the most effective way to accomplish that?
Comments
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Posted by: Robert | March 10, 2008 08:43 PM
This reading resonated with me, too. However, the line between knowing and being able to apply this approach is the hard part [in life in general, as well as growing up]. What is presented in a resume that demonstrates a personality aligned with steward leadership? We should find a term a less hierarchically negative than servant-leadership...
Sometimes those with the integrity and sensitivity to caretake for the entire group [not just the majority or elite] are less inclined to speak their mind. It's easy to find a group that holds your same priorities and feel that discussing the issue with them is enough; but how to broach the topic to others that don't consider this a priority, or even a problem?
So two questions:
How can employers identify potential stewards for their organization? This could be one of the reasons that networking, or less-formal communications are so important.
How do we build skills necessary to be a steward leader? Is this method mainly learned by example? Are there skill sets that leadership courses could include that build knowledge + experience in these areas?
Posted by: Sarah Wolbert | March 11, 2008 12:48 PM