July 2011 Archives

Last Week:

"It is important as a leader to self-reflect his or her strengths and weakness to lead a community. If a leader is able to lead others in a satisfactory, commitment way, many of the community will listen and make changes. However, a leader's message should concentrate on delivering the positive meaning and not the opposite."

This Week:
"Leaders who develop agendas are more likely to focus a lot better to become successful. Leaders who are willing to work hand by hand tend to lead others better. Most importantly, a leader should be patient when it comes down to making decisions."

Analysis:
My definition for this week is different from last week's definition since it focuses on being organized as a leader. From reading "Metamorphosis: Sustaining leadership change" it discussed about in order to become a great leader, you have to be able to build new opportunity from personal experiences and new learning style to become a successful leader (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). If a leader is always using the same skills, then they will never grow as a leader since taking part, as a leader will face many different challenges as time passed by.

Sources:

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). "Metamorphosis: Sustaining leadership change." Primal Leadership: Learning to lead with emotional intelligence (pp. 139 - 168). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.:

Last Week:
"Being in a choking or panic mood, it is important to step back and look at the big picture "balcony perspective" just so that you can be aware of the outcome of your action. (Gladwell, 2000) As a leader, knowing your own perspective will lack improvements and adjustment as to viewing things from many different perceptions."

This Week:
"It is important as a leader to self-reflect his or her strengths and weakness to lead a community. If a leader is able to lead others in a satisfactory, commitment way, many of the community will listen and make changes. However, a leader's message should concentrate on delivering the positive meaning and not the opposite."

Analysis:
My definition for this week is different from last week's definition since it only focuses on the positive outcome of a leader's action. From reading "The Sweet Spot for Achievement", Goleman discuss about the upside-down "U" graph where stress, optimal cognitive efficiency and anxiety plays a huge role as a leader. If a leader was to fall near stress and anxiety, there's a chance where he/she may not do well. I believe this example also relate to the other readings from Gladwell "The Art of Failure: Why some people choke and others panic". Along with the other reading "A social change model of leadership development" Astin pointed out that self-reflection is important when leading a group because without self-reflection, there wouldn't be self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge, a leader would find it hard to knowledge others and know his/her true identity. Overall, I believe that leaders should be aware of the outcomes when making choices to a community and especially for them.

Sources:
Goleman, D. (2006). "The Sweet Spot for Achievement." Social Intelligence: The new science of human relationships (pp. 267 - 284). New York: Bantam Books.

Astin, H. S., & Astin, A. W. (1996). A social change model of leadership development: Guidebook (version III) (pp. 4 - 27). Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute.d

Last Week:
Every one has the ability to put them in a position where they are capable of feeling one or the other situation before jumping to conclusion. To become an important leader, you must have a leadership vision to guide you to what ever you are trying to accomplish. Leader can encounter many situation of "Right versus Right" and to be in that position, it's a huge impact to make a difficult decision that could affect your leadership and your team.

This Week:
Being in a chocking or panic mood, it is important to step back and look at the big picture "balcony perspective" just so that you can be aware of the outcome of your action. (Gladwell, 2000) As a leader, knowing your own perspective will lack improvements and adjustment as to viewing things from many different perceptions.

Analysis:
My new definition of leadership could connect to the last week definition since the both explained the important of having a vision. From the helpful reading from Heifetz, Linskty and also Gladwell, I learned that leader could encounter some of the difficult decisions and how there are ways to overcome those difficulties. Like In "The Art of Failure: Why some people choke and others panic", Gladwell highlighted at the last page that many people who failed either because of chocking and panicking (Gladwell, 2000) and from the other readings "Get on the balcony", (Heifetz and Linsky) it discussed about how having a balcony perspective could bring out the big picture of a difficult situation (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). Both readings have a strong connection because if a leader is in a situation of chocking and panicking, having a balcony perspective can be a useful guide to overcome that situation. I believe that a leader to use this sort of tool could encounter a positive outcome when dealing with a difficult situation.

Gladwell, M. (2000). "The Art of Failure: Why some people choke and others panic." The New Yorker, 84 - 92. Retrieved from http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/choking.pdf

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). "Get on the balcony." Leadership on the Line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading (pp. 51 - 74). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Last Week
From experiences, I learned that leadership should be well prepared into leading many followers since their quality of leading others are held responsible to the outcomes. Leader's duty is to focus improving its leadership skills first and then improve their team to become successful. According to D.T. Kyle, he believes that Presence is the quality to resulting positional and personal power to merging individuals. (Kyle, p. 173)

This Week:
Every one has the ability to put them in a position where they are capable of feeling one or the other's situation before jumping to conclusion. To become an important leader, you must have a leadership vision to guide you to what ever you are trying to accomplish. Leader can encounter many situation of "Right versus Right" and to be in that position, it's a huge impact to make a difficult decision that could affect your leadership and your team.

Analysis:
Both of my quote from last and this week are quite similar since last week basically talks about how leadership should be well prepared into leading their follower and this week talks about how being a leader should have a vision that can guide them to become a successful leader. The only differences that I could see from the two would be the wording that I used such as "prepared" and "vision". From the Lee & King reading, I value their discussion a lot since I was able to connect to what they are trying to say like how having a personal vision should reflect based on your values, social life and past experiences. (Lee & King, 2001) Using those reflections would build a strong, efficient leadership vision to the organization and to you.

Lee, R. J., & King, S. N. (2001). "Ground your leadership vision in a personal vision." Discovering the Leader in You: A guide to realizing your personal leadership potential (pp. 31 - 54). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.