“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.” (Ronald Reagan as cited in Hennessey, 2014)

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Introduction

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The best leaders I have had the privilege of working for are those that have empowered people to achieve the established goals of the organization. They empower by being confident,collaborative, and consistent in their leadership – allowing for learning from both the successes and failures of their teams. The most successful teams I have been a part of had one key component integrated within them – we had fun. This paper outlines my updated and revised leadership philosophy - developed and molded through decades of mentoring (formal and informal) by both good and bad leaders. Additionally, as I continue to develop and learn, there are aspirational leadership qualities I hope to develop and deploy in future leadership positions.

 

Current Leadership Philosophy

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Authentic leaders are guided by a “True North”” (Northouse, 2016). “They have a clear idea of who they are, where they are going, and what the right thing to do is. When tested in difficult situations, authentic leaders do not compromise their values, but rather use those situations to strengthen the values.” (Northouse, 2016). Who I am as a leader is defined by three characteristics. These are at the core of who I am and how I operate as a leader. I am ethical,honest, and operate with integrity in all I do. These characteristics have been engrained into my core beliefs by my upbringing with fantastic parents and siblings, and through the mentorship of past leaders. I have been in situations where leaders lacked ethics and integrity. I am keenly aware of the impact of these three characteristics on both leaders and followers and they are the foundation of who I am as a leader.

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The second set of characteristics that drive who I am as a leader are representative of who I am while at the “helm of the ship”. In the thick of everyday leadership, I am calm, even- tempered, confident, optimistic by nature, approachable, and passionate on leading the team to the objective. While I possess these “at the helm”, I also operate from a third set of characteristics. These are supportive, collaborative, and committed. My goal as a leader has always been to replace myself through mentoring and collaborating with my followers – identifying the next leaders in the progression and moving on to the next leadership assignment. My goal in the organization is to be remembered as the kind of leader followers want to become.

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A team that shares and celebrates success is a team that will forever live in the minds of its team members. As a leader, having fun along the journey is one of the most critical aspects to achieving success. Happy people are more successful. I was a member of a very successful SAP implementation team at a prior company. Our team leader knew how to celebrate success. He was from the south and has sayings most of the team members had never heard before. Over the two-year project – team members gathered his sayings (slang) and in our final celebration, a lake cruise on Coeur D’Alene lake, our team presented him with a wall hanging that presented his most often said slang terms to him. We had fun, and to this day, I am confident that if you asked each member of this team what stood out to them as to the driver of our success, they would say we had fun. As a leader, I do not want to forget the reasons why we are pulled together, but at the same time relish the opportunity that we all must have fun together, in the journey to accomplish our objective.

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Aspirational Leadership Philosophy

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Practice Five of The Leadership Challenge is “Encouraging the Heart” (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). A leadership growth area of for me is encouraging the heart of my followers. Through studying Kouzes & Posner (2017), I have become more aware of the impact of follower recognition and celebration of victories.

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Through the Gonzaga University Masters in Organizational Leadership program, I have become more keenly aware of the individual contributions to team successes. I have become passionate about understanding the stories that team members bring with them to the team. I think of it in terms of a timeline. Each team member has lived their life individually, experiencing their own victories, challenges, celebrations and tragedies. Those events make up the “story” of the person on each team. A team is a group of individuals whose timelines have merged to one consolidated point, and it is our position as leaders to take custody of that team in the completion of the assigned objectives. I use the term “custody” as we hold this team temporarily. Once the mission is accomplished, or naturally as individuals move on, the timelines become dispersed again only to meet another team’s consolidated opportunity. Understanding the stories of those on your team make you as a leader stronger, and allows you to take advantage of both the strengths and weaknesses of each person. Leveraging and motivating the individual to the aspirational goals of the team is what we do as leaders. I have lived through cases where a leader dispenses with individuals who do not agree lockstep with them. I believe to my core that this is bad leadership. It takes many different stories to unite into a team’s success.

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To positively impact my team, I have, in the past, initiated a means for my team to recognize each other for their individual efforts. Although budgetary constraints limited the capability for financial reward, I created a non-monetary reward – a token of appreciation award. This reward/trophy was given to an individual on the team who went “the extra mile” or exhibited behavior above and beyond the call of duty. It was a floating reward, given by the last recipient to the next – a person of their choosing. The recipient was responsible for identifying the next good deed and passing the reward on to the next. This reward was an experiment in encouraging the heart and was well received by the members of the team. Developing and improving my ability to encourage the heart is the aspirational aspect of my leadership philosophy.

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My second growth area is in innovation and creativity. I have learned that improving my ability to be innovative and creative will help me become a more effective leader. In our office, there is an unusually high number of team members that will be retiring within the near term period. Developing my ability to innovate and lead creatively will help address the gaps as these retirees depart. Innovation and creativity will allow me to develop tools to streamline and increase productivity among the team as change occurs. By leveraging my strengths and developing my growth areas, I can expect to positively enhance my leadership skills, always recognizing that I can and will be better each day.

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Conclusion

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"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." (Ronald Reagan as cited in Hennessey, 2014)

 

If I boiled down my leadership mission into one sentence it would be – “be the leader that enables his followers to be successful and become new leaders, enabling the next generation of leaders to do the same .”   Leadership never ends and I anticipate that my leadership style will continue to evolve as I become a more seasoned leader.  I will always be willing to learn from others and I will always strive to be better.

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References

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Hennessey, R. (2014). The 15 Ronald Reagan quotes every business leader must know. Entrepreneur, June 5, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234547

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Daskal, H. (2015). The 100 best leadership quotes of all time. Inc. Magazine, Retrieved from:https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/the-100-best-leadership-quotes-of-all-time.html

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Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications

Kouzes, J.M & Posner, B.Z. (2017). The leadership challenge. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.