Final Summary and Reflections

Ending where I began....

When I started this blog I introduced the assignment that was set before me.  To finish I come back to the parameters of the final deliverable for this assignment:

As the final blog or voice-thread entry, each student will share their overall reflections and outcomes of what they have learned while enacting their PLDP. This documentation should include not only your own reflections upon what you learned, but also links to the ideas presented in the course literature and your originally outlined PLDP. In addition, it should include a discussion of how you have applied this insight to your work as a scholar-practitioner. 

Overall Personal Reflections
There seems to be a common thread that much of what I reflected on was either in relation to my supervision of staff, or my response to the leadership of those above me.  I am struck overall that most of my personal development and growth has come in relation to others. 

As I look back on readings and discussion board posts for the course, I am really connecting with the ideas of followership, adaptive leadership and distributed leadership. The irony is that I did not choose this group for my group project because in a previous leadership theory class, we spent a great deal of time examining and trying to practice distributed leadership and it left me not particularly keen on the practicality of this model.

Followership and adaptive leadership both look at simultaneous interactions and processes of leaders and followers.  The growth edge for me as a supervisor has been, asking myself if I am I leading those I supervise in a way that invites them into followership, and how and in what ways am I constructing opportunities that elevate them into leadership while stepping back a follower.   Taking this further adaptive leadership resonated even more when thinking about the evolving relationship and the co-construction and co-existence together not valuing one more than the other.  Through my supervisory role this application has looked like me stepping in to assist my Associate Director with advising a particularly troubling student group.  By assuming a leadership role in that setting it took pressure off him, he could follow my lead in working with them and over the past 2 months has allowed him to focus on other parts of his role, flourishing as a leader and resource to students.  Additionally, with that same person, I have reached out more just in the past two weeks to work with him to bring is skills into a project that is brand new, so that he is co-constructing it with me (along with a small group of 6 others).  While I am technically the "leader" in that the end responsibility for implementation is tied to my position, bringing this group in (and him) allows for more buy in, and the ability to highlight the expertise across the department.

As I think about those in leadership above me and my personal development I am struck most by my combination post from weeks 4 & 5 and how I describe essentially living in a heat situation this year.  The "leadership above me" that I speak about directly is our VP (not my supervisor, but my supervisor's supervisor) and her Senior staff peers (including our President). As I reflect on my own heat situations I am acutely aware that our VP herself seems to be living in a rather constant state of heat situations:  results matter-she is consistently struggling to work with her team effectively to be able to communicate the results we have in a way that they match up with the results that are being asked of her. It is extremely uncomfortable-she is the only woman of color on the senior leadership team, reporting to a white man of extreme familial SES privilege.  The combination being led by someone living in a constant state of heat, and then dealing with complex and volatile situations and being in a fluctuating state of heat myself has added more stress than how others may experience the leadership.  We read about leadership and identity and authentic leadership and I am struck by my writing on the Week 8 discussion board post and how it aligns with this situation perfectly (excerpt from my post below)

In reflecting on the Sinclair (2011) chapter I think the multiplicity with which she approaches leadership as an identity is striking. There is a realness in the chapter that acknowledges the leaders personal need to develop and craft a leadership identity that aligns with what will engender the followers around them to follow.  This authenticity paradox, that they need to craft or create their authentic self as a leader and in the very creation of that leaders identity exemplifies inauthenticity.   Further on she mentions leaders committing themselves to a particular version of themselves as leader and then fighting against and rejecting anything or one that doesn't align with this self conceptualization.  She also terms this an "enslavement" to the process of creating a leadership identity. 

All of this points to a very different and real human struggle associated with becoming a leader; the personal and internal developmental struggles that are associated with the self-discovery and enlightenment for the sake of being able to lead others. 

I ask myself how can anyone who is living in state of heat be capable of creating this authentic leadership identity.  As I reflect personally for me, I have seen through this blog that when in heat moments or experiences those are the times it is the hardest to focus on the creation of an identity because I default to getting through-no matter how intentional I am being with my personal development. I think through this reflection itself I have also cultivated a bit of empathy for our VP in particular, which appeared in week one of the course as an emerging leadership competency from the Northeastern President, but not one that made my list of top 5 competencies.

Finally, coming back to my objective much of my PLDP was centered on the concept of vertical leadership development and the idea that type indicators are things of the past as the push it toward development competencies.  Ironically, 1/3 of my plan (1 of the 3 action bullets) was related to the old stand by-an inventory.  Even though the nature of these assessments were based on self and observer feedback related to competency development it was a comfort zone that seemed concrete for me.  This was the one bullet as well that I was actually not able to accomplish for a variety of reasons chronicled along the way.  Overall there was a bit of learning there that growth and development can be personally structured and assessed without a scale, box, or series of letters telling me where I am.  This was exemplified by my discussions with late stage mentors, which was a tactic specific to vertical leadership development.  While the feedback did not put me into a "type" it did allow me to see my place in the journey and how to re-frame my perspectives by those that had a more developed leadership path. A component of that PLDP was also conscious engagement which CCL described as elevated sense making or meditation and mindfulness to re-pattern your mind.  While I chose to follow along the vertical leadership suggestion of meditation & nutrition to consciously engage, I think more than that practice the act of taking time to reflect became conscious engagement for me.  Having a dedicated reason with the accountability to look at these things and having to connect them to coursework really has enhanced my personal awareness and understanding of my on-going development. I suspect that was the entire point of this assignment and exercise, so I will leave this final reflection with that.  Time for reflection and dedication to personal meaning making and growth is often the first thing to get dropped when busy-there is so much deliverable work to be done and deadlines to meet and tasks to be accomplished that I know I don't focus on myself, consistently or meaningfully.  And the concept behind vertical leadership development is taking the responsibility for this development away from organizations or supervisors and placing it with the individual.  I am reminded that in order to help others you need to help yourself first; one of the best ways to help myself is by allowing myself the time and space to focus on my development.

Sinclair, A. (2011).  Being leaders: Identities and identity work in leadership. In A. Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson, & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.).  SAGE Handbook of Leadership (508-518).  Los Angeles, CA:  SAGE Publications.

Week 10 Final Week of Reflection

Just to revisit the overall purpose of this blogging experience...

Objective
To create a plan that will focus primarily on growth in the competency related to "development of self," incorporating the leadership development objectives of enhancing conscious engagement and enhancing my capabilities related to leading in complexity.

Conscious Engagement

• Incorporating time daily for at least one of the following: meditation, yoga stretching, or focused reflection on nutrition.  

Leading in Complexity

• Identify a late stage mentor both inside and outside of my current organization and ask each of them to talk through 1-2 scenarios based on current organizational situations I am experiencing from their advanced perspectives.
• Explore the viability of taking Susanne Cook-Greuter's Leadership Maturity Assessment (LMA) or the Leadership Agility 360 created by Bill Joiner

The blogging itself fulfills a portion of the overall final assignment

At the end of Weeks #3-10 of the course, students will develop either a blog entry or voice-thread summary documenting the action they took that week as well as their own reflections related to their leadership growth.  

This week marks the final week of reflection before the final summary/reflection.  It is also the reflection that comes over the week of the Thanksgiving holiday.  This lead me to do two things, each one related to one of the leadership development objectives I originally set out to develop.

Conscious Engagement

• I chose to fully take a break from my professional responsibilities over the holiday.  I did not look at my work email from Wednesday at Noon until Monday at 7:30am.  Our offices were "closed," I was not any one of the staff members on call and I had my family visiting me for the holiday.  
• Each morning I chose to wake up early with my dogs and after going out for a walk with them, I sat quietly in my living room before others got up and meditated.  I actually brought back my app Calm and did the 7 Days of Calm (well the first 5 upon writing this blog) basics to focus on this attentive practice (language from last weeks blog and Leadership Agility). 

Leading in Complexity

• In the spirit of Thanksgiving I reached out to a late stage mentor that I worked with at my previous institution (we are now both at very different institutions) to thank her for all her leadership and support and asked her for her advice on my current leadership challenge. Similar to my week 6 post (with a late stage mentor from within my organization) I posed to her in an email the overall challenge I am experiencing:

Scenario:  Currently we are deep in dealing with a bias incident related to racial/cultural appropriation and a Halloween party hosted by a very privileged group of students (athletic team) as a accelerant or tipping point for student of color to voice and speak out about their dissatisfaction with the college and their experience.  Our President is discounting the work that those of us on campus did for a week post incident while he and all of the senior staff were in CA fundraising.  He (our Provost and VP of Student Life) are now meeting with student groups to hear their perspectives and put together details and timeline so he can address the situation.  All ideas regarding communication from staff charged with meeting to do these things (bias incident response team, Dean of Students, advisors to SGA, etc) that have heard the students needs and wants were discarded and he has sent and email that basically now undercuts all that his staff has been telling him about what can, could, should be done and points the blame back at everyone except the actual students that hosted the party. 

Question:  From your past experiences, how do you navigate a situation when you feel like those in leadership above and around you are acting from a place of fear rather than a place of integrity.  How would you suggest I continue to lead when I fundamentally don't believe those hierarchical leaders are thinking about anything but themselves being portrayed as saviors, pontiffs, and the only ones that can get things right?

She responded and we set up a time to chat on the phone, something we haven't done in about a year and a half.  That in and of itself really reflected for me some characteristic of an agile leader in the most developed levels: catalyst-leaders actively facilitate others development, co-creator-being that leadership is really a service to others, and synergist-leadership benefits others while being a vehicle for their personal transformation.  I have not worked for her in 3 years yet she took her leadership role in our relationship to a level that those I currently work for (of worked for for 2 years prior) have been unable to access or demonstrate. 

Below are some of the parts of our conversation that stuck with me.

• Don't own things that are not fully yours to own.  Basically, don't take on the weight of how others are feeling to empathize at the sake of your personally ability to be successful. 
• This will pass...from my experience these things always fade away.  It may not seem like it now, but this will not encompass the entirety of your work (the specific bias incident).
• It is never easy but find that person (it might be your supervisor, but probably isn't someone that reports to you) that you can engage in the tough stuff with.  Ask them to seriously process out what you could have done, suggested, or been more assertive in any of the situations over the week that could have looked different or more aligned with what the President and other leaders are suggesting. Basically look for tough feedback when all others are blaming others or looking for a way out. 
• You take the small piece that you can control/lead/oversee and you do it the best you know how. Show others that in the midst of the poor demonstrations of leadership there are better ways to do it that can be positive and uplifting and what leadership should be.  

Personally reflecting on this conversation I am struck by some of the same things that I heard from my late stage mentor in Week 6.  Both suggested that in these moments of frustration look for critical or constructive feedback.  It occurs to me that in difficult times often people, myself included want to commiserate about their lack of involvement, or that lack or recognition or praise they are receiving.  But what I am hearing is that those that take this as a time to seek out feedback to reflect on what they could have done or could do in the future is more beneficial.  Turn both situations, the incident specific and the leadership overall into learning moments to make yourself better.  I also find myself reflecting on the idea of followership and how it focuses on leadership as co-created process between followers and leaders.  I have the ability to as a follower here either engage in the co-creation of a process that I don't believe in or flip the script and take on the leader role in the groups that I can and who others that might not want to follow the "hierarchical leadership" that they can follow and co-create small pockets of effective leadership alongside and with me.  

Week 9

Going further from last week...

Leading in Complexity

• Explore the viability of taking Susanne Cook-Greuter's Leadership Maturity Assessment (LMA) or the Leadership Agility 360 created by Bill Joiner

In the Vertical Leadership articles by The Center for Creative Leadership they referenced the above assessments as ways to learn more about individuals vertical leadership.  As I noted last week I chose to look more seriously into the work by Joiner.  

• Unfortunately, after a second outreach no one has responded to my inquiry about participating in the assessments on Changewise that are interconnected with Leadership Agility 360.  I am surprised by this and have had this similar situation occur with both inventories I have looked into online related to utilizing assessments to increase my personal awareness around vertical leadership development/leadership from a competency mindset. 

Following up from last week I did continue reading the Leadership Agility book by Joiner & Joseph (full citation at the bottom) and have chosen to use this weeks blog to reflect on this work in relation to my self-concept related to leadership. Not to sound too much like a book review, but to give an overview of the essential concepts components I will outline key ideas below.

The book is divided into 3 Parts:

What is Leadership Agility 

1. Simply defined by Joiner and Joseph (2007) "the ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions" (pg. 6).
2. Viewed as a meta-comptency, or an essential supplement to a full range of leadership success factors. It enhances other leadership skills, mindsets and personal qualities needed to be an effective leader (and your ability to identify and enhance those). 

Five Levels of Leadership Agility

1. Data collected from 600+ managers give rise to 5 distinct levels of mastery of leadership agility; Expert, Achiever, Catalyst, Co-Creator, Synergist 
1. I provide the link to this book review on Org Hacking by Itamar to provide an accessible reference to the Table in the book that elaborates on these levels and the cheat sheet that Itamar created that is a more comprehensive summary of the levels with respect to other concepts from the book

Becoming a More Agile Leader

1. Self-assessment and identification of current levels of leadership agility are recommended-or identifying a "home base" that they return to repeatedly throughout the day (illustrating that different agility levels are accessed and utilized all the time, but that there is one area that is the default level of operation).
2. Set leadership development goals (develop in current level or into a new level)
3. Self-leadership in action-use everyday initiatives to experiment with new behavior
4. Reflective action; assess situation and results, diagnose, set intentions, take action.
5. Attentional practice-awareness of physical, mental, and emotional experiences in the present moment. NOTE:  This connects directly to my other competency area set for this project of conscious engagement.  Meditation is a key practice identified. 

Personal Leadership Development Connections

Reflection on the idea of agility as a meta-competency this fully resonates with me.  As I continue further in my time in my new role and at my new institution I am realizing that in an environment that is less supportive and somewhat toxic it is harder to engage with a meta-comptency like agility because in order to survive I am simply just trying to do my best to manage issues, concerns and expectations while balancing the ability to get the work of the job done.  I am relying on my inherent personal characteristics and my awareness of how to integrate skills and types other than my own into managing and executing.  This is very consistent with the EXPERT  level of agility which is where about 45% of leaders live.  

As I continue to read the chart (see link above from book review, pgs. 8-9 in the book) I know that in a non-toxic, supportive, encouraging, personnel focused institution I can easily operate from a home base of ACHIEVER, which is 35% of leaders.  At times I can very much float into CATALYST, when given the time, space and trust to create and encourage the creative to create in others. The issue I am currently experiencing is that the lack of trust in staffs ability to execute (on the part of our toxic senior leadership) and the inability to assume that everyone is doing their very best work to the benefit of the student developmental experience (academic, social, personal) cripples the ability for me to want to aspire into these level and to stretch myself to continue practicing these competencies.  One there is no assurance of safety or reward/benefit that can communicated by my supervisor that this type of action would be acceptable. The level of micromanagement and usurping of duties that is going on by our department head it striking and the best thing that can be done is to keep your head down and do your work, not calling any attention to yourself.

Personal Reflection
While typically reading these types of books would excite me and give me energy to improve my practices reading this book and thinking about this post actually saddens me.  I am experiencing a good bit of regret that I took on this significant move and change in institution and role at a place that stifles me in an area that I am so passionate about, leadership development.  While I am enjoying getting some of the collaborative and supervision experiences with diverse departments that I am getting in order to basically check a next level box that says I have experience supervising multiple professionals that oversee diverse and multiple functional areas, I feel as though to get that required to move up professional development I am almost sacrificing my personal development.



Joiner, B., & Josephs, S. (2007). Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change. Jossey Bass.

https://orghacking.com/2015/02/23/book-review-leadership-agility/

Week 8

As a follow up to my Week 3 post...

Leading in Complexity

• Explore the viability of taking Susanne Cook-Greuter's Leadership Maturity Assessment (LMA) or the Leadership Agility 360 created by Bill Joiner

In this third week I quickly looked up the LMA and associated cost.  It is $1000 so a bit cost prohibitive, though I might be able to use it as professional development for work to get the cost offset. 

• While I was willing to consider the cost associated with this particular assessment because I though it would be much more personally interesting to me, I reached out twice via email to find out more about taking it and did not hear back.  I also decided that I did not feel like asking for my work professional development to cover this cost as appropriate.

In contrast Leadership Agility 360 appears at first look to be $250 per report, making it more cost effective.  I am going to reach out through email to inquire further in Week 4 about both tools.

• I did a bit more looking into the Changewise website at other potential assessments.  There are two less expensive that can be taken virtually without consultation or coaching associated with them.  Through reflection on topics and what would be given they did not seem to really align with the ides of leadership development competencies and developmental growth, but appeared at first glance to be more style associated, thus not aligned with vertical development. 
• I did choose to purchase a copy of the book Leadership Agility from Amazon and began reading it. 
• I also submitted a request to participate in a call to engage in the assessment itself.  The major concern that I have at this point is timing and engaging others to participate as we get close to the end of the semester.

Week 7

This week..I am not even sure where to begin with this week.  When working in higher education Halloween in the middle of the week is never good, it allow for parties on the weekend before and the weekend after and that means the opportunity for parties and costumes that culturally appropriate.  The fall out of such actions can overwhelm the remainder of a semester or year given the culture of the campus, and leave students, staff and faculty exhausted.

Well that about sums up this past week EXACTLY!

In the wake of that, and the continuation of parsing that out and addressing/responding to it this week I was reminded to focus on centering practices from the competency area aligned with conscious engagement.

Conscious Engagement

• Incorporating time daily for at least one of the following: meditation, yoga stretching, or focused reflection on nutrition.  

This week I wanted to default to watching Netflix with my dogs...and while that did occur, part of my centering was to integrate an attention to my breath and meal prepping as avenues to deal with the high stress and long hours. In respect to this assignment this was an intentional way to allow for a pause while still fulfilling the on-going focus on personal leadership development.

Instead I took time to go grocery shopping after work on Monday and then prep 3 healthy meals to rotate for dinners and lunches throughout the week.  This focus on nutrition, and the routine and structure it provided allowed me to literally feed my body so that it wasn't run down by sugar, carbs and caffeine. 

I also took advantage of the "breathe" function on my Apple Watch.  I started by just doing the minute of guided breathing before getting out of my car and then back in my car.  I found I had a few minutes between meetings and I could have checked email, Facebook, or others but instead did the minute of breathing.  I felt so much more centered after that I immediately did a second.  Later in the week, I found myself intentionally doing this 2 minutes of focused breathing before going into a long meeting that could have been very draining, dealing with students that appropriated and then helping other students craft a response to upset peers. It allowed me to start and maintain a focus on the students much longer than I feel like I might have without it. 

While the tasks were not huge this week they allowed me to focus on the personal side of the development plan so that when I needed to more visibly enact the leader side of my work I was a bit more centered.  I think a bit of learning that also occurred this week was that it is often difficult to remember to put yourself and your development or rejuvenation foremost when you are dealing with those in your community that are in such a high need.