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.