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/