Blog#3 – Everyday Leadership

 

Drew Dudley, a leadership educator, who gave me an awesome speech with a title, “Everyday Leadership.”

Generally, when people talk about leadership, it should be something beyond our thought. However, Drew Dudley redefines the concept of leadership in this video. He intends that leadership is not complicated and demanding action. As he said, leadership can be obtained by doing minor things. Leadership should be easy to obtain, for example, an unexpected behaviors lead change of others unexpectedly, and this can be called as the everyday leadership.

During the speech, Drew Dudley bring up a new concept named “lollipop moment,” it is a moment that can change one’s life, and what he trying to tell us is every people could have great leadership by small things. Looking back, I also used to be influenced by someone around me. I used to hate  chemistry class so much in high school, and i always received low-grade on the exam deservedly. But one day, my chemistry teacher asked me to stay after school to give me the extra tutoring  instead giving me up, this moment did impress me a lot and did change my attitude toward study thoroughly. I consider that moment was my “lollipop moment.” A good leader should not only acting a role to control people or to give people directions, but also could being someone who influence the followers, even the whole team.

As this video said, influence in every day is enormous power. This video gave me a different thought about leadership. Leadership is not required to be a big thing, if you can affect people around you and make his/her life changed, you already have great leadership!

Blog#2 – Who Moved My Cheese?

 

One of the course I am taking this semester, OLS 386, require me to read a famous story book, named “Who Moved My Cheese?” Although it is a book that existed in many people’s childhood memory, but I did not have chance to read this story book until recently.

After I finished reading this book, and I know this book, wrote by Spencer Johnson, M.D. is trying to show teens about how people react when they facing unexpected changes. In the story, the mice and the little people are stand for people. The cheese is something that people want to have and willing to chase it for his/her whole life. And the maze symbolizes the path people look in to find what they are seeking. Those two mice are representing the “Innovator” and “Producer” in our real life. In the meanwhile, those little people are playing “Stabilizer” and “Unifier.”

By reading this story book, I can relate it to the leadership we learning about in the CSR309 class. A team may face changes everyday, sometime it is easy to solve, but sometime it is not. No ready for change might cause some big problem which might smash a team. In this case, leader should being the one to warn the crew to prepare for any unforeseen change, in order to avoid the unprepared situation, which is extremely dangerous to the team.

However, all of these I have mentioned above reminding me the book we read for the CSR309, which named “It’s your ship.”  In chapter eight, captain Abrashoff emphasized a theory of “Go beyond standard procedure” by shared his experience on USS England. It was a valuable experience for captain Abrashoff, since he had learned the importance of precondition.

In summary, there is something I have learned after read the book. A good leader should realized that change happens all the time, the leader need to be prepared before it comes to protect the crew and make sure the crew be ready to change quickly.

Blog#1 – 15 Things A Successful Leaders May Do Every Day

 

CSR309 is the most special class I have ever take, and is a course about leadership. During the class, professor Feinberg helped me to realized that leadership is something can be learned  and need to fight for by ourselves. Developing and Improving leadership is a long way to go, so I will keep learning about it in different ways, from different places and note it down. This blog is a good place for me to share something i have learned about leadership from video, article or other blogs.

In my blog#1, I want to talk about something interesting I have learned from Llopis, Glenn, by reading his post named “The Most Successful Leaders Do 15 Things Automatically, Every Day.”

The following are the 15 things he list in his article:

1. Make Others Feel Safe to Speak-Up

2. Make Decisions

3. Communicate Expectations

4. Challenge People to Think

5. Be Accountable to Others

6. Lead by Example

7. Measure & Reward Performance

8. Provide Continuous Feedback

9. Properly Allocate and Deploy Talent

10. Ask Questions, Seek Counsel

11. Problem Solve; Avoid Procrastination

12. Positive Energy & Attitude

13. Be a Great Teacher

14. Invest in Relationships

15. Genuinely Enjoy Responsibilities

In this list, there are few points interested me. For the Point 1, make others feel safe to speak-up, i do think this is one of the most important thing a leader should do to their followers, encourage followers to voice their opinions, let them to share their perspectives and points of view, there will be no harm for the leader to listen more point of views, instead consistent with the leader’s own perspective. In the same way, for the Point 4, a successful leader should force their followers to think more and grow more. Provide the followers a comfortable environment is never a good decision to make.

In Point 6, lead by example, Llopis wrote a sentence that I strongly agreeing with, ” Leading by example sounds easy, but few leaders are consistent with this one. Successful leaders practice what they preach and are mindful of their action.” As the Vice-President in Hong Kong Student Association, I do know how important “lead by example” is. My attitude, behavior and work performance will directly affect my crews’. For example, when we working on an event, if the management layer too lazy to distributing the tasks and monitoring the progress, the crew will be unorganized, and our followers might become careless and sloppy. Thus, it is important to establish a positive atmosphere in an organization.

In general, being a leader in a student organization, these 15 points are the things I should review everyday, because all of these points are crucial elements to my leadership improvement journey.