Leadership

PSYCH 485 blog

I’m a SERVANT for you

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I hope you heard BrittanySpears song “I’m a slave for you” when you read the title!

The Servant Leadership Perspective can be practiced adequately by any individual who is taught the servant style of leadership. There may be many altruistic components to this leadership style which require a person to be inclined toward giving to others, and helping others in a way that does not come naturally for some personality types. However, there are many studies that don’t ascribe personality traits to the leadership style. Additionally, antecedent conditions like culture, leader attributes, and the willingness of the follower impact a person’s ability to practice the leadership and contribute to the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness of the leadership approach. These are arguably variables that that can impact the execution and effectiveness of the leadership style, while not necessarily prohibiting the leader from conducting the leadership in the servant leadership perspective style.

Northouse cites Dennis & Bocarnea (2005) (Northouse, 2016) as ascribing “vision” and “agape love” as observed characteristics of servant leadership. Those attributes are not ones that can be taught, but you can teach people to love important aspects of their work and the people around them. As Northouse indicates, servant leaders often produce servant leaders among their employees and staff. I don’t believe that happens in a vacuum. I believe servant leadership is a culture that is created, and a tone that is set within an environment. It teaches servant-minded techniques to the members of the organization. Northouse cited a need for more empirical research on the characteristics of servant leadership, and the inconsistencies between the prescribed results among loads of existing research is a good reason to believe that is true.

According to Northouse, “the prescribed behaviors of servant leadership are not esoteric; they are easily understood and generally applicable to a variety of leadership situations…. Training in servant leadership typically involves self-assessment exercises, educational sessions, and goal setting (Northouse, 2016, p 235-236). This makes servant leadership accessible, and able to be learned. Southwest Airlines provides a good example of successful servant leadership training. In an interview posted on You Tube by KnowledgeAtWharton, Southwest President Colleen Barrett spoke about the leadership approach of her airline. She mentioned a pyramid of importance where the value the organization places on employees is at the top. The airline is one of the leading examples given in chapter ten, where a company embodies servant leadership at all levels. Large corporations like Southwest prove that servant leadership can be taught. The culture at Southwest breeds more of itself. Such a strong motivation and interest in helping others is a trait that doesn’t need to be inherently part of a person’s personality to effect the success of servant leadership.  They have a very effective training program to support this since it would be difficult to hire based primarily on personality characteristics we can assume the company-wide leadership style is taught the employees. Many of the studies on servant leadership approach the leadership style “as a trait phenomenon (e.g., courage, humility) in some studies while other researchers regard it as a behavioral process (e.g., serving and developing others)” (Northouse, 2016, p 224). I believe it is the latter.

Besides personality characteristics, there are antecedent conditions that impact the effectiveness of servant leadership. One of those things is a follower’s desire to be led by a servant. In some cultures where there is high power distance in the region, there may not be an acceptance of shared leadership by follower (Northhouse, 2016). This may affect the effectiveness, but not the ability to learn the leadership style. Certainly, the accepted “seven behaviors of leaders that foster servant leadership: conceptualizing, emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating value for the community (Northouse, 20162, p 232) can be learned by almost anyone. Even conceptualizing, which Northouse describes as not clearly trait or behavior can be taught by emphasizing the need, and method in which a person can imagine an outcome. That lesson simply requires intelligence and cognition, not an inborn characteristic.

Spiritual leaders like Dave Ramsey, make a living by teaching others to serve, and in doing so, become leaders, and vice versa. Ramsey makes a living by empowering others to take control of important aspects of their lives. I once took a 2 month course of his that taught financial peace, and emphasized giving as an important measure of acquiring wealth. He often makes an example of Christian concepts related to serving (like paying tithes) that result in the success of the leader who is serving. Church leaders do the same each week during their sermons. In fact, Christianity is a religion based on God being the leader of this world, but one who emerged as a leader through first having been a servant who ultimately died, paying with his life for the sins of the people of this world to be forgiven. In an interview on servant leadership conducted by EntreLeadership Podcast, Ramsey describes leadership as a paradox where you must have power, but you shouldn’t use it. Instead of being weak as a servant leader, you are loving people and by serving them you are helping them “participate with the inevitable” (Ramsey, 2011).

There is a lot of evidence supporting servant leadership as a learned leadership style, and I firmly believe that it can be taught to any person who wants to learn it.

Barrett, C. (2008, July 9). Southwest Airlines’ Colleen Barrett on ‘Servant Leadership’ Retrieved October 25, 2014.

Northouse, Peter G. (Ed.). (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc,

02/2012. VitalBook file.

Ramsey, D. (2011, September 27). The EntreLeadership Podcast. Retrieved October 25, 2014.

An Authentic leader…now

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Our PSU WC commentary tells us that “there are some antecedent conditions necessary for authentic leadership to even start as a developmental process. Those are positive psychological capacities (confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience) and moral reasoning (PSU WC, L12, 2017, p 3). The antecedent conditions and psychological capacities are thought to catapult a leader into authenticity. While I did not search for a convincing case study, I am inclined to believe this is very much true based on my own personal experience.

When I started my small business 9 years ago I was well aware that I had no idea what I was doing nor what I was getting myself into. I just knew that I had a goal and a mission that needed my work to get accomplished. I set out to learn everything there was to know about the industry I was entering, and about the product I was going to sell. Learning everything there was to know about my industry was challenging, but not too much to tackle. What held me under its thumb was my imposter complex. Who was I to have an entire office when I had only ever sat at a cubicle and had not graduated college or ever managed a single person before in my life? Despite my inexperience and lack of confidence, I soldiered on and surprisingly found that everyone seemed to believe the big lie: that I was a leader. People came to me for advice, knowledge, and guidance. Some were even intimidated by me which I found inexplicable since my hands trembled while I presented and trained the large groups that would fill my conference room. I was intimidated by them because at any moment I was sure I would be discovered to be a complete phony.

Over the years I gained confidence, but I still felt I had to a “boss”. I had to fill the prescribed image of a leader even though I did not feel like one. It wasn’t until we had a big loss that almost made us close our doors that I realized I had become an actual leader. My antecedent condition was the severe loss in revenue that caused me to experience an entire year of severe financial hardship. During that time I focused on personal development, my education, absorbing the feedback I had gotten and taking corrective action to make constructive changes. In the process I developed the positive psychological capacities confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience which led me to feel like an authentic leader.

As an authentic leader I no longer felt like I had to fill a roll. On the contrary, I feel as though I am enough just as I am. I do not need to be a perfect leader, I can just be myself and that is enough. I feel comfortable being honest, vulnerable, and imperfect. For the first time I do not feel like I have to pretend to be something I am not, and the authentic manner in which I present myself has gotten me terrific results. I have much more comfortable and easy (even exciting) interactions with other leaders. I am treated as a credible and knowledgeable partner, and I am respected. All the things I wanted when I started out, I am now able to get. The caveat is they are not as important to me anymore. I need a lot less validation and I give a lot more praise.

You can’t fake being an authentic leader.

Overcoming Ethnocentism

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Leading effectively in multicultural groups and organizations requires knowledge and cultural sensitivities that often take a great deal of time and resources to acquire. There are, however, compensatory measures that a leader can use to overcome the cultural unawareness, ignorance, or ethnocentricity that can negatively impact a leader’s effectiveness and performance. Some of the measures a leader can take to better lead multicultural groups and organizations include becoming aware of their own ethnocentricity, and that of their subordinates and colleagues. Additionally, it would be helpful to gain some familiarity with the desired leadership behaviors of the culture clusters the individuals being led belong to, or originate from. These techniques help leaders reduce, if not eliminate, their prejudices toward their own culturally familiar leadership preferences.

The challenge is in becoming aware of one’s own ethnocentricity. When I watched The State University of New York’s SUNY Global Center video entitled, “How to Reduce Ethnocentricity” featuring Dr. Robert Rosen, CEO of Healthy Companies, and author of “Global Literacies” (Rosen, 2011), I was shocked to discover my own ethnocentric assumptions of how much my own beliefs and values would be represented around the world! In his talk, Dr. Rosen challenged students to imagine a village of 100 people that represented the entire population on the Earth. Then he asked the participants to ascribe a percentage of the population among various attributes ranging from their geographical location of origin to religion. I was astounded to witness myself assuming my views would be represented by a much larger percentage of the population than they were. This is a great exercise both male and female leaders could utilize to point out their own ethnocentricity. According to Northouse, “Ethnocentrism can be a major obstacle to effective leadership because it prevents people from fully understanding or respecting the viewpoints of others” (Northouse, 2012, p 385). The problem with unrecognized ethnocentricity is its accompanying unrecognized prejudice. Being a skilled leader requires the leader to be sensitive to the cultural tendencies of others, while still remaining true to their own cultural identity (Northouse, 2012).

The Center for Creative Leadership featured a podcast entitled “The Big Balancing Act.” which suggested some very helpful tools for balancing local and cultural needs (CCL, nd). They used a term called “glocal” which represented a combined decision-making strategy that thought of the local and global needs of organizations together when making policy decisions that would affect the company. Global needs were a foremost concern, right along with local needs, and so they would be thought of in an integrated manner with every cultural need in mind. Using strategies like these could help a leader navigate their company in a way that considers the entire workforce from a cultural perspective, and not just a local one.

CCL. (n.d.)The Big Balancing Act. Retrieved from http://www.ccl.org/leadership/podcast/BigBalancingAct.mp3

Northouse, P. G. (Ed.). (2012). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc, 02/2012. VitalBook file.

Rosen, D. (2011). How to reduce Ethnocentrism. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from http://vimeo.com/23688340

Captain Sully’s Hero Skills

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On February 8, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger sat with Katie Couric for an episode of 60 minutes (CBS, 2009). He was there to discuss his miraculous landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 onto the Hudson River in New York City, New York. The airplane had only been in flight for 90 seconds when Captain Sully noticed that birds were hitting the windscreen and being sucked into the engines (CBS, 2009). Within three and a half minutes, Captain Sully knew he had to make an emergency landing(CBS, 209). With the lives of 150 passengers and the plane’s crew members in his hands, Captain Sully made some quick decisions that led to a safe landing on NYC’s Hudson River.

In the short video above, Captain Sully explains his thought process while managing this life treating emergency. The CBS interview reveals the skills Captain Sully employed while making his landing. He conducted a rapid troubleshoot of all mechanical alternatives and quickly discovered none were available; he had to manually take control of the aircraft. Captain Sully then had to find a place to land the plane, figure out how to conduct multiple simultaneous operations, and keep himself calm enough to execute the procedures within seconds. His skill in manually flying and landing the plane, quick problem solving, and technical accuracy demonstrate Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al.’s (2000, as cited in Northouse, 2012) “skills model [which] contends that leadership outcomes are the direct result of a leader’s competencies in problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and knowledge.”

Captain Sully has the individual attributes of  general cognitive ability, or intelligence, as demonstrated in his rapid perceptual processing of the problem the birds were causing as they flew into the plane’s engine; reasoning skills that led him to troubleshoot for mechanical alternatives; and creative and divergent thinking capacities and memory skills that enabled him to quickly find a place to land and recall the protocol for such a landing (Northouse, 2012). General cognitive ability is a biological skill, but crystalized cognitive ability explains his acquired skills. His ability to problem solve so effectively is because he acquired intellectual ability over time (Northouse, 2012). His motivation to land the plane safely came from the third attribute in the model which requires a leader to “be willing to tackle complex organizational problems” (Northouse, 2012). Captain Sully appears to have the fourth attribute of personality that contributed to his successful landing. His management of the emergency demonstrates “openness, tolerance for ambiguity, and curiosity may affect a leader’s motivation to try to solve some organizational problem. Or, in conflict situations, personality traits such as confidence and adaptability may be beneficial to a leader’s performance” (Northouse, 2012).

The outcome of Captain Sully’s leadership skills was a safe landing. The skills model describes leadership outcomes such as effective problem solving and performance. It is clear that Captain Sully effectively resolved the problem and performed well. He managed to land the plane without injuring any of the passengers or crew members. In fact, in my research of this incident I was unable to find evidence that he caused any additional damage to the plane in his landing.

Captain Sully had 30 years of experience as a pilot. In his interview he said that he thinks all of his work and training up to the point of the flight were to prepare him for that moment (CBS, 2009). He didn’t doubt himself once; he was certain he could land the plane safely. When his body wanted to physiologically react to the situation, he focused on the task and kept calm. He said it was easy to keep calm (CBS, 2009). He was self confident and demonstrated a great deal of technical and conceptual knowledge during his interview. Northouse describes this high level of proficiency in our textbook, “Career experience helps leaders to improve their skills and knowledge over time. Leaders learn and develop higher levels of conceptual capacity if the kinds of problems they confront are progressively more complex and more long term as they ascend the organizational hierarchy (Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly, et al., 2000 as cited in Northouse, 2012).

The external environmental influence of the failed engine event “provide[d] a unique challenge” (Northouse, 2012). This is a fact that is part of the skills model but out of the leader’s control (Northouse, 2012). Instead of allowing the challenge to negatively impact him, he recruited his skills and valiantly brought the plane to a safe landing against all odds. Captain Sully is a hero and a great leader. His handling of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 is a great example of how leaders use the skills approach to solve problems and lead effectively.

CBS (2009, February 8). I was sure I could do it Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ5HnyEQg7M

Northouse, P. G. G. (2012). Leadership: Theory and practice, 6th Edtion (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Learning to Lead by Trait

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The idea that leaders are born, not made persists even though we have little evidence for this theory, because it is perpetuated by misperceptions, the media, and antiquated ideologies. It is also supported, in part, by 100 years of trait research that has resulted in a myriad of management training books and seminars. It is such a pervasive notion that it is taught at home by parents who might encourage their extroverted children to be leaders, while not encouraging their competent but otherwise introverted children.
Today we recognize that leadership traits are acquired rather than inherited. Northouse (pp. 23-26) identifies five general categories of such traits: (1) intelligence; (2) self-confidence; (3) determination; (4) integrity; and (5) sociability. Reading the couple chapters of our textbook has been an eye-opening experience for me. I came into this course believing that people were instinctively born a leader, but after chapter one I was able to view leadership as a skill that can be learned, an ability that can be developed, a behavior that can be demonstrated, a relationship that can be interactive, or a process where you drive everyone to a common goal (Northhouse, 2012, p.3-6). Leadership is a lot of things, all of which can all be enhanced by the “natural “ trait of charisma, but not reliant upon the one influential trait (Northhouse, 2012, p. 30).
I had no leadership experience before I naively thrust myself into entrepreneurship. I was relationship oriented by nature, task oriented as an employee, and as it turned out, I was a command and control, top down kind of leader. I didn’t adjust my style to my workforce, I just resented them for their inability to present the skill required to appreciate my leadership. Very few have come back to thank me, but my highest producer and best recruiter did thank me, that is, as she was turning down a new opportunity to work with me on a project a couple of years later. I was operating as an authoritarian who had little faith in my 50+ representatives’ desire to succeed.
My sobering collision with leadership left me unhappy with my leadership techniques, so I decided my charismatic husband would just be the “good cop” and I would be the “bad cop”. I have worked hard to change the leader I was in 2008. Still, for everything I did wrong, I did quite a few things right. I always maintained an open and honest communication with everyone we partnered with. From the top-down, I could be counted on to have integrity and clarity in my interactions, often putting my promises in writing so that I could be held accountable and so my people could be protected. I became more knowledgable in my product and was able to demonstrate the important traits of confidence and intelligence in my corporate and office communications (Northhouse, 2012, chapter 2). I was our designated trainer, website designer, policy write, script preparer, contract preparer, and operations manager. I often worked through the night without sleeping more than a couple of hours, and as a result, I became an incredibly hard-worker. I also adopted some of the sociability traits that I had observed in my husband. I threw pizza parties and celebrated our reps’ birthdays, I let them talk to me about their personal issues, and cared about their growth outside of my office. All of these changes made a difference in my experience as a leader, and my representative’s experience in my company.

Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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