PSEL 2018

Leadership Discussion Blog

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Ethical Leadership

Ethical leadership is important especially due to the fact that leaders are often in positions of power. This puts leaders in a place to influence and affect the lives of many people. To me ethical leadership is what you do when no one is looking. It is about doing the right thing at all times.

It’s important to remember though that doing the right thing means different things to different people. Different people have different values. What may please one person may offend another. The trick is then, I think, to thoroughly understand your organization, it’s mission, it’s clientele, and it’s values. These could change from organization to organization but these are the values a leader of said organization should model.

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Persuasion And Negotiation Skills

Persuasion and Negotiation skills are critical for a leader. In fact without a higher than average skill set here I would say it’s impossible to even be a leader.

Persuasion is critical in getting the people you need on board with your vision of your organization. This should not be construed as manipulation where there is some level of deceit. It should be done honestly. If no one believes in your vision and you cannot inspire others to want to work together you simply will be unsuccessful as a leader.

Negotiation is the sister concept that many times begins if persuasion is unsuccessful. The art of negotiation is in sitting down with the other party and coming to an agreement on how to move forward. You must approach negotiation with mutual respect. Approaching these situations with the sole goal of winning sometimes creates bitterness in the other party and future communications begin to break down before they are even had.

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Leading Change

In the past few years I’ve had a significant evolution in thoughts regarding leading change in an institution. This change in thought actually occurred to me based on a problem actually. In the early years of my career I typically focused on building my technical skills and not so much my soft skills. I tended to think that leadership skills were more innate and certain people naturally had those skills. And I assumed that I did not necessarily have them. I was always a quiet calculating and reactive person. As I moved up the chain in my Information Technology career I began working on more complex systems that had a much wider impact on the day to day University work flow. And of course with more responsibility comes more scrutiny to your work, planning, and processes. It was around this time that I noticed many of my colleagues were demonstrating that they were very adept at avoiding big decisions and responsibility. No one wants to be on record making a decision because if a project fails they do not want to be associated with it. Many of them flat out wont make any decisions at all but are quick to point fingers when projects go astray. This has been a very frustrating experience but very eye opening as well. Over time my frustration boiled over during several projects and I felt compelled to sort of step outside my normally reserved personality, my comfort zone, and make decisions where others hesitated. In meetings that were rudderless I began to work on agendas and list action items from the meeting and verbally attached specific action items to specific people. Over time I found that many other people who more apt to stay in the background were coming to me more with questions of their own. More and more people began to invite me to more and more meetings and solicit me for my opinion. I started leading tech talks and received a very positive response to these. It was then that I began to realize that leadership can be learned through our experiences. I felt myself transition more from a background tech person to the foreground. What I discovered is that a big part of leading is to step up. Step and own it, whatever “it” is. Get in there. Don’t just sit back and wait for someone else to do it or be afraid something is going to go wrong and then you will have a bad reputation. These thoughts can keep you in the background forever. Be the one who is unafraid to put yourself out there, take ownership, and be prepared to back up your ideas when you need to, or back off your ideas if need be. Always be ready to adapt, pivot, and be seen. When you do this people will look to you for answers. And when people look to you for answers you have the opportunity to influence the situation and those people in order to orient the direction of the institutional towards meeting its goals. You have to step up to the challenge before you get anyone’s attention, and you have to have peoples attention before you can lead any change.

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Leadership Philosophy Statement Version 1

My leadership philosophy is centered around people. A good leader changes people’s lives and organizations. A good leader is someone who inspires others by encouraging them to think big and by modeling the behavior they would like to see in others. My leadership philosophy is about having impact, getting results, having influence and encouraging compassions amongst those you lead. It favor servant style leadership and leading with integrity. You must always recognize your people, be accountable, build in processes for change in an organization, include people, and encourage collaboration. People around this type of leader will do these things automatically if they have respect for the leader.

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Leadership Quote 2

“The X-Factor Of Great Leadership Is Not Personality, It’s Humility”

-Jim Collins

#QOTD

If you think you are better than your subordinates than you are not going to be an effective leader. Turn your focus to those that work for you and think about them more and yourself less.

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Navigating Institutional Change

I recently took part in a job shadowing experience and was able to make some basic observations. It seems that everywhere I look I see organizations going through major changes and in some cases turbulence. At PSU in particular I see reorganizations taking place, new groups created, others folded, greater push toward centralization, social changes, health care changes, staff changes, budget changes and even environmental changes. What I have noticed is this change brings with it a large amount of anxiety. People like stability. In the midst of an evolving work environment my observation is some associate this change with chaos. It is this very moment where good, pointed, compassionate, and tireless leaders are important. With the wrong leadership in place when changes like these occur, especially in the area of IT, good people will often leave or disengage. Someone has to be able see the light at the end of the tunnel. Someone has to have a clear vision of what the organization is working towards, what it might look like when we get there, be able to articulate that to the workforce, and have enough respect capital built up to drive through the storm. Miss this point and leave authoritative or disengaged managers at the helm during rough patches and the organization can fracture, lose it’s top talent, and fail at its mission. Good leadership is paramount to survival and adaptation. Not only must he or she be able to pull this off themselves, they must guide and convince everyone else to do the same thing.

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Leadership Quote

Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.

Robin S. Sharma
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/robin_s_sharma_628747

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Success and/or Failure is Contagious

In the last three years IT has had fluctuating leadership and stalled initiatives. I have watched and listened as my coworkers have been drawn to cynicism, low morale, and withdrawn from our mission. In recognizing this I have realized that either positivity or negativity are contagious. One person’s complaint or negative comment begets another. With this in mind I began what I think of as thought seeding. I have focused my thought process on noticing and being alert to the negativity and always being ready to lead with a positive note. I always try to redirect the conversation to things that are good about our workplace, people who are doing good things, successes that we have had, and the potential that we have. This has drastically improved my immediate team’s outlook. I realized from this experience the potential I have to influence.

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My Thoughts on Leadership

I have made some observations regarding leadership. To be a leader in any area puts a person in a position of responsibility. The first topic that comes to mind is personal power vs positional power. Good leaders are those that lead by personal power as opposed to positional power. Good leaders are those who can motivate, inspire, delegate, and influence from respect and their character. These leaders are adaptable and can effect positive change no matter where they are that is based on cooperation and respect. Positional power on the other hand can be based on fear, manipulation, and risks. Often time position power with the wrong leader leads to the team being cynical, uncooperative, and resistant to change. Heavy handedness sponsors resistance. Leadership is most effective when the leader has the ability to gain a consensus. Of the two styles personal leadership is the most adaptable and successful. Personal leadership requires open ended professional development to be both adaptable and effective. The qualities and skill set in this type of leader is what I hope to improve upon in the PSEL program

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