SAIL

Okay, leadership is such an easy subject that you can’t even consider it a topic suitable for idle conversation. But if you still wanna know much I studied the concept of one person telling everyone else what to do with their lives, I can tell you this: I’ve rarely studied the subject at all. The “leader” that taught class all throughout 5th grade in elementary school? I knew she was being lead by the principal. And even then, the principal was under the control of the superintendent, who was being influenced by our parents.

Now having said that, it wasn’t until I got a little older that I realized CEOs, Army Generals, Class Presidents, Country Presidents, Criminal Bosses and the Town Sheriff/Rookie Head Cop/FBI  Officer flick heroes that fought said Evil Crime Bosses, were also being lead by other people. Okay, I guess I always knew they were being lead. I just didn’t wanna admit it. All I ever wanted was for a CEO, Army General, Class President, Country President, Criminal Boss or the Leader Hero that fought ’em to just appear and say “Hey.”

Unfortunately, reality is a hard road indeed. Yep, you gotta admit, the laws of leadership definitely puts a damper on things. I even stopped watching those TV shows about office leaders and CEOs telling everyone else what to do. CEOs, Army Generals, Class Presidents, ‘course they don’t lead every single person in the world. But a little part of me wishes they did. I guess I’ve grown up and realized that I can think about those things and still accept reality. But by the time I got out of High School, I pretty much outgrew that kind of stuff. And I guess I got used to the idea of living in an ordinary world without any true leaders that tell everyone else what to do. And just like that, I was in college. And that’s when I met her.

“Nice to meet everyone. I hope we all have a good year together.” I announced to the class standing up, it being my turn to introduce myself. Taking a seat back down, it was the person behind me’s turn to introduce herself.

“I’m from East Town High School.” What she said was pretty normal up to this point. So I didn’t even bother turning around to look.

“First off, I’m not interested in any normal human beings. But if any of you are Army Generals, CEOs, or Country Presidents, please come see me. That is all.”

Upon hearing that, I couldn’t help but turn around. There stood before me this amazingly beautiful girl.

And after that, leadership never became a problem for me anymore.

By: Megg Gawat

By Lori Lawson

Last week (or perhaps this week) one of my peers posted a blog entry entitled Learning or Getting Good Grades?. While the author may not have realized their connection to our weekly discussion, I immediately knew the importance of this post. During our last meeting, we discussed whether it is more important to have a group that works well together but does not necessarily achieve the original goal or a group that gets the job done. While I can’t remember the names for each side of this issue, I do know that it is a highly relevant topic for anyone in charge of a group (whether implicitly or explicitly), and is particularly important in the realm of community engagement.

If you recall the post mentioned above, you know that it is about learning versus getting good grades. While the author was able to get satisfactory grades based mostly off of short-term memory, their father always questioned whether they were truly learning. Of course, applied to this concept of leadership the “getting good grades” is equivalent to getting the job done, while learning is equivalent to the group that learns to and continues to function well together. In this case, which is more valuable?

Group Relations versus Achieving a Goal

The author seems to indicate learning as more important, but does this translate well into leadership? My first reaction was no. Leadership is about getting the job done. Think of a service project – does it do any good for the community for the volunteers to make new friends or is it better for them to establish enough of a working relationship to get the job done? Clearly the second option provides the greatest benefit to the community versus personal gain.

What made me stop and think is this comparison to learning. Isn’t it important for members of a group to learn how to work together instead of potentially being inefficient in order to hurry up and get the task done? This post made me realize that yes, learning how to work well with others is an important skill in leadership that cannot simply be overlooked when a goal is in sight.

Why not learn and make good grades?

I suppose my solution (a middle-of-the-road approach, if you will) involves a bit of a learning curve. If a group is being established for a series of goals involving a long-term commitment, perhaps there is value in allowing the group time to discover how they best work together with the goal somewhat irrelevant. Of course, there is a time where this simply becomes frivolous, which means a switch to goal-oriented work would be in order.

Back to the learning and good grades comparison, it is clear to see how one leads to the other. If you put the time and effort into learning the material, you will inevitably get higher grades. The same is true when it comes to working in a group and directing a group as a leader: take the time to learn about one another and have a higher degree of success.

I’m going to go a little off-topic and not talk about leadership, exactly, although I do think this could certainly pertain to leadership.

Growing up, my parents taught me good work ethic, helped me with homework, and set certain standards for my education so that when I began to take control of that education (in middle and high school) I did really well in school.

I got a ‘smart kid’ reputation that stuck with me throughout middle and high school…and somehow followed me even into my senior year Calculus class (where I’m fairly confident I was one of the more clueless people in the class).  That label was attached to me pretty early on and never really wore off, even as my classmates began to realize that I didn’t always get straight As, and I didn’t always retain the knowledge I gained.

…Which leads me to my dad’s philosophy on grades.  I would come home from school with a proud grin and show my dad my As and Bs and he would immediately ask, “That’s great, but are you learning?”  It drove me crazy when he asked that.  Wasn’t it good enough that I got good grades?  Couldn’t he just be happy for me like every other parent?

But my dad had a point.  I had a great study routine down that went something like this:

1. Test next class?  Ok, I’ve got this…go home, study for test, cram, memorize.

1. Next class:  “Here’s your test.” … go through it really fast before you forget everything!

1. End of class:  (sigh of relief) “Now I can forget it all!”

This strategy, while it works well for getting good grades, does not work well for actual learning.  I took four years of French and I don’t think I could survive a week there- but I got an A in the class!

What do you think?  This relates especially to freshmen who are trying to just get past their gen-eds so they can move on to the more exciting topics their majors dictate.

Right now I know I’m in my Math 106 class with the joy that this is the last math course I’ll ever have to take and the hope that I’ll get a good grade.

In this period of required courses, do you study to get good grades, or do you study to learn?  Be honest.

How you define Strategy? Is Strategy an essential function for a Leader? In the article “Putting Leadership Back Into Strategy,” author Cynthia Montgomery provides historical background information about the topic Strategy and how it aligns with Leadership. Montgomery informs the reader the way we perceive leadership in academia or in the business industry is very grouped. For instance, we have too many segregated units among society to perform multiple tasks at a time. This is how we as a society cultivate the culture of our strategy. Montgomery crafts her position around the emphasis of strategy as a leader and the importance it bears on society as a whole.

In the job industry Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), are defined as a leadership position. The business world, many “moons” ago, used to teach strategy as a part of a course. Strategy produces the plan of action, and as a leader this is a valuable variable to the overall equation. Leadership has a purpose within a group of individuals to act together as a function. This function has to be aligned with a certain strategy in order to execute an operation. Today, people have removed the word and definition of strategy from the function of leadership.

Whether the individual is a student, professor, businessman, or someone who has a leadership position, strategy is valuable to whatever the purpose is of any group to perform the plan of action. In the words of @WinstonChurchil, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

-Would love to hear your thoughts! For more conversation, follow me @LaurenHWaldron on Twitter!

http://hbr.org/2008/01/putting-leadership-back-into-strategy/ar/1

One of the last things we discussed in Wednesday’s class was organic vs. organizational approach. Professor Swags defined the Organic Approach as starting out a project/mission on a small scale and seeing how far it goes, kind of like going with the flow of things. On the contrary, Organizational was specified as taking the time out to thoroughly plan a project, then setting forth to accomplish the task. I am a strong believer in strict planning; rarely do I like to walk into something blind.

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On the first day of class we all came up with traits and qualities we thought make a leader, some of us even spoke about the leadership positions we’ve had.  Since the first class I’ve been thinking about the list we came up with and realized that we all generally think a leader is a person that is able to take into account everyone’s opinions, then make one decision based on those ideas and follow them through with the help of the team. So what happens when things go wrong? Everyone looks to the leader for the why things went wrong.

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