A Leader’s Intuition
I was doing a reading for my creative thinking class a while back and I came across an interesting idea that the author put forth. According to him, Michael Michalko, when we are stuck, unable to find a solution for a problem, our unconscious already has the solution, it is just a matter of pulling it up from the depths of our minds. This is where intuition comes from. Intuition is our subconscious telling us what we already know is or will be true. This subconscious to me is built off of experience, information, and our animal nature.
As usual, this got me thinking about leadership. Many times in my leadership experience, after given enough time to become familiar with my followers and the environments I find my instincts become very sharp and very accurate. I have been able to determine the outcome and the likeliness of a project working out or someone not
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The premise of the book is that you can pull a large number of leadership lessons from the toys we grew up playing with. Things like Play-Doh and Mr. Potato Head. One of my favorite lessons is one that is pulled from LEGO bricks. In summary, the lesson is that leadership is about building connections to build something better. Like LEGOs, relationships are the building blocks that our organizations are built with.
That makes perfect sense, but another sub-lesson from the chapter is that LEGOs do not just attach to one another willy-nilly. The person building with them (the leader) hast to deliberately and with effort push the blocks together, thereby creating the connection.
When you think about it, this is super inconvenient for leaders who are regularly sucked dry of our time and energy by the world, work, school, etcetera. This means that we need to find a balance of taking time and energy to build relationships with and between others and also meeting our expectations set for us… Not an easy
In the article titled, "The Common Language of Leadership," by Corey Seelmiller and Thomas Murray, which can be found in the November 2013 edition of the Journal of Leadership Studies, the authors conducted qualitative research in an attempt to (a) define and understand the competencies needed by college students to engage in leadership in their respective career fields and (b) to use the research findings on leadership competencies in order to develop a program that will encompass all fields of academic disciplines. The authors of this article studied the comprehensive of learning outcomes of 475 academic programs within 72 academic accrediting organizations in regard to student leadership development. The assertions by Corey
The topic of leadership continues to attract several theoretical arguments as the practice of leadership varies depending on a variety of factors (Loveridge, 2014). However, the contributions made by John Wooden in transforming leadership are impeccable, with his many years as a basketball coach earning him admiration and success in equal measure. John Wooden, therefore, explains how leaders can get the maximum potential out of their followers through enhancing the individual abilities and shaping the personal efforts in a manner that guarantees personal peak performances and subsequent improvement of team or organizational performance.
The book that had the most impact on me as a leader while I was working in the corporate world was Extreme Ownership by Leif Babin. Although I have always been a reader, I didn’t discover leadership books until 2010, and I didn’t discover Extreme Ownership until 2012. But, as I’ve continued to study, read, write, and speak about leadership over the past several years, I’ve come to think of leadership as something we hopefully grow toward and into as we mature, rather than levels or steps we climb. To me, leadership isn’t something you can neatly check off as you reach milestones because it’s so very dynamic. My wife uses the analogy of the alphabet having only 26 letters but thousands of words with different meanings. And yet, it’s incredibly
First published in 1987, The Leadership Challenge is a guide for becoming leader. The book received many awards and its above two million copies are internationally sold. The book teaches principles of leadership that apply whether the leader is running a sports team or a fortune 500 organization. The book includes stories and examples of many leaders from micro to macro level (Founders and Authors, 2013). The basic leadership principles can be adopted by anyone to challenge status quo and increase leader productivity multifold. The book tells about the flow and hierarchy of values too (Machedo, 2013). One can use the guide without an instructor to develop leadership traits.
General Powell highlights 18 lessons learned in leadership that are applied to successful companies, and how they are applied to leadership in his presentation to the Outreach Program, and the Sears Corporate Headquarters. These approaches can be applied not only in business but life in general. I will highlight three of the lessons that have impacted my career in the military
The overall objective of the book is to teach new, and old, leaders to become better leaders. While anyone can benefit from reading this
In this paper I will identify and explain the leadership concepts that I learned in this class using characters from the film Finding Nemo. To do so I will provide examples of transformative leadership and describe the impact it had on others. I will also explain how the characters acquired their leadership effectiveness by identifying experiences that were instrumental in their leadership development.
When people are between a rock and a hard place, they will use everything they bring and their own knowledge to save themselves. In the movie 127 Hours, Aron Ralston, an American outdoorsman and mechanical engineer, stucked his right hand and wrist between a boulder and a wall in BlueJohn Canyon in Utah for six days. Because without telling everyone the specific location he would go, the rescue failed to search for him. On the sixth day, he cut his arm out and went to search the rescue. In six days, his leadership skills helped him survive.
I chose this book in hope that it could help me understand the difference between managing and leading. In addition, I wanted to gain more knowledge and tools to help myself grow as a leader and help develop all of my subordinates that I may have to time throughout my career. The book jacket for this book is ultimately why I decided to read the book because it truly grabbed my attention. I found it interesting that John C. Maxwell is a #1 New York Times bestselling author (Maxwell, 2013). Moreover, the book jacket continued to catch my attention by stating to be more than a boss people are required to follow, you must master the ability to inspire and invest in people (Maxwell, 2013). I particularly found the “invest in people” line most interesting and caused me to want to read and learn more about the authors perspective on leadership.
James MacGregor Burns said it best, “Leadership is leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations-the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations-of both leaders and followers. And the genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their own and their fellow 's values and motivations”. As one reads this statement, one naturally reflects on personal leader experiences or ones learned through academic or professional studies. Abraham Lincoln, especially during his presidency, exemplified Burns definition of a leader.
What Leadership theories covered in class are reflected in the book? Explain how, using examples.
What matters the most is what you do day by day over the long haul, explains the author. If you continually invest in your leadership and let your ‘assets’ compound, the inevitable result is growth overtime. While some are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, with nearly all of which can be learned and improved. You can be a good leader if you want to, since everyone has the potential to be one, you just have to understand that you can’t accomplish it overnight. Leadership is complicated and has many facets, and it takes a lot of ‘seasoning’ to actually an effective leader. Whether you do or don’t have the natural ability for leadership, the author states that in the development and progress process probably occurred in the following four phases: Phase 1 being ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ here a person doesn’t realize how valuable leadership is and believes it’s for people up the corporate ladder thus passing up the opportunity to learn how to lead. Phase 2 is ‘I know what I don’t know’ here you begin to realize the importance of learning how to lead and the learning process begins’. Phase 3 is ‘I grow and know and it starts to show’, in this phase you realize you lack skills and begin daily discipline of personal growth in leadership. In phase 4 ‘I simply go because of what I know’ is when you’re knowledgeable and your ability to lead
The first of the three theory based changes I could make as a leader to maximize my success, would be to be more flexible. Situational leadership theory states that leaders have to adjust their style of leadership to the current ever changing context of society. Situational leadership stresses the importance of strong leaders who match the working conditions of the follower to the current conditions (Lynch, 2015). I could change my flexibility by changing the way I do things instead of always having the same repetition. Observing how things are changing, and how worker’s styles are changing this will allow me to be more flexible.
One of the biggest lessons learned from this course is that to be an effective leader, you must have a diverse skillset. I’m not sure if there is any one magical component or characteristic in being a great leader. One influence during my review of the literature was that; although easier for some, I see leadership as something we must continually improve upon. This is in contrast to my belief during my first day of class, when I thought leaders just
The first lessons were related to leadership and I was wondering what 's new here. I thought I knew a theory about leadership. After all, I am an author of a