ERAU OBLD 633 Adaptive Leadership in Complex Environments Week 1 (CRIGOE)
I have been working in leadership
roles for nearly three decades now, and my view of leadership has evolved from
that of an impetuous teenager who saw his leaders as out-of-touch old men and
women who couldn’t do what I did, to being an older man who can no longer do
what my people do. Besides the literal shift in position, my perspective has also changed. I have realized that leaders cannot be as technically
skilled as their workers in all things. That's okay, that's good, and that's
normal. Leadership and management require different skills, often more abstract
skills, such as strategic planning, problem-solving, communication, emotional
intelligence, and influence, among others (Northouse, 2022). The distinction in
skills and the misunderstanding of what leaders do can create dissonance in
teams and lead to a shift in the perspective of leadership among followers.
For example, my parents always
taught my brothers and me to respect people in positions of authority.
Teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers —the list goes on. We had
presentations by police and fire departments to discuss with us, as kids, how
to stay safe in our world and to create that connection between them and us,
fostering a relationship built on respect. My Grandmothers espoused similar thoughts
around authority. The phrase “listen to your elders” was heard often enough,
but always in the sense of offering advice; it was their way of saying “I told
you so” without hurting my juvenile feelings. I have seen a trend in employee
engagement with and their responsiveness to leadership. The same is true of
leadership; we also have a shift in our perception of followers, and that also
needs to be addressed.
Buzzwords like quiet quitting are circulating
to describe leadership’s view of employees doing the minimum at work to stay
employed, rather than working above and beyond (Hetler, 2024). I do not see
quiet quitting as the problem, but rather the leader’s perception that an
associate only doing their job is somehow a bad thing. If there is no benefit
to putting in extra effort, I understand why people do not make the additional
effort. A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to invite associates to work
extra hours, and only five people volunteered. I had already planned to buy the
team pizza as a way to thank them for coming in early, shook their hands when
they came, and thanked them, and at the end of the shift, I also sent them a
thank you note for coming in that would post where my supervisor would see it.
Leaders often forget to be grateful for the extra effort people put in. Not
everyone can or wants to work additional hours, not everyone wants to advance
within a company, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice their personal time
for the company’s sake in the pursuit of advancement. Our responsibility as
leaders is to respect what our people want to do and support their efforts to
be the best employees they aspire to be, whatever that looks like to them,
within the confines of productivity expectations.
Two reasons why this shift has occurred
among employees are the concepts of safetyism and radical individualism. Safetyism
is the idea that emotional safety is prioritized to a significant degree, leading
to a decline in the free expression of ideas (Haidt & Lukianoff, 2015).
Leaders then begin to disconnect from their people by not discussing
performance and expectations with them, leading to a growing resentment of
merely doing their jobs, which leaders refer to as quiet quitting. Radical
individualism prioritizes the well-being of the individual over that of the
community, leading to an emphasis on doing one’s work, rather than going above
and beyond (Castelberry, 2023). These changes have created a unique relationship
between leaders and followers, along with the seismic shift in technology and
ways of working that have never existed before. The constancy of change is not
new, but the speed and scale of the changes are dramatic, and there is a lack
of adequate leadership development to guide them effectively (Obolensky, 2016).
The only way to close the gap between leadership
quality and available resources is through practical training and development. Every
time I have been promoted, it was because I excelled at the job I was currently
doing. I was never promoted for the skills I developed for the role I was being
promoted to. At the frontline leadership position, I was troubleshooting; at
the next level, I was planning; and now I am designing goals and key
performance indicators. Those skills do not overlap. What is consistent is my
approach to leadership, but not everyone has pursued an education in leadership
and management. Companies need to spend more time teaching how to lead at the
level people are at, rather than promoting strictly for the skills they have mastered
in their current role. The effort to teach leadership must be intentional and
sustained, as does the effort to learn it. Popular sources of leadership are
great inspirations for many. I love Jocko Willink’s material, but he lacks
academic credibility. That does not mean his material is not good; it just
means it is based on his opinions. Academic material relies on inaccessible linguistics
and pay-per-view academic journals that the average leader is unaware of. This
leaves the most valuable material accessible only to those who deliberately
seek to pursue it, obscuring and growing wider the gap between leadership
quality and available resources. As leaders, we must close the gap by making
our knowledge more accessible and leading the way by teaching what we know,
while also asking that our organizations invest meaningfully in the development
of our people and leadership.
-Chris
References
Castleberry, J. (2023, September 5). Leadership and moral
individualism. Northwest University. https://www.northwestu.edu/president/blog/leadership-and-moral-individualism
Haidt, J., & Lukianoff, G. (2015, September). How
trigger warnings are hurting mental health on campus. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
Hetler, A. (2024, May 14). Quiet quitting explained:
Everything you need to know. WhatIs. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/Quiet-quitting-explained-Everything-you-need-to-know#:~:text=What%20is%20quiet%20quitting%3F,to%20improve%20work%2Dlife%20balance.
Northouse, P. G.
(2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). SAGE.
Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership:
Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Routledge.
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