Do you think of yourself as a leader? I hope so. At Heartland AEA, there are so many ways every employee provides leadership as a part of his/her daily responsibilities.
You may have heard about the pilot study on leadership development that is underway at the Agency. A small group of staff is checking out the Denison leadership development system and working together to cultivate their skills. While I look forward to learning from this group’s journey over the next several months, I encourage all of us to simultaneously work on our own leadership skills.
One of my colleagues shared a leadership blog with me that you may also find helpful. One of the feature articles on the blog highlights the results of a study by the late Warren Bennis (a great resource on leadership/former distinguished professor of business administration at USC) on characteristics of influential leaders. Some highlights of his work about creating empowering environments include the following tips:
1. Share information.
2. Change your mind based on new information shared with you.
3. Expect positive results.
4. Provide learning opportunities for those you serve to enhance expertise.
5. Ask, don’t command. (Unless you’re in a crisis.)
6. Set goals together rather than independently assigning them.
7. Authorize others to act and decide.
8. Establish mistake-making policies before mistakes happen.
9. Expect people to solve their own problems as much as possible.
10. Be an external cheerleader – most of us have plenty of internal critics.
11. Express enthusiasm for the projects and interests of others.
See how many times you can use this advice when engaging with colleagues, with those you serve and with the planning councils you are connected to. You will be exercising leadership and contributing to an empowering work environment for others! What have you been reading about leadership?
Please share your ideas and thoughts (share in the “Comments” section of this article) or consider writing a guest article for The Connection.
Have a great week,
Paula
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