A633.9.3.RB - Polyarchy Reflections

I found this particular assignment interesting because when applied to my field of coaching, oligarchy is still in place with few leaders over many followers. We have coaches, usually 2 or 3, and then captains, usually just 1 or 2, who lead 16 players. But, as a coach it is our job to get ALL of our players prepared for life after school basketball in the real world, a world, which is quickly transitioning to a society of polyarchy. This makes our job tricky because we want to remain a successful team with our same principles in place, but yet develop the leadership skills necessary in all our players, not just our captains.

            With our need to develop all of our player’s leadership skills even more, as they venture off into a new world of polyarchy, it changes how we will need to lead as coaches. In the past, in our team meetings or talks after practice, the captains are always encouraged to speak up if something is on their mind. Whether it is something heavy or just a couple comments about a particular drill. Prior to games, halftimes, as well as after, the captain is called upon to do the same, usually more formal and inspirational during a game. All of these acts develop leadership for the captain. Now the problem is it is only developing his abilities, much more than the others. As a coach in the future, I will have to develop many more opportunities for the rest of the individuals on the team to step up as a leader and address the team with whatever insight they may have. This will help prepare everyone even more for their life after school and basketball.

            I do believe polyarchy is fast replacing old oligarchy assumptions, but I don’t believe this makes the old models redundant. There is still much to be learned from the old models that will help leaders strive forward in whatever organization they may be in. I do also think that there could be small changes made however to models, which show the movement we are making towards polyarchy.

A633.9.3.RB - Polyarchy Reflections

I found this particular assignment interesting because when applied to my field of coaching, oligarchy is still in place with few leaders over many followers. We have coaches, usually 2 or 3, and then captains, usually just 1 or 2, who lead 16 players. But, as a coach it is our job to get ALL of our players prepared for life after school basketball in the real world, a world, which is quickly transitioning to a society of polyarchy. This makes our job tricky because we want to remain a successful team with our same principles in place, but yet develop the leadership skills necessary in all our players, not just our captains.

            With our need to develop all of our player’s leadership skills even more, as they venture off into a new world of polyarchy, it changes how we will need to lead as coaches. In the past, in our team meetings or talks after practice, the captains are always encouraged to speak up if something is on their mind. Whether it is something heavy or just a couple comments about a particular drill. Prior to games, halftimes, as well as after, the captain is called upon to do the same, usually more formal and inspirational during a game. All of these acts develop leadership for the captain. Now the problem is it is only developing his abilities, much more than the others. As a coach in the future, I will have to develop many more opportunities for the rest of the individuals on the team to step up as a leader and address the team with whatever insight they may have. This will help prepare everyone even more for their life after school and basketball.

            I do believe polyarchy is fast replacing old oligarchy assumptions, but I don’t believe this makes the old models redundant. There is still much to be learned from the old models that will help leaders strive forward in whatever organization they may be in. I do also think that there could be small changes made however to models, which show the movement we are making towards polyarchy.

A633.8.3.RB - How Do Coaches Help?

Being a basketball coach myself and having played the sport dealing with coaches all of my life, it is very similar to the job of an executive coach. There is a coaching theory (for sports coaches at least) that says for every 1 piece of negative criticism you should give 7 positive ones. This sort of defines the meaning and job of being a coach. A coach is there to provide confidence and guidance in the client, to let him know he cares and is willing to adjust behaviors but mostly to encourage through his/her experience the right way to handle the situation and to empower the client to bring the best out in himself.

Coaching and leadership go hand in hand because a leader must truly care about the personal and professional growth of subordinates. I heard once that good leaders don’t make good followers they make other good leaders and that statement says everything about a leaders responsibility to coach and grow the people around them. Coaching and mentoring is crucial to the development of people in organizations, inexperienced members need that attention and guidance or they can become lost and unaware of their role and true potential.

The right leadership and coaching can have a huge positive impact on an organization, its internal chemistry, its employee engagement, its productivity, and its success. Coaching and leadership taps into the individual potential of the people of the organization and the true potential of the organization. A culture in which peers learn from each other in no specific hierarchy makes for the most successful of organizations.

In our organization we have such a culture, people treat others with respect and have for the most part positive learning work relationships. Our leaders are humble and truly care about the successes of all of us from the coaches, support staff, to the student athletes. This is our culture, our culture of building leaders out of our coaches and players, so they may have the best student athlete experience and be prepared for a successful life after their sport.

A633.7.3.RB - Leader Follower Relationship

After taking the assessment on chapter 10, my results were 5 for strategy 1, 2, and 3 and only once did I use strategy 4. This shows that I have a diverse opinion on different situations and when to use each strategy. I believe that this gives me an advantage as a leader because I am able to adapt to the specific situation and deal with it how I see best fit. I don’t think it is advantageous for a leader to rely solely and always on one strategy. Every situation and individual calls for the right way to approach and solve it. These results also reassure me that as a leader I have a good balance of people focus and goal focus. This means that as I assess each individual situation I read and see if it calls for me to mentor the person or for me to be more goal-oriented.

I would have to say that my thinking has not changed, but evolved as I learned about new concepts and theories on leadership. Complexity theory and the role that complexity plays in organizations and leadership was something that I never truly considered a factor. Chaos and complexity are inevitable and should not be something negative all of the time. Organizations should establish cultures ready to adapt and embrace chaos and complexity. Another concept that I learned about is the leadership charade. This is something that is very important for good leaders to be aware of and not fall into. We should establish open communication in the workplace and not ever pretend to know something simply based on our position. These concepts and theories have not changed my thinking about leadership but expanded it and increased my factual knowledge of leadership. One of my favorite learning points is that of upward leadership and how great leaders should establish an organization that allows for leadership from the bottom up, where people’s voices are heard and considered.

These are all things that I will take on with me as I continue striving to be a better leader. I will have better theoretical understanding of leadership techniques, methods, and concepts. This will give me the knowledge foundation to make better-informed decisions. This knowledge alone will not make me a great leader. That will come with the application of such contents and the personal experience of leading every day in a real working organization. Having a self-critical approach and being open to following and learning from others all around me. This knowledge has provided a great foundation for my leadership and it will continue to guide and help me grow as a leader.

A633.6.5.RB - Circle of Leadership

Reflecting on the leadership circle it is a very interesting cycle of underachieving. I can see how many organizations and leaders experience this without even realizing it. One of the harder things for leaders to do is to step back, follow, and delegate to and empower others. A leader is in a position of high visibility and the responsibility for subordinates can create a fear of letting others do things. A leader must make subordinates feel empowered and be ready to be responsible no matter the outcome. If a leader always takes work away from them and does it himself/herself the confidence of the subordinates will be affected and it will turn into the vicious cycle. There is certain power in a leader showing trust in someone who maybe even did not trust them. I speak from experience when I say that when my coaches gave me a chance as a walk on to start and be a team captain it gave me so much more confidence than I had in myself.

In our organization this circle is not existent and it is not by accident. Our leader purposely gives people the freedom to do things and empowers them even if they fail. More can be learned personally from a failure rather than have someone else do something for you. This creates trust and promotes personal and professional growth. People do not feel intimidated by our leaders but rather supported by them and overall makes people more engaged and more productive. It allows for people to bring their individual unique skills to the table making our organization more effective and diverse.

My proposed circle is very similar because it begins with one opposite action and it becomes a domino effect of positive results.

A633.5.3.RB - Reflections on Chaos

Reflecting on the video’s chaos exercise and chaos theory I found something very interesting. I had never seen such exercise done, but as the speaker was explaining it my brain began working trying to predict what would happen. Maybe like most people (or maybe not) I thought that it would literally be chaos, that people would not be able to accurately split the difference between their two points without messing someone else’s distance and I thought therefore it would almost become an endless chaotic loop. To add a little bit of humor, I do not know why but I pictured them trying to run to their places and them physically running into each other. Anyways, after the 2 or three seconds where all of this was going through my head the people began moving slowly, and in a very controlled fashion. They knew whom they had picked and no one else did, and as time went on they moved less and less until they all found their spot in under a minute. Assuming that they all ended up in fact, half way between their two references they accomplished this effectively and rather quickly in my opinion. They (the volunteers) became a system working together towards a final state seemingly disorganized but in fact did so in a very rhythmic manner. They were like gears turning and moving until they came to a stop. So what did this teach me? It is a real life demonstration of chaos theory in many ways! Obolensky (2010) tells us that chaos theory “shows how chaos has an underlying order and patterns which can be used to good effect”.  He also quotes the book Nature’s Numbers in saying that “to an untrained eye it looks pretty much random”. Now let’s think about the exercise. First of all was there an underlying order? Yes, although they did not move in predictable paths each person had a goal and it depended on all of the other people and that is what created their path. Those paths that each person moved probably looked completely random and unordered to someone if they were to walk in without hearing the instructions. “They are just moving around aimlessly and then stopped” is what someone might say. This is chaos theory, chaos looks chaotic because so many factors internal and external affect the underlying patterns that are occurring. These patterns actually have a bit of order and purpose but to an outsider or an “untrained eye” chaos is scary. This fact that the patterns are very hard to see and understand presents the biggest implication for organizational strategy. It is nearly impossible to predict chaos before or during it, and that makes strategizing difficult. In its nature, strategy is based on a future state and chaos theory is there to let organizations know not to get too far ahead because you don’t know or understand what I am doing or what will happen

A633.4.3.RB - Changing Dynamics of Leadership

Organizations have experienced a change in leadership from generations before us for several reasons. I believe one of the reasons is the complexity of organizations and the market in which they operate. A few generations before us, organizations were smaller, simpler, and operated in limited environments, in which case top management knew the answers and was in charge of making them. In todays workforce people are more and more educated and subordinates are no longer just workers taught to do one thing. This along with organizations who operate in complex and uncertain environments has caused for our leaders to be less informed about the right decisions to make. The problem arises when in our new environment we carry the old way of thinking, subordinates knowing that top management does not know all of the answers but not saying or doing anything about it, and top management pretending to know the answers because of the pressure from the organization to know.

I believe that my current organization (Athletic department at Embry Riddle) has embraced the new way of thinking under the leadership of our former Athletic Director Steve Ridder. He was a leader that believed in and created a culture of empowerment and honest communication. Our current culture of leadership is a leader that does not fall into the charade of pretending to know the answers but rather a leader that asks the right questions and engages the right people when decision-making is necessary. One of the terms that we hold close to our culture is “servant leadership” which in itself flattens our hierarchy to show that everybody’s role is just as important as the person next to them.

The second reason is because the relationships in our department and our culture allow for anybody to raise their concerns about an issue. No one is “scared of the man” that thought does not even exist here and it creates an environment where everybody feels heard and valued.

Lastly is the lack of water cooler talk that speaks volumes about our culture. The success that we have endured over 26 years has been with the right people who believe in our vision as an organization or department. Our workforce is not people who are being told what to do, they are individuals who are passionate about our mission as an organization and enjoy working towards that together.

This culture has made strategy easier because our people are engaged therefore we make better decisions. We have underwent a lot of changes to our organization and our environment successfully the latest being our transition to the NCAA. Our structure has allowed for this transition although tough to be rather smooth and viewed as a challenge. This sort of culture in which the majority of decisions do not necessarily come from the top could present the implication of personal egos from leadership positions but for our organization that is not a concern.