15 Minutes a Day

Archive for April, 2010

For this class I had to come up with a personal leadership style statement. Here is mine:

As a Servant Leader, I work to Empower those I work with to move beyond their current skill set and achieve greater things together than they could have achieved on their own.

Your thoughts and feedback on this are welcome…

We gave our presentation today and had a lot of fun doing it. Afterwards our instructor gave us our feedback – told us what we did well, where we screwed up (which we did really really well), and how to fix it going forward. We have all been trying to get into a scholarly thinking mode for the process of writing our dissertations. However, one of the things that we learned from this exercise is that we need to apply scholarly thinking to EVERYTHING.

Scholarly thinking requires inquiry in an in-depth manner without bias and preconceptions. One must open their mind to the possibilities and not make assumptions based on surface information. Scholars look for:

• The underlying theory of what they are reading
• A model and a plan for moving forward including a possible solution
• A way to evaluate the model or plan and make changes where necessary

My group had a model and the beginnings of a plan to move forward, but was not in-depth enough for what our instructor was looking for. However, when she was giving us our feedback, our instructor pointed out that she had not given us the assignment rubrics on purpose in order to evaluate where our thinking was and expected us to perform as we had. Now she expects us to improve. Now we get to find out what’s next…

In the past I have noticed that when someone looks around for a leader, I am usually one of the first to step up and accept that role. Today I decided to step back and let others volunteer first. I’m not sure why I decided to do that today. Especially since the instructor kept looking at me to take the lead. I think I just didn’t want to be thrust into that role again. I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew and I just didn’t feel up to it today.

One of my classmates asked the question “Am I a leader?” The instructor thought this was an extraordinary question to ask. In hindsight I have to agree. I have always seen doctoral students as strong-willed, determined individuals who are working to become leaders in their fields. Why else would anyone put themselves through this process? I feel that I have been a leader my whole life and my tendency to set goals and work to achieve them is one of the traits that makes me a leader.

To answer my classmate’s question for myself, yes, I am a leader! I may not be a manager in the organization I work for or a district officer in Toastmasters, but I am a leader in almost everything I do. At work I have a manager that I report to, but I am a leader to about 500 of my coworkers who have been trained as site administrators. It is my job to teach and guide them in using a communication tool and to become effective, efficient, and proficient in using it. When they need help I provide it. When they are stuck, I make suggestions for making progress. When they don’t remember or understand something, it is my job to rephrase or re-explain something. I love doing it!

That is just one reason why I am pursuing my doctoral degree…

The reason I started this blog in the first place was to chronicle my journey through the Management and Organizational Leadership doctoral program at the University of Phoenix. Today is the first day of my Year Three Residency – an on-the-ground class in Phoenix, AZ. The rest of my program is done exclusively online.

Our first assignment was to develop a “concise leadership statement” about our leadership style. This had to be prepared prior to our arrival in class. From that “concise leadership statement” we were to develop a one-sentence statement about our leadership style. Here is mine:

As a Servant Leader, I work to Empower those I work with to move beyond their current skill set and achieve greater things together than they could have achieved on their own.

I am told that this will change over the next five days as this class proceeds. We are also being asked to adjust how we ask questions of presenters. We are to start our questions with the phrase “I heard you say this…” paraphrase what was said and then ask the question. This is done to show that we were actively listening during the presentation. Our instructor has said that this is a very effective way to ask questions, get clarification for statements made during the presentation, and provide feedback and feedforward which is a new concept to me. More on that later as I learn more about it.

Many theists (people who believe in a god or gods) don’t understand how atheists (people who don’t believe in a god or gods) can believe the way they do and also believe in a spirit or spirituality. Theists also don’t seem to understand how atheists can believe that this life is all there is. Stephen Fry explains these beliefs in a simple, yet eloquent way.

Your thoughts on this? Please share…