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CHAPTER ONE

What Kind of Leader Am I?

Are some people just born with the necessary charisma and drive to lead? Or do people learn the necessary skills along the way? Whether you believe leadership is innate or learned, self-knowledge is critical to its efficacy, a fact that debunks the myth that some people have just the right combination of characteristics to lead others. Harvard Business School professor Bill George (2011) says his research bears this out and that the “essence of leadership comes from not having predefined characteristics. Rather, it comes from knowing yourself—your strengths and weaknesses.” Collaborative leaders are at their best when they know who they are and what they can do.

Prolific leadership writer Jack Canfield (2005) confirms that “you have to believe in yourself. Whether you call it self-esteem, self-confidence, or self-assurance, it is a deep-seated belief that you have what it takes—the abilities, inner resources, talents, and skills to create your desired results” (p. 40). A collaborative leader has a strong sense of self. Think about this as you reflect on the current reality surrounding who you are as a leader.

In this chapter, we talk about the skills necessary for you to become a collaborative leader, including truly knowing yourself as one. We ask you to assess your trustworthiness, visioning abilities, and communication styles. Finally, we discuss how you can recognize and enhance your strengths. The end of the chapter includes action steps for increasing your leadership skills. Because improving general leadership skills is the goal here, the steps in this chapter assume you’re working with an assembled team. We explain how to assemble teams in Chapter 3 (page 27).

EXAMINING YOUR CURRENT REALITY

As you read this chapter, consider the following questions. Reflect on your personal growth as a leader and your support of growing leadership within your organization.

• What skills do you bring to the leadership position?

• Why are these skills important?

• What difference do they make?

• What are your challenge areas?

• What difficulties do they cause?

• How do you compensate for them?

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Understand Yourself as a Leader

There is a difference between knowing yourself and knowing what kind of leader you are. You may have many great attributes, such as a strong memory or a positive persona. It is good to be aware of those, but how do they affect you as a leader? This understanding is partly about relating what you know to how you would (or would not) use it to support and move an organization forward. It is also thinking about how you think and act in given situations. Self-assessment includes not only metacognition (thinking about your thinking) but also comparing yourself to others in social situations (Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995). It is a good idea to seek feedback from honest, trusted friends and family as well as anonymous feedback from colleagues. Your perception may be different from that of others.

After taking stock from colleagues, friends, and family, consider looking into a more objective approach. One way to do this is via a data-based personal inventory test such as the Leadership Practices Inventory, or LPI (Kouzes & Posner, 2012; www.leadershipchallenge.com). This inventory, based on years of research, focuses on five distinct practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. Different inventories have different areas of emphasis.

Data-based inventories focus on specific characteristics crucial to effective leadership. For instance, professors Murray Barrick and Michael Mount (1991) tested five personality characteristics (www.outofservice.com/bigfive) and scored how relevant each was in different occupational groups. Their results show that conscientiousness is consistently important. Extraversion predicts managerial and training proficiency, and openness to new experiences correctly predicts how proficient someone is at training others (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Assess your conscientiousness and extraversion. Are you detail oriented about work and careful with others’ feelings? Do you easily begin conversations with others, even with people you don’t know? Professor and leadership author Linda Lambert (1998) asserts that the required skills include helping a team “develop a shared sense of purpose with colleagues, facilitate group processes, communicate well, understand transitions and change and their effects on people, mediate conflict, and hold a keen understanding of adult learning from a constructivist perspective” (p. 18). A constructivist perspective supports learning from experience. Leaders construct their own knowledge from their experiences and reflect on the results of those experiences.

What if, after assessing yourself for those qualities, whether through an official personality inventory, gathered feedback, or private self-reflection, you discover that you are not naturally extraverted or particularly conscientious? You can work to develop those skills in yourself, just as you can help others work on it; at the end of this chapter, you will find action steps for improving your leadership skills. Research shows that improving your skills also increases your metacognitive abilities, which will help you assess others’ strengths, thereby aiding collaboration (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). You can read a book, attend a workshop, or take a class. You can make a concerted effort.

You mustn’t have every strength to effectively lead. The collaborative aspect of tapping into others’ strengths helps bolster change because you can build teams of people who have the strengths you lack. For example, you might excel at focusing people on getting things done, but be inexperienced at supporting the people who do the work. See who around you has this particular skill.

Focus on Trustworthiness, Visioning Ability, and Communication Style

Self-awareness helps build authenticity and trust; avoiding repeat mistakes is a side benefit of this knowledge. Author Kevin Cashman (2014) asserts that “when we are self-aware, we are more in touch with reality; people trust and respect us more.” Completing the “My Leadership Challenges” worksheet (page 14) will help you pinpoint areas that need strengthening. Trustworthiness, visioning ability, and communication style—all important aspects of leading well—are touched on in the following sections and discussed at length in later chapters. In addition to the following strategies, there are action steps for improving your leadership skills at the end of this chapter (page 12).

Trustworthiness

Kouzes and Posner (2012) assert that trust is collaborative teamwork’s “lifeblood,” and that it is crucial to maintaining lasting relationships (p. 239). Collaborative leaders show their trustworthiness in everything they do—delivering on promises, doing what they say they are going to do, and living by example. If they break trust (or even just appear to), they work with individuals to discover what happened and figure out how to build back that trust again. For an in-depth look at earning trust, see Chapter 2 (page 17).

Visioning Ability

Visioning ability means how well you work with others to create and sustain a vision. This ability is paramount to collaborative leadership success. Tim Kanold (2011) explains that the resulting “vision answers the question, Are we really doing what matters?” (p. 12). Collaborative leaders use the vision as a guide for all they do and lead a school to that vision. Chapter 4 (page 41) defines vision and addresses committing to one.

Communication Style

Open, honest dialogue is one of the best ways to communicate. It is also helpful to be sure everyone has the same understanding of the language because words have different meanings, implications, and connotations (DuFour et al., 2016). Collaborative leaders use good communication to help them help others move forward. Chapter 6 (page 67) details communication strategies for different audiences.

While keeping conversations positive is important, you cannot avoid difficult conversations. Dennis Sparks (2010), in his book on daily meditations for school leaders, says, “Intentionally increasing the number of positive interactions with members of the school community can transform relationships and improve school culture” (p. 39). We strongly believe that positive interactions will hold you in good stead when you have more difficult ones.

Promote Your Strengths

Leaders who understand their own strengths, perhaps through an assessment such as this chapter’s “My Leadership Strengths” worksheet (page 13) or the LPI (Kouzes & Posner, 2012), can use those strengths to build trust, create vision and buy-in, communicate effectively, and help create growth. For example, leaders who are visionary can use that skill to paint a picture of the future and guide others in that direction. Similarly, detail-oriented leaders might gather others together to create a detailed plan that shows the steps necessary to move toward a designated end line. Leaders can make most strengths work.

Let others know who you are. If you can jump right into a task and complete it, make that fact apparent. Share your strengths with others, and let them know that you are available to assist them whenever anyone needs those strengths.

A benefit of collaborative leadership is that no one person has to have all the necessary skills or strengths for any given situation; a good collaborative leader capitalizes on strengths from others. For example, a collaborative leader who needs to give detailed instructions to others but lacks that particular strength knows who could get the job done right; that leader delegates the task appropriately.

Note that a leader’s understanding of his or her personal weaknesses is not synonymous with being a weak leader. This realization might actually be one of the biggest lessons you can learn from your self-assessment. There is often a perception that a leader cannot have any weaknesses. Everyone has weaknesses. How you handle them makes the difference.

In the end, personal understanding of a leader’s strengths and weaknesses enables growth. See “My Leadership Strengths” (page 13) and “My Leadership Challenges” (page 14) at the end of this chapter to jumpstart that understanding. They promote reflection on each of these in order to grow as a leader. Finally, “Celebrating My Strengths” (page 15) helps you focus on positives. Leaders need to take time to recognize themselves and acknowledge when they have used their strengths to move an organization forward. Seeking honest feedback about your strengths and weaknesses is important, too. George (2011) encourages getting that feedback from other leaders and your superiors, as well as from those you lead.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we answered the question, What kind of leader am I? Take time answering the following questions, and think critically about each.

▪ What are you doing right now that fits with what you learned from reading this chapter?

▪ What might you stop doing after reading this chapter?

▪ What might you start doing after reading this chapter?

Action Steps for Improving Your Leadership Skills

Think about your current leadership abilities, whether you are currently leading a team of people or not. Consider the following two steps.

1. Identify your own leadership strengths.

▪ Using the “My Leadership Strengths” worksheet (page 13), list between three and five of your personal leadership strengths.

▪ Brainstorm ways you can use these strengths.

▪ Record when you use these strengths and the impact they have had.

2. Identify your own leadership challenges.

▪ Using the “My Leadership Challenges” worksheet (page 14), list between three and five of your personal leadership challenges.

▪ Brainstorm ways you can strengthen those areas.

My Leadership Strengths

List at least three of your personal leadership strengths. Then brainstorm possible results of using those strengths.

My Leadership Challenges

List at least three of your personal leadership challenges. Then brainstorm ways you can strengthen those areas.

Celebrating My Strengths

List at least three of your personal leadership strengths. Keep a running log of when you used them and why.

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