Danger of Stories

In this week's class we are studying the power of stories as well as the limitations of speaking and how people listen. The jury is out on how just how much people "listen" by usage of body language versus spoken word. As a matter of fact two of texts contradict each other on this idea. The Professional Communicators Toolkit (Whalen) says 75% of communication is body language, while Denning's The Leader's Guide to Storytelling pretty much says Mehrabian, the guy responsible for the study that came up with that number, derived that from a specific set of laboratory environments and added a great deal of extrapolation. I'm inclined to agree with Denning as I have interacted with people with whom there is a significant language barrier and while my posture, facial expressions, and gestures may indicate mood and intent they cannot deliver meaning. To assign a number to that seems meaningless. There is no doubt that body language is crucial to communication but to pin a number to it would be an attempt to quantify a variable that exists on a sliding scale.

Another distinct limitation is something I am going to call the Storyteller's Myopia. I will elaborate on that more below but it relates to the video of a novelist's experience with what she calls the "single story." Chimamanda Adiche gave a talk on the dangers of the single story. Before I elaborate on communication and stories it will help to understand Adiche's point. People will draw conclusions on things that are foreign to them based upon the stories that they are told regarding that subject. In her case she had drawn conclusions about Mexico that weren't accurate. Likewise she had encountered the dangers of the single story while interacting with her roommate. This gets into ethnocentric behaviors that aren't germane to THIS entry but need to be addressed in the greater scheme of leadership. Modern organizations may span the globe and ethnocentric attitudes are a barrier to effective leadership.

 What Adiche is also saying and what I am going to call the Storyteller's Myopia is as a storyteller you need to be aware that the stories you tell are going to influence your listeners in many ways. You want to take care to not interject ethnocentric ideas into your stories. Also you want to be aware of how your actions within a story may be perceived by your listeners. The rule "know your audience" is just as important here as well.

Stories and Organizational Culture

In this week’s learning we understand the importance of The Story. The Story is an integral part of communication and it is a great way to impart meaning and relevance to any situation. It can be easier to relate to a concept when you are able to contextualize the material in story form. Stories give life to living. In my current role I work with disabled veterans or veterans that are facing barriers to employment. My task is to case manage these veterans to aid them in overcoming these barriers. This involves everything from creating resumes to working with veterans as they go through addiction recovery and PTSD treatment, and that is just my office. In my organization over a dozen (perhaps more) programs are administered dealing with employment and assistance issues. Some of these are simple grants for education or training but others, like my program and a few others, are intensive services designed to directly address the needs of clients. In this capacity many people develop a bit of a dark sense of humor or create other coping mechanisms. Story telling is one of those mechanisms.

To pinpoint one particular story would be very difficult. A great many conversations occur when someone plops down at your desk and says, “You have to hear this…” This isn’t to say that there aren’t some that don’t stand out more than others. One story involves a man that needed to wire money from his New York accounts because Obama was bombing Libya and his liquidity was an issue. This man suffered from an obvious mental illness but he is only one of the many heartbreaking stories that live in and breathe in our waiting rooms. There is the story of the battered wife trying to feed her children. There is the story of the man laid off from work for no reason other than the employer wanted to hire a family member. There is the story of the young veteran home from the front and finding out that a great deal of the time a “commitment to support our troops” really just means a bumper sticker and not a job. Yes, there are also stories of people attempting to scam the system though those stories are in far less supply than some in the media would have you believe. In all of this there are the stories of the men and women that work in our building. There is the story of the man whose wife left him. There is the story of the low wage earners here that struggle to make ends meet as wages fall far behind cost of living. There is the story of the guy that struggles with his own mental illness as he works to help others solve theirs. These stories merge into a greater story, a unified story, of the daily struggle to take care of one another. I believe that stories are just crystallized versions of life; much like poetry is the crystallized essence of a moment or feeling. To ask for a single story would be to do a disservice to how all these stories unify a culture. I have held and will always continue to hold to the concept that we too often focus on the tree while the forest goes unheeded.

These stories bring together the office as a whole and they do provide a bit of focus for what we do. We aren’t paid very well, civil servants rarely are. The newsmakers make news because they are rare. Many of us do what we do because we believe that we can make a difference in someone’s life. Others do this work as a means to garner experience in office settings. And still others do this because in our region of the country it is one of the better jobs you can have. This isn’t to say that these people are not professionals, they are, and through these shared stories we can reaffirm a bit of our commitment to what we do. This is how stories impact my organization’s culture. They provide shared laughter and success and sadness. In an organization designed to affect lives isn’t laughter, success, and sadness life itself?

Women, Diversity, and the Workplace

The topic of diversity and gender equality is broad and, quite naturally, diverse. For this blog post I am reflecting on the comments made by Rosabeth Moss Kanter as they pertain to gender discrimination.

Ms. Kanter makes an early point that it is difficult to draw black and white distinctions about gender inequality while being firm that it exists. Women and men often find themselves in different roles as far as leadership is concerned. Men are found in high risk roles and women are found in people roles. This distinction may be reflected in the national pay disparities as high risk roles tend to pay more. This begs the question, why don't more women get into these roles? Kanter states that people trust people that are similar to themselves. If men have traditionally are in high risk roles as places by obvious discrimination in the past it stands to reason that men will promote other men to those roles. However, Kanter states that women are making their own inroads in other areas such as sole-proprietorship's and even politics. It may be that there will be a shift to women in power in the future.

The crux of many of Kanter's comments centered around women taking care of other women and through that sort of empowerment, create company cultures that are supportive of family and gender equality. I really like her perception that people trust the judgement of those that find familiar. However, that sword can cut two directions. As we grow a new generation of leaders it is important that we begin to not discuss the gender of a candidate but rather what they bring to the table. Supportive corporate cultures will begin to chip away at these distinctions as they will allow workers to thrive free of discrimination concerns.

Yukl brings a few concerns about gender identity to mind and these also need to be addressed in the broader concept of diversity. Once again, I feel that as these ideas gain acceptance by larger amounts of the population you will see trans-gender (using this term to include gay and bi-sexual as well) people moving into leadership roles and then bringing their values with them to the workplace. As noted, this will start to change corporate cultures as well.

Many of Yukl's other reasons for sex-based discrimination such as lack of inclusion, lack of mentoring, and lack of opportunity I feel can be addressed by people trusting what they see as similarities. To say this is discrimination is inaccurate as I think discrimination is willful. Instead this is a lack of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Becoming aware of one's own biases and tendencies is important for any leader and must be addressed if we are to become a more diverse and inclusive group of leaders.

Acting on core values

"....think about yourself, and reflect on what differences distinguish you and would help you in living and acting on the basis of your core values."


Above is my task for this post and after some thought I narrowed my core values down to professionalism, honesty, ethical behavior, and kindness. Those are in no particular order and this will be a short post due to external stress. This has been an interesting question this week.


Professionalism, at its core, means that one does their job without prejudice, bias, malice, or to poor standards. I think that professionals have a duty to execute their responsibilities to the best of their abilities despite personal hardship or external situations. This is NOT to say that one has to "play hurt" or put aside their own lives for a job. Certain things such as divorce, death, child birth, health issues, and financial stressors are going to affect a person and that's to be expected and persons in those situations should be supported (kindness). However professionals don't let things such as a bad mood, or personal biases interfere with their work. This relates to emotional intelligence and that is something I've spoken on before. A leader must know his or her self first.


Honesty and ethical behavior are intertwined. Honesty is an ethical trait but I think it stands alone as it is the basis for all other ethical behaviors. If one isn't honest it their dealings with others than one cannot be operating in an ethical manner. One must also be honest with one's self. This will allow you achieve a certain level of emotional intelligence and from there you can become a more effective leader.


Kindness speaks for itself. Leaders do have to make choices that may cause injury, distress, or worse to followers and this is an unfortunate aspect of leadership. However, leaders should be kind where possible and I know I try to be kind to others as. Like most humans, I am not always successful but I strive for kindness in the hopes that it makes me a better person.


Living and acting on these values is important and becomes easier once they are internalized. When I am going through times of stress and anger I reflect on these things and see if I am acting consistently with these values and the answer isn't always yes.

Creating Meaning at Work

This week I have been asked to reflect on how leaders create meaning in a work place. I think this question is making a few assumptions. The biggest assumption is that the people within an organization are at point where they are able to meet their basic needs and are thus searching for new meaning. As Maslow's hierarchy of needs tells us there are several basic needs that must be met. A greater number of people are experiencing income insecurity as costs are outpacing wages. Additionally, the income gap is widening at an unprecedented pace. These economic indicators are meaning more and more people are increasingly worried about security and even physiological needs as they struggle to make ends meet. To ask how one creates meaning in this environment is a bit intellectually dishonest. I feel that as academics we too often postulate on how the world should be rather than how it is. So to answer the question, in order to create meaning we have to provide an environment where meaning can be an added value as opposed to environments where meaning is expected to replace living. When creating environments for meaning to be an added value a manager must see to it that workers are not worried about the first two levels of Maslow's hierarchy which are physiological and security. They do this by providing certain benefits such as health insurance, (in America at least, every other first world nation provides this to all the people not just the percentage of the population lucky enough to have coverage) fair wages, and other benefits designed to aid employees in meeting these needs. This isn't always the case as for many worker in service industry fields these benefits and wages are not available and the US is rapidly heading in that direction. So creating meaning becomes an academic exercise rather than a reality. No one cares if their ability to flip a burger or clean a hotel room has "meaning" if they can't afford food or housing. As studies have shown that raising the minimum wage has little effect on employment and a small affect on prices; to add to this meaning we have to change the way we view labor. This is a societal change that I am not sure the US will make and it is one of the reasons the nation is falling behind in quality of life for its citizens.

Be all that as it may and assuming we solve all of those problems, we move into step two. Managers create meaning by providing a vision, mission, or shared culture that employees can internally quantify. As noted in prior discussions, Southwest Airlines created a culture and vision where people believed in providing safe, friendly, affordable, and efficient air travel to their customers. In doing so they were able to attract and retain employees that were willing to work for below average industry wages until the company was able to attract enough market share to thrive. As I've mentioned, people need to have certain needs met before they are able to share in a vision and find meaning. However, once those needs ARE met people search for satisfaction within themselves and what they do. A great deal of a person's sense of self-worth and identity is tied into their job. Think about meeting new people, within the first few minutes someone will ask "What do you do?" People need to feel proud of their accomplishments and their contributions to society.

As we know, people are motivated by different things and I think the question assumes that all people are needing to find meaning. I respond negatively to charismatic leaders though I appreciate a transformational one. Others might be the opposite. A manager's approach to leadership is tied in with creating meaning. I chose charismatic and transformational leaders as I feel those are the two types of leaders that are able to best create meaning for their workers. Through their vision and efforts they allow others to believe in what they do. There is a caveat to this and it speaks to the second assumption; the target needs to be amenable to finding meaning. For some, work is a means to an end. They find meaning in giving, or nature, or any other activity not related to the work place. That doesn't mean that they don't appreciate a clear vision but that they don't attach personal meaning to their work. There is a difference in enjoying what you do and finding meaning in what you do.

To say that everyone needs to find meaning in their work to truly excel in their work is incorrect. Meaning has to come from within. If a manager can convince, through whatever means, a person welding in a water-filled ditch that their work will better society or have a meaning for others AND the target has a personality that desires to attach meaning to their work (or can be convinced) than the added value of meaning will enhance the person's work experience. Otherwise the attempt to create meaning may fail.

I do believe that managers, especially transformational ones, should attempt to create an added value of meaning to the work-place. It has positive repercussions for the employees and the organization as happy employees are productive employees. Even if the attempt to create meaning passes over a few the overall affect will be a net gain.

Go Go Transformers

Recent research into transformation leadership and how it relates to the remote work environment has been summarized in a recent article. It is an interesting new direction for leadership study and application. At its root, researchers are attempting to discover if transformational leadership can be executed via email. Previous studies focused on face-to-face interactions and in the modern workplace this isn't always possible.


Without going into a lengthy discussion of transformation leadership I will link its key definition here via Wikipedia: (bold print is mine)


"Transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower's sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them and makes them interested; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that enhance their performance.


The full range of leadership introduces four elements of transformational leadership:

Individualized Consideration – the degree to which the leader attends to each follower's needs, acts as a mentor or coach to the follower and listens to the follower's concerns and needs. The leader gives empathy and support, keeps communication open and places challenges before the followers. This also encompasses the need for respect and celebrates the individual contribution that each follower can make to the team. The followers have a will and aspirations for self development and have intrinsic motivation for their tasks.

Intellectual Stimulation – the degree to which the leader challenges assumptions, takes risks and solicits followers' ideas. Leaders with this style stimulate and encourage creativity in their followers. They nurture and develop people who think independently. For such a leader, learning is a value and unexpected situations are seen as opportunities to learn. The followers ask questions, think deeply about things and figure out better ways to execute their tasks.

Inspirational Motivation – the degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is appealing and inspiring to followers. Leaders with inspirational motivation challenge followers with high standards, communicate optimism about future goals, and provide meaning for the task at hand. Followers need to have a strong sense of purpose if they are to be motivated to act. Purpose and meaning provide the energy that drives a group forward. The visionary aspects of leadership are supported by communication skills that make the vision understandable, precise, powerful and engaging. The followers are willing to invest more effort in their tasks, they are encouraged and optimistic about the future and believe in their abilities.

Idealized Influence – Provides a role model for high ethical behavior, instills pride, gains respect and trust." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_leadership)


I know Wikipedia isn't scholarly but I am only including the definition of transformational leadership for ease of discussion. Below is a series of links that also define this type of leadership if you would like more reading on that topic. Yes I know APA doesn't hyperlink but work with me here.


Cherry, K. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/a/transformational.htm


Hall, J., Johnson, S., Wysocki, A., & Kepner, K. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hr020


Moving on


Research found here has hypothesized that transformational leadership (TL) can be executed via a remote method. The research team devised a series of tests using fabricated emails and gauged subject reaction to them via survey. This validated the hypothesis that job satisfaction could be increased with transformational methods. A second study found that transformational and intellectually stimulating messages embedded in email correspondence also increased job satisfaction. and motivation.


Initial Initial results are indicating that it is possible to utilize the proven potential of TL via electronic correspondence. However like many things leadership it is difficult to separate what individual motivators are used internally by the followers. Additionally, these were quantitative studies and as such only show if the hypothesis was proven or not proven. In this case it was, but it does not show why it was proven. I think a qualitative study would be most useful as a follow-up.

As the workplace becomes more geographical separated many team members may never have face-to-face interactions. It is vital that managers are able to motivate and inspire using electronic means. Managers may use different styles when communicating via email than they would in-person. A manager may appear cold via email but is actually quite the opposite. Managers need to be aware of how they are communicating via the written word. It will become imperative that managers become effective at the written word as well as the spoken word. 

And who said the internet killed grammar?
 

Asas

A511.4.4.RB-Contingency Theory

This week the discussion turns to contingency theory and managerial traits. Many of the early forays into the academic world of leadership focused on defining what traits make a good manager and how a manager behaved in certain situations and that behaviors effectiveness. It appears to me that early studies seemed to start with an idea and work towards validation of that idea. As in, there has to be something that makes a leader a leader and these traits must be present in order for a leader to come forth. According to Yukl this has been supported by multiple studies which begs the question that how many studies are needed to determine leaders need self-confidence? Snark aside there are traits that tend to come out when leaders are studied. Aside from the obvious ones such as self-confidence there are competencies such as emotional intelligence and internal loci of control that are also present. Other traits such energy level and stress tolerance and integrity are pretty self-explanatory. Short version: you need those things. Also, ambition (broken down by power motivation and achievement orientation) is important. Effective leaders tend to want to be leaders.  Surprisingly, narcissism can be of benefit to a leader but only if properly contained and applied. When a leader brings adoration upon his or her self by also empowering others narcissism can be positive. 

In my view emotional intelligence (EI) is critical for leaders. A leader needs to understand how his or her biases, emotional state, prejudices, and state of mind are affecting decision making. Leaders need to be able to work with many different people in many different capacities. In order to make sound decisions a leader needs to understand how these varying people and emotions are affecting the leader internally. It takes a great deal of self awareness to be highly emotionally intelligent and this is where I try to continually improve. I don't consider myself a master of EI by any stretch by any means but I'm getting there.

Where I am strong is self-confidence and ambition. I came through the crucible of homelessness to become an air traffic controller and a college graduate. That gives a person a bit of confidence. I made plenty of mistakes but I have tried to learn from them and move forward with my new knowledge. Some of my life lessons have been very painful but I moved forward and tried not to repeat them. Once again, not always successful but I have learned to trust myself. Ambition is good when one tries to rise those around him as well. I never want my ambition to come at the expense of others. I think leaders need to be ambitious but also need to develop and mentor subordinates. This was a lesson I also learned the hard way but that just means it stuck.