3 - Leadership Excellence - Randy Rask

Leadership Excellence

Randy Rask

Reference:

Wheatley, Margaret J. Leadership Excellence. Oct2006, Vol. 23 Issue 10, p8-9. 2p.

Theme:  How leadership works in the world.  A leader's role is to create stability and control.  The article relates leadership to disasters

Summary: 

-           Margaret J. Wheatley created a leadership "new science" of leadership that people began to question.

-          She states that the people questioning her had the wrong perception of how the real world works.  People tend to relate people and organizations to machines because we all do what we are told therefore organizations can be ran like clockwork

-          These people believe that motivation comes from fear and rewards.  Compassion and generosity are not applicable.

-          Margaret states that this is not how the real world works.  The real world demands that we learn to cope with chaos, learn what motivates people, and adopt strategies that lead to order and not more chaos. 

-          All people have a sense of how to self-organize.  This evokes creativity and leads to results and creates a strong and adaptive system. This also creates stability and control which is what a leader's job is

-          She then relates this new science of leadership to disasters. 

-          The first thing people do in a disaster is want to help.  People pool their resources and create solutions to problem right there on the spot.  They work for days with no rest. This is the self-organizing that she speaks of.

-          These efforts, however, are often halted by officials who insist that this is not the proper way to do things and that they need to follow protocol.  But, these officials are also imprisoned by rules that they need to follow and cannot act on their own.  This causes an uncertainty of who is in charge. 

-          During the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans, the people and the officials had this exact problem and it was very difficult for anything to get done.

-          But, in the Gulf Coast, people began to self-organize.  Although people acted freely, there was a mutual intent on what was going to happen in order for the chaos to end.

-          She states how "senior leader" have a difficult time acting this spontaneously.  Power and policy steps in the way of this more often than not.  Courage is needed in order for help to be given.

-          So, for formal leadership to work, the leaders need to have confidence that the people that they send out to do certain jobs know how to handle it and can invent their own solutions.  Leaders need to expect and value these efforts. 

-          Leaders can rely on human compassion, caring, and creativity, and self-organizing skills to hand self-organizing skills to isasters  the people that they send out to do cert the  proper way to do things and that they neeelp have a big impact after disasters.

Application to Lesson Topic:

Certain skills such as knowledge and experience are very important in forming a good leader.  Leaders, however, need to realize that there are other people and organizations that know what they are doing.  Therefore, a leader can let them handle certain situations so that they do not have all of the creativity and planning workload on themselves.

Application to Emergency Services:

This relates to emergency services because a good leader in emergency service would be benefited by letting other people and organizations be creative when responding to things such as disasters.  Although it is important for the leader to know what is going on, it can be much too overwhelming for them to handle everything themselves and this could ultimately hinder response efforts.