Personal Leadership Philosophy

Phase 1 of the Personal Leadership Philosophy Paper presented the opinion and supporting information establishing that; leaders are products of opportunity, birth and environment, but of these; opportunity influences great leadership the most. Furthermore, it was discussed that assigned leadership is a cancer to corporate America and this point is illustrated in the following example. While employed at Deloitte and TouchÐ"© Consulting Group (DNT) we engaged ARCO, a major oil and gas company, to develop and implement an email migration strategy that consisted of 1200 Arco users at their subsidiary company, Vaster Resources Inc. In the initial meeting we were introduced to a gentleman, we will call John Smith for the purposes of this paper, and it was explained to us that as part of ARCO culture, leadership opportunities were provided in a formal manner to allow everyone to lead a project. In this case; it was John Smiths turn in the rotation. Within a short time period after starting the project it became very evident that John did not possess the natural leadership abilities needed to manage a group of highly educated and experienced individuals. The project suffered cost overruns, timelines were in disarray, and the project was in a position to fail. We were forced to go to ARCO upper management and explain the situation and proposed a change in leadership to one of the DNT consultants who did posses the leadership abilities needed to make the project a success; this DNT individual happened to be me. I quickly revised timelines, reassigned some team members to different roles and brought the project under control. The result was a major success for ARCO and Deloitte and TouchÐ"© Consulting Group because the project was completed early and under budget because of a change from an assigned leader to a natural leader.

Leadership is based on results, which can be directly related and measured with the perception of the individuals who are directly and indirectly related to a project, company, etc.. with regard to each individual’s leadership abilities. The LPI survey (James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posne; 2003) was a perfect exercise to gage this perception of the individuals we are involved with from numerous points of view (e.g. co-workers, direct reports, clients, managers, etc..). Further review of the LPI data presents some great insights into the perceptions of those involved with my leadership results as compared to the perceptions of those who were directly affected by leadership actions. Several areas were considered in the exercise encompassing model the way, inspire a shard vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart. Each of these five main areas combined created data that will allow for a larger drill down into each section and the resulting picture will paint a portrait of the leader.

Figure 27.1

The LPI identified areas of strength and weakness. The areas identified as weaknesses will provide an opportunity to improve upon and assist in formulating a plan to go forward. The plan will provide the necessary road map to fill in the gaps needed to address the perceptions. The LPI data identified several areas of strength; model the way, and inspire a shared vision were the two practices that stood above the rest as indicated in figure 27.1.

To inspire a shared vision implies the ability to “see vision in every opportunity” and this is important to a successful leader. By walking into a room and envisioning the end success even prior to any work being started is a talent that cannot be taught, but is a leadership trait acquired at birth. The ability to look into the forest and envision each

Figure 27.2 - inspire a shared vision

tree as an important part of the project as a whole and understanding which trees to water, fertilize, prune and/or remove without the benefit of a preordained plan. This trait provides the ability to expand that vision by articulating it to others so that they too can be empowered to understand the big picture and to willingly accept it. This acceptance creates a path that allows for the transfer of knowledge to each individual, under the leaders command, to allow them to absorb the necessary information to perform more effectively as a valuable part of the team. The results of this approach yield the ability to obtain higher goals than previously anticipated by tapping into and elevating the vision of each team member, so that they too realize a higher sense of purpose. The net effect is a more effective member and a more effective team with only the prospects of successes increasing. For example; recently I engaged a small company to create an assessment of their information technology environment. Within a very short time frame it was envisioned as to what the solution should be. This vision was articulated to the client and the response was overwhelmingly accepted and a plan put in place to proceed.

The ability to assign tasks and empowering people with the full understanding that “I would not ask anyone to do something I would not do myself” is a perfect

Figure 27.3 вЂ" model the way

example that the topics presented in model the way. Articulation of vision by leading the way to the established goals is as important an asset as the vision itself. Building a plan to execute the tasks necessary to accomplish the goal envisioned is important. But, building the proper steps and the roadmap for the team to follow is more critical to the success of the project as a whole. Articulating the plan so that all team members understand their respective roles and how those roles interact with overall goal is important to the success of not only the project, but to raising the awareness of each team members importance, from their perspective. By establishing the necessary tools needed by each team member, providing those tools, and then allowing the team members to make decision along the way toward obtaining the goal is critical. In other words; by providing the tools, software for example, that is defined by the team member, reaching mutual agreement on the goal and then allowing the team member to execute the plan with choices of their own is empowering and not controlling. This will result in a much larger effectiveness in the performance of each member and the results will be outstanding. For example; recently, while performing an information technology infrastructure implementation, I overheard two engineers complaining about the work when installing the data cabling. So without mentioning a word I proceeded to start in assisting with the