Overall Reflection

 

‘It always seems impossible until things are done.’ This was what it was like to me before attending the Dynamic of Leadership course. After endless days and nights of riding intellectual waves and devoting hours of mental and emotional energy on this course, it finally came to an end. Thank God for everything and now, as we have reached the end of our course, I have recorded my thoughts and reflections of this learning journey.

Do feel free to enjoy reading snippets of my thoughts. 

You may read my weekly reflections here. 🔗

And my overall course reflection here. 🔗 

😏😏

Reflection - Topic 11 Level 5 Leadership

 Topic 11 Level 5 Leadership 

Th concept of Level 5 leadership, created by Jim Collins, is unique as it is based on empirical evidence of a five-year research. Collins’s discovery was based on a hierarchy of capabilities and traits discovered during his study. Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will.

What I have learnt

Level 5 leadership is an essential factor to distinguished a company from good to great, but it's not the  only  one. There are multiple factors  that  deliver  companies  to  greatness, such as the environment, the followers and the market. It takes a handful of considerations to take a team beyond remarkable. 

To become a Level 5 leader, one needs to have the skills and capabilities found in each level of the hierarchy above.

Level 1 : The Highly Capable Individual. Effective productive workers who are talented, knowledgeable and skilled. 

Level 2 : The Contributing Team Member. Workers good at working with others, notably proficient at reaching objectives together with team members. 

Level 3 : The Competent Manager. Competent managers can effectively oversee people and resources, helping to achieve predetermined goals.

Level 4 : The Effective Leader. Effective leaders can steer their companies toward well-defined, compelling goals and ensure that their organisation functioning at high levels of performance.

Level 5 : The Executive. Executives have the unique capability to develop a company’s greatness through what Collins identifies as “a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will.”

🏆Elements of Level 5 Leadership🏆

First Who, Then What

People first, strategy second. Before addressing to tactics and strategies, find the right people for the organisation and get rid of the wrong ones. 

Stockdale Paradox

“Life couldn’t be worse at the moment, and his life would someday be better than ever.” -- Admiral James Stockdale. Accept difficult situations and believe that one day we will rise. 

The Hedgehog Concept

A comparison between the abilities of a hedgehog and a fox, derived from an essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. Foxes are characterised as knowing a little about a lot of subjects, while hedgehogs know a lot about a single thing.  Be like a hedgehog, focus on essentials and ignore the rest. Know capabilities, effectiveness and passion of people and organisation. 

Technology Accelerators 

Carefully invest in technologies that help contribute to its mission. 

A Culture of Discipline

Disciplined people eliminate the need for hierarchy. Disciplined thought removes bureaucracy. And disciplined action eliminates the need for excessive control. Together, all three result in extraordinary performance.

👍👍👍

Here's what I thought...

Level 5 leadership is the leadership style I admired the most amongst all style. In my opinion, a leader  should have a model to follow despite all the environmental factors and other factors. The Level 5 leadership is such an interesting concept. logical and reasonable. 

As a four-year experience primary school teacher, I think I am now in the Middle Leader Team (MLT) and I am currently on Level 3, trying to reach Level 4. 

Let's start from Level 1. The novice Level 1 me years ago was trying very very hard to just survive without causing any trouble to my colleagues. I am always trying to learn more and equip myself with more knowledge of subject matter and pedagogy skills to be a good teacher to the children and a good team member among my colleagues. 

In time, Level 2 me became more competent working on my own and I was able to help a friend and to complete tasks together with my team. 

There I think I am reaching Level 3. Slowly, I was given more important tasks to lead small groups and complete targets. I learnt attributes of a good leaders, how to work well in SMTs, how to take charge sometimes when necessary. I think I grow to love this already. 

As of this year, I was given more important role. I was assigned as the head of panel for the English Panel. It was an honour but I am feeling a little nervous and a little worried. Am I going to be a Level 4 Effective Leader? How am I going to do this? 

See, being an Level 4 or Level 5 leader doesn't mean that one has to hold super important or super high stake jobs. I can be a Level 5 leader of my small team in my organisation. We will be the little screw that makes the machine works well. 

Other than the above, I was very attracted to the idea of Stockdale Paradox. It describes me in my current 'young life crisis' where I find a lot of things confusing and hard to accept. Life isn't rainbows and sunshine. The perfectionist me feel hard to love this fact that life can be a constant struggle. The melancholy me tells me to sulk in my sorrow. But I must stand strong and continue. To be the leader of my life, I need to take control of my emotions running wild. As the Stockdale Paradox suggest, it is going to be fine in a while. Just take some time, continue to be like a hedgehog, focus and do what we do always. Survive and strive. 💪💪

:)

Reflection - Topic 10 Transformational Leadership

Topic 10 Transformational Leadership

The transformational leadership approach encourages, inspires, and motivates employees to innovate and create the change necessary to shape the future success of the team. 

Here's what I have learnt...

Transformational leadership focuses largely on the leader’s vision rather than on follower attributions. Transformational leaders are known for moving and changing things “in a big way,” by communicating to followers a special vision of the future, tapping into followers’ higher ideals and motives. They seek to alter the existing structure and influence people to buy into a new vision and new possibilities. 

1

Charismatic VS Transformational Leadership

Charismatic Leadership : not wanting to change anything and only focused on themselves than anyone else. 

Transformational Leadership: has basic focus of transforming the organisation and their followers. 

All transformational leaders are charismatic but not all charismatic leaders are transformational.

🏆

To make transformation in a team, a leader often take actions in 4 behaviour dimensions, according to Bass and Avilio. These for dimensions include 4 I's, which are idealised influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation. 

The process of transformation process often starts from 1 making a compelling case for change, follows by 2 inspiring a shared vision, 3 leading the transition and lastly, 4 implanting the change. 

2

Transformational VS Transactional Leadership

Transformational leadership creates an enduring long-term future of organisation with vision-oriented leaders who wants to change the status quo. 

On the other hand, transactional leaders are task and reward oriented and they love creating stability in organisation thus the nature of their leadership style is transitory. 

3

Stewardship VS Servant Leadership

This is an extremely informative topic that gives me a lot of insights about leadership style.

What I thought...

This is an extremely informative topic that gives me a lot of insights about leadership style. 

Transformational and charismatic leadership are like making choices between working own self towards the goal or influencing followers to rally towards a shared goal.  

Comparing transformational and transactional leadership, transformational seemed to work with visions and future while transactional ends when leader-follower relationship ends. 

Stewardship and servant leadership is even more interesting. It involves level of equality and reward between leaders and followers in a group. I am not a big fan of stewardship as I think all should be equal, and reward should be given according to effort, not rankings. 

Talking about transformational leadership, I was reminded of a famous movie character and his characteristics. He is the famous boy who lived -- HARRY POTTER. 

In his long journey battling Voldemort, he never stops believing that good will triumph over evil. He was humble and most of the time, selfless. He organised secretive magic classes to teach and develop leaders to lead the Dumbledore army in one of the episodes. His sincerity towards his goal were shared by many and his influence towards the others were long-lasting and vision-oriented. Team Harry Potter, have common goal to defeat the evil. Harry Potter is undeniably a transformational leader. 

When thinking of my own experiences with these leadership style, I think I enjoyed working under a transformational leader like my previous guru besar. She was a fierce and charismatic lady. Working with her was always like the 'fast and furious🔥🔥'. However, She shared her visions with us and convience us about what we are doing so that we are always working towards the same goal. Although she did not have the best temper in the world, I thought working with her was quite a pleasure because I have learnt a lot under her leadership. To me, being in the 'understand' is very important because everything we do, we do it for a reason. With the reason being crystal clear, only then we will be motivated to pull out full force to it. 

Be like Harry Potter, embrace transformational leadership. :) 

Reflection - Topic 9 Leading Self-Managed Teams

 Topic 9 - Leading Self-Managed Teams

Self-managed team can be a high performance team with full autonomy, when set up properly. 

In this lesson, I've learned about the nature, the benefits, the characteristics of SMT; the stages of group development and distributed leadership in SMTs. 

What I have learned...

I've drawn a mind map while attending the class and studying the notes. Below is the summary of what I have learnt. 

What I thought...

Self-managed team. It sounds very 'atas', pretty complicated. However, when you read more about it, the concept is pretty simple and straight-forward. 

🏁A same goal🏁

👩👨A group of people👨👩

💞Shared leadership responsibility💞

As I have mentioned previously, I do not have any interest being a leader. My passion is with children. Learning about self-managed team is an eye-opener to me. I can blend being a teacher and a leader without sacrificing my passion for teaching or stifling my personal or career growth. As a primary school teacher, I have had several self-managed team experience. I often work with teachers of same level, towards the same goal. 

For instance...

(1) When training a child for a district competition(common goal), a group of teachers (leaders) will share the responsibility to train and get the child (follower) ready. 

(2) Weekly discussion for teaching and learning activities are conducted among teachers (leader)who teach the same year to ensure quality of teaching (common goal). 

There are listless examples happening everyday. That's pretty normal for working adults. 

👦👧👦👧👦👧👦👧

What I felt interested about this topic is to introduce this leadership style into classrooms among children. 

Is it possible to introduce this leadership style into classrooms among children? 

How to nurture young leaders in self-managed teams?

After a quick brainstorm, there's one major point to be considered ... 

If I were to make SMT work among kids, same proficiency kids need to be grouped together. SMT will not work well in mixed-ability group, because children too advanced will naturally take lead while weaker children will happy to be followers. 

If I were to change now, I need to break my mixed-ability group and regroup them according to similar proficiency. I should not be doing this now, because they are used to one another and peer teaching seems to work well among them. 

If I were to make new changes to my grouping system next semester, this may not be a good choice because weaker group in the class will have high chance to be left behind. Unless I have known the class already, and have better way to relocate the weak kids. Also, it would work, if my class is of same ability. 

All these years teaching, I am always thinking of the weak kids and how to help them. Today, learning about SMT broaden my views. I think SMT will definitely benefit advanced learners. With shared goals and a lot of autonomy, I think I will be able to see a lot of creativity from the little ones. 

Although this is still an immature idea, this will for sure be something I consider next semester when a new year starts. 

Discussion Question- How many members should a self-managed team have? I think 4 to 5 is optimum as too many members may hinder good communication. A group too many members will easily have 'passengers' too. 

Discussion Question- What is the role of a champion? I think don't think there will be any champion in a SMT because leadership roles and responsibilities are distributed. Everyone is a champion in a SMT.  

Just a piece of my thoughts. Thank you for reading! 😏

Reflection (Sharing Exp: Talk by Expert)

 

It was a really informative talk regarding leadership and governance for sustainability. 🌎

    Firstly, Dr Wesam emphasised about the environment and how natural capital is degrading. The impact of the degradation has caused a dozens of negative effects including fatal diseases, pollution, and health and natural resources damages. The social and economic impact of climate change is extremely scary as well. Fresh water supply will be limited, productivity of harvest will reduce, sea level will rise, towns will be relocate and more and more scary impacts will come if we do not start changing. With numbers and graphs, we were told about floods and diseases too. When I was listening to the talk, I was so shocked to see so many people suffering due to something that we have done. What is it that we can do? 

    Next,  Dr Wesam brought in the hope for changes. It was shown that the lock down due to the pandemic has brought some positive impact including the earth healing! We can and we should change this situation to ensure sustainable development. To build a better environment, we should practise the three pillars of sustainable economy. 

For better results, small realistic goals are set so that leaders and followers have the same objectives. We can all direct our energy into realising them. Here are the Global Goals: 

Lastly, now that we have goals, we must have a plan... 

I have some thoughts about this...

Let's go into the leadership part. 

What can leaders do in this? 

1- create rules and laws 

2- encourage citizen's participation

3- create more market opportunity

I could think of a few examples.

In Japan, classification of recyclable and non-recyclable waste is a must. Those who do not conform to the law will be fined. This is law.  

Nowadays in Malaysia, plastic bags are banned gradually in chained super markets. They provided 'green points' for those who bring own bag, and charge those who need plastic bags. This is citizen participation. 

In Singapore, water are retreated and sold to the people as drinking water. Factories are set, workers are employed. This is market opportunity. 

When our government and all related authorities have made their effort, 

followers (you and me!) play a huge huge huge part now! 

because, 'Sikit-sikit, lama-lama menjadi bukit'. 

So, what can normal citizens like us (followers) do? 

💓🌍Practise 3Rs 💓🌍

💓🌍Car pool💓🌍

💓🌍Plant trees💓🌍

💓🌍Educate our next generations💓🌍

💓🌍Conserve water 💓🌍

And many many more...

Before I end the reflection, I would like to share a song with you. 

It's a song I've always share with my little ones in school when teaching about the Earth. 

Ta-da! 

That's all for today. 

Here are my prove of attendance. 

I'm going to be an earth warrior too! 💪

🌍💓😇

Reflection - Topic 8 Team Leadership

 Topic 8 - Team Leadership

Team leadership is the management of a group of people brought together to work to achieve a common goal.

Here's what I've learnt...

A group is not the same as a team. A group comprises people who coordinate their efforts, but are independent and have individual accountability, while a team comprises people who share a common goal.

There are 3 types of teams, a self-managed team which comprises members of different departments who works autonomously to achieve a common goal, a cross-functional team which comprises of a multidisciplinary team with members of different expertise who work towards a shared objective, and a functional team which is made up of members with common functional expertise.

Why is teamwork important? The formation of a team produces faster and more innovative decisions, reduces chances of error, promotes constant improvement and generates greater contentment. However, in a team, an individual may feel the need to conform due to peer pressure, and often not, feel left out. Conflicts are also a common occurrence in a team as different people have different opinions.

This is when a leader comes into play. A leader plays an important role in resolving conflicts, supporting creativity and facilitating group discussions. A team leader should be able to delegate work, assign members to task most suited to their abilities, provide resources needed to complete a task and help members to overcome creative block. An inspiring and supportive leader creates an effective team.

Last but not least, I also learn that in order to conduct a meeting worth everyone's time, a team leader should commence the meeting on time. Start by identify the objective of the meeting, then proceed to get through the agenda, and finally, summarize and review the task. It is always a good habit to end the meeting on time too.

Here's what I thought...

No man is an island. No matter how smart a person is, there's only so much he/she can achieve in his/her lifetime. However, the magnitude of productivity can be greatly enhanced if individuals work together as a team to solve complex problems and achieve common goals together. 

Geese are an excellent demonstration of effective teamwork. Have you ever wondered why geese fly in a v-shape formation? As each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the birds following. This allows geese to reach their destination quicker with less effort. The same principles could be implemented in a team. By working effectively together as a team with all members sharing a common goals, we can achieve greater heights.

I hope that this little story will help you to see teamwork from a new perspective. :)

 

Reflection - Topic 7 Dyadic Relationships, Followership and Delegation

Topic 7 Dyadic Relationships, Followership and Delegation

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, dyadic is defined as relating to the interaction between two people, and understanding the dyadic theory allows us to better appreciate why leaders change their style of leadership when they are interacting with different subordinates.

In my opinion, this is the hardest and most complicated leadership theory amongst all that I have learnt. 

Here's what I've learnt...

There're 4 stages of dyadic approach, which can be summarised by this figure below: 

Let us dive into each stage and evaluate them in depth. 

1 Vertical-Dyadic Linkage (VDL) Theory identifies: 

(1) how a leader develops one-to-one relationship with followers, and 

(2) how a leaders creates in-groups and out-groups.

Note that, this relationship can be developed formally or informally. 

In an in-group (close circle), a people-oriented leadership style is observed where subordinates have strong social ties to their leader. In-groups are people-oriented, possesses high mutual trust, high exchange, two-way loyalty and mutual influence. 

Completely opposite to in-group (distant group), an out-group proposes a strict task-oriented relationship where minimal social tie among subordinates and leader is seen. There's low exchange, lack of trust, not much loyalty and minimal mutual influence. 

Why do we need to understand VDL? Leaders should be aware of dyadic relationship and establish effective leader-follower relationship to avoid creating any out-groups so that productivity of all members can be equally significant. A good leader should aspire to establish relationships with all members, favouritism should be avoided. 

Now that we understand the importance of having the relationship...

2 Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory assumes that 

leaders have limited time, resources, attention, discretion and energy so they use this selectively among followers. Therefore, quality of relationship will be different with different followers. 

High quality LMX means more support, reward, involvement in decision making. It also means great level of loyalty, commitment, respect, affection, mutual trust and mutual liking. 

Low quality LMX means low consideration, formal supervision, less support, coercive influence, compliance, authoritative behaviour and lesser involvement in decision.

Unlike the VDL theory that merely explain on the relationship, the LMX theory focus on the quality of the relationship. 

The LMX Life Cycle Model describes three stages, each explains (1)stranger, (2)acquaintance and (3)maturity. 

That was the quality of the relationship... Now, together as a team...

 

3 Team Member states that 

Effective leaders should aspire to establish relationships with all members, not just a few special individuals.

A team is good. But that is not sufficient...

4 System & Network View discusses that 

Leader-follower relationships are not limited to employees, but include peers, customers, suppliers, and other relevant stakeholders in the broader community. Organisation is system of interrelated parts. Effective leader need to develop effective relationship with other groups and external members to gain support and resources.

Pygmalion Effect

When leader treat followers well enough, the followers will believe that they are doing well. To gain more trust and liking, more loyalty will be poured into the relationship to get higher performance ratings from leader. Then, when results and performance ratings comes again and again, it become a habit for followers to do better and better. That is Pygmalion effect. 

What I thought...

This is an interesting theory. 

Starting from the leader-follower relationship, we discussed more about the quality of the relationship. When the quality of a leader-follower relationship --LMX-- is high, an effective team is formed. Then, it's time to consider the whole environment including all other stakeholders. 

What attracts me most, is that this topic actually talks about ways to become an effective follower. 

A lot of leadership theories focuses on the leader. However, in some point of life, the leader was once the follower. So, how did they 'make it big'? There must be certain attributes that a followers should possess that they can stand out from all the followers and get elected as the leader. 

An effective follower is described as courageous, responsible and proactive. He has to be active and independent. He has critical thinking skills. He makes sensible decisions and solve problems. I was consciously taught about these by my mentor, Miss Sophia, during my IPG times. A good follower can be a good leader, but a good leader may not be a good leader. She told us about how to 'value-add' ourselves to stand out among the crowd.

As a teacher, we are leaders of the classrooms. 

1- Building relationship with children is needed, just as the VDL theory suggests. Those who are friendly will be our in-group while those who are shy and quiet may unintentionally be in the out-group. 

2- With our limited resources and attention, as the LMX theory proposed, we may selectively put our attention on a certain group of people. 

What do we need to reflect and do is that: Are we fair towards every kids? How should we divide our limited resources and attention so that all children feel important? How do we develop positive dyadic relationship with our little ones, from stranger to acquaintance to maturity? 

3- Now that we realise how relationship works, we can focus on making us an effective team. Without favouritism and out-groups, a good team with trustworthy relationship can be made. 

4- Now that a good team is made, how do we work well within the organisation? As the leader of the little ones, I brought kids to make projects, take pictures and find ways to connect with all related persons outside the classroom. 

So, this is how dyadic relationship works between teacher and their little ones. 

Interesting enough for me. What do you think about dyadic relationship? 

:)