My Leadership Journey

The business environment is changing rapidly and in many different ways. Globalisation, information technology, the internet, issues of social responsibility are all impacting on the knowledge and skills required by today’s business leaders. MBA programs are expected to assist current and aspiring business managers and leaders to respond effectively to all these challenges. One of the electives units within the MBA program at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business, Leadership II, focuses on individual leadership development, challenging students to see themselves as the most significant factor in their own success as leaders. The unit requires critical reflection of individual characteristics and beliefs. In Leadership II, students are required to reflect critically on this process and the impact of their discoveries on their ability to lead. The assessment items within this course play a critical role in facilitating the process. The assessment moves beyond a measurement of learn...

A review of available literature indicates that an individual areas of strengths provides opportunities for attainment of ideal self, leadership development, and making formidable impacts or contributions (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001; Roberts, et al., 2005; Spreitzer, Stephens and Sweetman, 2009; Bouskila-Yam and Kluger, 2011). The above reasoning favour a strengths-based orientation such as the reflected best self assessment, which is closely linked with extraordinary leadership. However, this position contradicts another school of thought that reasoned that an individual's area of weakness is his greatest area of opportunity (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)-this is a weakness-based self portrait and is closely associated with ordinary leadership. Promoters of a strengths-based orientation argue that the weakness based model may hinder people's chances of making their greatest contributions, which is performing at their best, or having a fair sense of who they are at their best. This position was supported by the reasoning of Roberts, et.al (2005) who argued that a strengths-based approach to personal development assumes that progress towards excellence is not a function of improving on one's weaknesses, but is a function of leveraging on one's strengths. The objective of this paper is to assess my personal views and those of several others on the strengths, contributions, and enduring talents that I have displayed when I was at my best (i.e. best self stories), in comparison with the identified weaknesses, opportunities and gaps from NEO-PDR individual report and GELI (Global Executive Leadership Inventory) feedback reports. The game plan is to identify personal, relational and situational enablers and blockers, and proffer actionable steps toward filling the gaps in order to attain my ideal self, re-energize my work life through job crafting, and enhance my self-directed learning abilities, as "leadership and learning are like siamese twins. 2

2011

Lawrence Technological University has implemented a required four year leadership curriculum for all undergraduate students based on the University's Leadership Education Goals and the Relational Model of Leadership. This investigation is assessing individual components of the curriculum, which include courses and co-curricular elements, as well as the impact of the curriculum as a whole. The primary tool for assessment is the author developed Leadership Self-Perception Assessment Instrument. Through pilot testing, the instrument has been proven to be temporally stable and internally consistent. The instrument will aid in answering many research questions which cover how students perceive their own leadership traits and skills, whether students are demonstrating growth in confidence in those skills through each component of the curriculum, the impact of the entire four-year leadership curriculum, and the modifications necessary to the curriculum to adequately address the student learning outcomes. Therefore, the instrument will be used for both formative and summative assessment and facilitate a longitudinal study of the leadership growth of the students. A pilot test of the instrument revealed that the students perceived an improvement in some leadership skills upon completion of one component of the curriculum. This paper will focus on pilot test results as well as set the stage for the longitudinal investigation.

Journal of Leadership Education, 2009

The number of leadership education and development programs has increased substantially over the past few decades. However, deliberate assessment strategies aimed at understanding actual student development have not kept pace. The primary reason for this limitation likely involves the challenges that are associated with this type of assessment. When examining leadership one is not only interested in the mere acquisition and retention of knowledge, but the actual application and practice of such knowledge. There are a host of challenges that stand in the way of such assessment. In the present paper we call attention to several of these challenges in an effort to understand what effective leader education assessment could look like. Additionally, we offer two examples of how intentional assessment strategies can be implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of leader education and development.

College & Research Libraries News

How to use your life experiences to become a better leader F rances Maloy, ACRL president, asked me to write this column after she heard me deliver a presentation at the 2004 Frye Leadership Institute titled, "Can you lead with the heart without taking it to heart?" After giving her invitation some thought, I came to the conclusion that librarians do not need another treatise on leadership. At the local bookstore, entire aisles are devoted to book titles promoting everything from The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun 1 to the Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus. 2 Amazon. com alone offers more than 16,000 books with "leadership" in the title. In an article published in this journal last year, author Eric Shoaf searched Library Literature Online and came up with close to 600 articles on leadership. 3 Many of these works subscribe to the popular presses' quickfix formula of following stepbystep directions that lead to becoming a better, albeit generic, leader Missing from this vast array of "cookie cutter" leadership wisdom is advice on how to glean and mold your own life experiences into a personalized leadership philosophy. This nontraditional approach to leadership takes into account past experiences, current competencies, and future potential. It is built upon a foundation of basic common sense, acquired knowledge, personal disposition, a certain amount of tenacity, and a sprinkling of intuition. To begin, you must first conduct an inventory of your life experiences, identifying those that might hold leadership potential. It is the deconstruction-the picking apart-of these experiences to reveal your underlying values and beliefs that will translate into a customized set of leadership principles. While it would be impossible for me to author an article based on the leadership principles that you bring to the table, I can describe some examples gleaned from my own life experiences. These fall into fi ve categories: perspective, teamwork, creativity, observa tion, and process.

I am delighted to introduce this important report. For the first time, we have detailed information about what is happening with leadership development throughout the public, private and not for profit sectors in Scotland. While progress has been made, there is clearly much that still needs to be done. In our view, effective leadership is of vital importance to the future success of our economy. We at ABS are committed to developing robust research programmes that will help organisations develop better leadership and better leadership development practices. For us, however, research is a guide to action. We are therefore also committed to providing world class leadership development programmes. A series of events has already been held, and more are in prospect. We are also building partnerships with other Universities and key leadership academics in Scotland and from throughout the world. This report is intended to promote further dialogue about the way forward. We would encourage you to talk to us about your responses to its findings and recommendations, about your needs, and about how we can work together to achieve what we all want -the kind of leadership in Scotland that will help us to thrive and prosper in the 21st century.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

In this introduction to a book on leadership development, we argue that leaders in the 21 st century need to recognize that building their organization's leadership capabilities is going to be a major differentiator for future success. We emphasize that organizations that do not have properly structured leadership development processes in place will be at a disadvantage. Organizations that take leadership development seriously outperform the competition. Furthermore, we also put forth that as the world is changing, leadership is no longer defined by what a single leader does (the "Great Man" trait theories) but by the ability to collaborate, motivate and to manage networks. In this day and age of highly diverse teams, matrix structures, and global organizations, the talent in network building is key to creating collaborative teams and a boundaryless organization. We suggest that due to the changing nature of organizations-a more distributed view of leadership will be needed thus shifting the focus from the traditional single leader to an intricate and complex web of leaders who possess a range of abilities and experiences necessary to ensure that the leadership function is carried out to the benefit of the wider organisation. From what we have learned from our own experience, we argue that the best approach to developing leaders is through various forms of self-assessment, action learning, and apprenticeship activities. Furthermore, with the emergence of the knowledge economy, we explore the fact that companies are now playing an increasingly active role in the continued education of their own workforce-one example being the creation of corporate universities. In this context, we also discuss the leadership development 'toolbox' that is needed to make leadership development activities a success. Some of the more commonly used tools in this toolbox include classroom lectures, leadership exercises, an outdoor adventure training, case analyses, simulations, and 360-degree evaluations (which is basically a technique involving the evaluation of leader by his/her boss, peers, subordinates and the leader himself/herself).