My day as a leader-- self audit

Back to the paper airplane construction activity, I think I did pretty well on organizing the company to produce products that meet our customers requirements. But when competing with my competitors that is when presenting our products and introducing our company to the customers, I felt that I did not do enough work to make our company most appealing to the customer. I noticed that many leader of the other companies did well on making the extra effort to make their products and their companies look good. Namely, naming their products, and basically ways to promote their products and companies. Honestly, I did not thought about all these and I felt that I really should have. As the leader of the company I should do everything possible to make our company more competitive. I have always been a passive person, I used to think that if I just keep on doing what I do, some body would see what I'm doing and appreciate what I do. I think this is also a reflection of my introvert personality. Recently, more and more I learned that I should be proactive, seize the initiative, and express myself out, learn how to promote myself. This ability would be beneficial in job interviews and various business occasions.

My day as a leader-- employee development

In the paper airplane construction activity, I was assigned to be the leader of a group. Given the problem that the market expects products of quality, quantity, precision, and uniqueness. And given the nature of employees that I have in my company, 2 veterans with high competence and low commitment, a new employee with 6 months experience who has little competence and high commitment, and a employee with 1 year experience who has average competence and commitment.
Based on the market expectations and resourced that I had, I decided to have my veterans to be my research and development people. First I asked them to build prototypes for my mass production people to mass produce. And then I gave them freedom to utilize their skills and creativity to design new models, adding modifications to the existing models, and develop new ways of making paper airplane. I applied supportive leadership to my veterans giving them encouragement, freedom, and avoid making them do mechanical and tedious work, to utilize their skills(strength), and tried to build up their commitment(weakness).
And then I had my 6-month-experience employee to be my mass production person. Because during the process of mass produce, our newbie will be able to master the basic paper airplane making skills. Also, the newbie is the number one passionate about folding paper airplane in my company, so he is the best fit for mass production. Although, tedious work might wear down his passion for folding paper airplane a bit, it is still worth it to make him mass produce airplanes for the benefit of the company(quantity) as well as his own good-- building competence.
Eventually, my 1-year experience employee. I let her to participate in every process of the company's operation. She was teaching my newbie the folding skills, while consolidating her own competence. She was an apprentice in the research and development department with my veterans, seeing the company's future, exercise her creativity and hopefully boost up her commitment even more.
In all, I believe the key to employee development is seeing employee's potential and also know their strengths and weaknesses. And by assigning them to different positions, also by applying different leadership upon them, try to utilize their strengths and better their weaknesses.

Mayers-Briggs evaluation and self-audit

Today we did a short version of Mayers-Briggs test, and I thought about the importance of self-audit in working environment and in life. The Mayers-Briggs test says something about a person's disposition, habit and propensity according to the person's dispositions. I believe is it vital for an individual to understand his/her dispositions and know what they are tend to do in certain situations. I think some situations are neutral in nature meaning they do not have bias toward any disposition, and therefore people with various dispositions all have equal opportunity of succeeding in those situations. However, some situations have characteristics that are advantageous to certain dispositions. For example, when socializing, introverts are less likely to be heard by people and get people's attention than extroverts. Some people would say that introverts have their own ways of getting people to know them and getting people to be on their side, and I agree with that. But I believe since one can understand hiss own dispositions and propensity of actions in situations and realize that some time the propensity is disadvantageous to himself, he should rationally modify his behavior in situations to turn things around. Same situation, in a socializing environment, and introvert could force himself to seize the initiative to talk to people and speak up. It is hard to get out of one's comfort zone but it is worth of the pain. Maybe it is nearly impossible for one to alter his/her innate disposition, but I believe actions of people with certain disposition in certain situations can be learned. And that is when self-audit comes in to play. By self-auditing one can see that what has worked for him and what has not. And by analyzing things that have not gone right for him, he can think of what should work in those situations, memorize it and try to act that way if ever get into similar situations again. Gradually, one can form a "conditioned reflex" so that he would automatically respond to situations in a way that he had trained himself to respond. And in that way actions of dispositions "can be learned".

Leading organization with subdivisions.

Recall the lead presentation to high-schoolers activity, our group was divided into subgroups to generate ideas and work on our own parts. This is much like having subdivisions in a large organization. So when every groups' work was on track and Pam came in as our second leader, I observed her leadership role as a leader overseeing all subdivisions.
In every subgroup that we had, there was a subgroup leader. I consider them tech-leaders, they lead their followers/peers, to work on each of their tasks. When dedicating in a certain task it is hard for the groups to consider things on a broader sense meaning on the organizational level. And I believe they do not have to. As a leader overseeing progresses from all the subdivisions, it is his/her job to make sure everything is on track and organize organizational level events to accomplish the organizational goal. By doing so, a leader gave his/her "tech" people freedom to exercise their creativity and tech-skills and focus on their tasks, while keeping the ship heading toward the right direction. What Pam did is she reminded everyone the time we had left till putting every groups work together. And when practicing the presentation all together she made sure that every group knows the order they are going and what we are going to do as a whole like yelling out "Lead" together in the end.
Consider the conceptual and interpersonal skills of a leader, I think a leader's role in an large organization with subdivisions should be like a ship captain and a butler of the organization. The leader should act like a captain, using his conceptual skills to make sure everyone on board is on the same page and guide the ship heading the right direction. The leader should act like a butler, utilizing his/her interpersonal skills to serve his followers by creating the best work environment possible allowing creativity to grow and building harmonious atmosphere among the organization.

Directive and supportive leadership

Recall the leadership presentation to high-schoolers activity, I learned that it is very important for a leader to understand different situations need different styles of leadership for best result. And of course, a leader also need to know either to be more directive or supportive in given situations. Ultimately, apply the best fitted leadership style to situations for optimal achievements.
Directive leadership style is more transactional, focusing on efficiency. Just like during the activity our group leader Kevin started the meeting by getting everybody to know the agenda of the meeting. And by giving clear instructions Kevin divided the group into several smaller groups to think of ideas for what we can do for intro, and the body. Also he emphasized the importance of knowing the audience- high-schoolers and their characteristics like having short attention span, do not like pure academic lecturing, vocabulary limitation? and so on. Thanks to Kevin, all our group members knew what they should be doing right away and we had a quick start.
Supportive leadership style is more transformational, emphasizing effectiveness. Just like when our second leader Pam came in and saw that every subgroup was on top of what they were doing, she chose to let the groups do their own thing. And she just constantly checks with every group and make sure everybody is on the same page and our team as a whole is going toward the ultimate goal.
Therefore, it is the leader's job to acquire skills to perform both types of leadership style. And it is also the leader's job to understand what the organization's goal is at each point and apply corresponding style of leadership for best result.