Question

Step 1: Identify a true-life situation requiring leadership in your personal or community life. Examples include raising a family and leading a task force or team.

Step 2: Answer the following questions. The Combination Lock—The Leadership Equation Describe your leadership traits, behaviors, qualities, and style. Describe the characteristics of your followers. Describe the situation in terms of time and circumstances. Are the people and conditions right for you to provide leadership? The Ignition Key—The Power of Vision What is your vision—what do you want to accomplish? How will your picture of the future focus and energize others? Why would you provide leadership in this situation—for power, achievement, or affiliation? How strong is your interest in providing leadership? The Golden Key—The Importance of Ethics Do you base your actions on moral principles, regardless of personal loss or gain, and without regard to social influence? Describe your values in terms of honesty, respect, concern for others, and the like. Do you have conviction and courage so that others will follow you? The Front Door Key—The Empowerment of People What authority do you have? Do you possess the power of position? Do you view leader- ship as the opportunity to serve others? What will you do to empower people? What steps will you take to develop a high-performance workplace? The Vault Key—Leadership Principles What principles of leadership will you practice that will help your followers be effective? What will you do to keep work morale high? What will you do to develop communication, teamwork, and a one-team attitude? The Skeleton Key—Understanding People Do you understand the nature and needs of the people you lead? What are their motiva- tions? What are your own reasons for doing what you do? What will you say or do to per- suade others to take action? Do you value and utilize diversity as a strength? The Multiplication Key—Multiplying Effectiveness How will you increase your leadership effectiveness? Are you willing to delegate duties and authority to others? Who will you assign to do what by when? Are you effective in meet- ing the needs of and achieving results with the different personalities reporting to you? The Master Key—Developing Others What will you do to attract and keep good people? Do you have the ability to train and develop others? Do you have the ability to help people through change? Do you focus on exploration, responsibility, and commitment, versus denial, resistance, and the attitude trough? Do you model and reinforce the characteristics of a hardy personality? The Score Key—Performance Management Do you set high goals, reinforce good performance, and correct performance problems? What are your strengths and weaknesses in the areas of statesmanship, entrepreneurship, and innovation? Do you have, or are you developing, the paradoxical qualities of personal humility and strong resolve?

Step 3: What is your prediction of the outcome? To what extent are the nine keys of leadership present in this situation? Whether you would be hero, teacher, or ruler as a leader, how successful will you be in lighting the path and encouraging others to follow? Will your ideas and actions show the way and influence the behavior of others? Explain.

Answer 1

This should more be reflective about who you are rather than who I am. Nonetheless…here goes!

I am associated with a school for the visually impaired and I work as a school administrator. However, my role is not limited to administration. I handle everything from convincing local community to support our cause, liaison with government authorities to secure grants, hunt for private sponsorship and also manage the faculty staff and student (or their parents’) concerns.

The Combination Lock—The Leadership Equation

Leadership traits include

Awareness: Since I deal with various stakeholders on a daily basis, I am aware of where they are coming from, their issues and concerns and the way they perceive things. Understanding this distinction helps me to interact with them in an efficient manner. There have been instances wherein I had to intervene between two conflicting groups and the only reason I could resolve things amicably was because I was sensitive to the opposing parties conditions. Working out a middle path becomes that much easy then.

Decisiveness: As a leader, there have been cases when I have had to take tough decisions. The key is to not have second thoughts and stand through the consequences.

Accountability: As a leader, I feel that I should be held accountable for any wrong that I may have done. To ensure this, I have an open door policy wherein my colleagues can walk in any time discuss any issues that may have with me.

The Ignition Key—The Power of Vision

My vision is to ensure that children who are visually impaired do not face any discrimination in the society and are self sustained in their future. Since most of the support staff are from the same neighborhood, the same goal is shared by everyone. Hence the entire approach is collaborative.

The Golden Key—The Importance of Ethics

Every dealing in our institution is based on the highest code of ethics and support staff and me included have ample clarity in doing things only legally. There was a publisher of Braille books who was intent on securing a deal with us through unfair means-we were strictly against the same (even though the deal would have benefitted us financially).

The Front Door Key—The Empowerment of People

I have the authority to make key decisions in terms of budgetary expenses, faculty recruitment and admissions. Leadership, to me, is more about having a collaborative approach towards everything. If I make my colleagues empowered by including them in many decision making processes, they feel that they are included in the same and hence they try harder to achieve our shared goals.

The Vault Key—Leadership Principles

There are several measures that we take to keep our team motivated and effective. We have morning meetings everyday wherein we discuss the objectives for the day. We have monthly meetings where support staff, following a rotational policy, give a presentation of the failures of the month and other members offer their solutions. Whilst monetary incentives are rare, we ensure that staff is offered other kinds of incentives such as bi-weekly visits to places on interest in the city.

The Skeleton Key—Understanding People

Understanding people is a complex process and hence a continuing process. No amount of textbooks can ever theorize how a human being would behave in a certain situation (if only there were algorithms that defined our behavioral outcomes). Hence having a permanent line of communication always helps. I believe the motivation for my support staff is synchronized with mine, that is to uplift the condition of the visually impaired children.

The Multiplication Key—Multiplying Effectiveness

The profiles of the support staff (except for the faculty members) are very fluid and hence duties are delegated as per the strengths of that particular individual. This ensures that no one feels monotonous in their job roles. One person on a Monday may go to government officials to seek funds and the same person on a Tuesday might be handling the admissions process.

The Master Key—Developing Others

I think the concept of job rotation (as mentioned above) really helps in developing my staff in having experience in various roles and domains. In addition to this, regular training is given to faculty staff, since teaching to visually impaired requires special skills.

The Score Key—Performance Management

I wouldn’t say the goals we set are too high or too low. What sets us different is that employees write their own goals for the year. These are more often that not SMART goals. The paradox of being humble and also wield strictness is of course difficult to master, however the effort continues.