Chapter 4 Stamina

Stamina is, I think, people usually overlooked. However, leader is the person that comes with great pressure, responsible and stress that caused by it.  

As in chapter 2 "Symbolism and Personal Example" shows, leader especially at the edge need to be an innovator or role-model to overcome the harsh situation. Since being innovative or role-model are, in the most of the case, need to work harder than other members and do things that otherwise no one will do, leader is the first person to feel anxiety, pressure and responsible.

So then, why leader cannot loose stamina even they are in such harsh situation?

The author showed us two reasons for this.

1. "Fail to maintain your own stamina, and then you will be unable to summon the energy needed to reach The Edge."

2. "Others in your team will take their cues from your behavior"

I was persuaded by these two ideas. Especially the second one shows that leader should care themselves in order to manage the team or group.

At the latter part of this book, I found “summit fever” to be an interesting topic. I really love the part that talks about "summit fever". 

He said leader should take their team and one's stamina in to consideration and build safeguards to ensure the team to keep their perspective and recognize when to rest, back up and dive. 

The example of Scott that we learned in our class, I think, is the one that caught in summit fever. They could rest or back up to maintain their stamina, but they choose to proceed to the trip which eventually meets a great loss. 

This chapter reminds us to be calm when engaging on task or near the goal which is crucially important to achieve task successfully.  

 

Be careful at "summit fever"

My Research Proposal

Research Proposal (RW class)

Xiaotian Zhao

"Leaders face the most difficulty not when they follow the trend that they had or try to keep situation as it is, but only when they try to change something or making transformation. This is called change management.

This paper will analyze why change management is the most difficult while indispensable for management, how to successfully accomplish changes with minimum conflicts by introducing several tactics, and finally bring you some example of leaders who successfully accomplish the change and make their company the first runner in the age of high competition. Changing management is difficult simply because you have to make people agree before you take action. Which means you have to persuade people into buying your plan. However, transformation or change is not the thing that people will be willing to take, this connects to the nature of human being to stay them as it is. In the most of cases, changes require great amount of work and also need to take responsibility when they failed. However even considering the difficulty we have to face when taking transformation, we still need to take changes. Customer demand are constantly changing; Not taking changes or taking risks will lose the good chance to success or even fail as company since they didn’t follow the trend. Konosuke Matsushita will be the good example of this. Then the question goes, how can we achieve successful changes. John Kotter says we need 12 steps to do so.His book”Leading changes”. However Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller have the different view on this. They points out that changing or transformation is not always good to the company but will also make employee confused which lead to failure of management. These sources indicates that whether making changes is still debatable and need to be find out more in my research. "

Overall I love my topic change management, because that is the one, I think, which stays the core part of management and connects to all the things we learned in class. If you also have the same topic as mine, leave a comment and I would love to share information and cooperate.

Chapter 3 Optimism & Reality

This chapter mainly talks about how to acquire optimistic thoughts even when one is facing adversity. He talks about that talking to oneself, sharing the optimistic view, creating optimistic environment. However the most important thing to notice, I think, is after you get the optimistic perspective: how you apply them to find solution to the problem. In this post I would like to focus on what specific optimism style is required as leader.

   Optimism that we might come up in our daily life are quite different form what is required in the leadership. In our daily life, the word "optimistic or optimism" is used to represent a person who take every thing  as good, only care about the bright side, thoughtless or someone like him(see the figure below).

   However, the one that is required in leadership is "Optimism that Stay Grounded in Reality": who have optimistic view and bring optimistic idea or proposals, but they are based on reality as well. Now the questions goes to "Why they have to stay in the ground?"
   That is simply because, being "super optimists",happiest when he/she is facing the most hardship, won't bring any solution to change the situation on fix the problem. Even such people have a plan, if that is out of reality, then it won't be shared by others and more over fail to collaborate, because their idea or perspective is exceeded most people's understanding and value. As the authors says "Optimism is important leadership quality, but denial is deadly", Optimism with exceeded reality is only harm to the organization.

To the conclusion, although as the author says the duality of Optimism and reality is difficult, we need to use this "optimism" carefully and wisely to fight back even the disastrous situation.
　　　　　　

After reading chapter 2 "Symbolism and Personal Example"

"mobilizing energy through personal example and with clear, concrete images and symbols."

-Dennis N.T.Perkins

   Before I write this post, one thing stuck in my head and kept me from understanding this chapter. I understood that if a leader are seen as symbol or role model, then his/her action will motivate workers, but the question is “Should a leader be a person to show off their power to make him/her visible or special?”  I had a sense of objection to this showing off actions, since that action is opposite to my admirable one who wish to cooperate and choose to stay equal. However, after some reading and discussion. I find myself misinterpret the message of being symbol from this chapter. I would like to share this little finding here.
   The biggest fault of my interpretation was the case that this chapter is discussing.  It bases on situation that people are at the edge which means an urgent situation. However what I thought is much mild one, in which every workers are energetic and have high motivation to their work. In such occasion, leaders are not very needed to be symbolized. Going back to the urgent case that the book is discussing, leaders should act strongly and take the job as role model. That is because people are afraid of failing, especially when it is at the edge in which one misstep will be a crucial to their outcome, less people will willingly to voluntary take such risk. In such time, the only hope to change people's mind is only left to someone who can motivate people by making "right speech", dramatize the challenge with action, visible so that people can learn. It is the leader who can do all these things and in this way, people can move forward.

    After these things in considerations, giving the right speech, using vivid symbols, being visible as leader comes meaningful to me. I hope this finding will also help other readers agree on the idea of leader as "Symbolism and Personal Examples."

Hi, everyone!
I've found a very useful website that may become useful for getting the concepts of leadership. For example, you can go to "Leadership Skills", then you will find many article explaining what is leadership about and also topics such as power, emotional intelligence, facing crisis.
I hope this website will also help you find your essay topic.
Link: Mind Tools (Management training and leadership training, online)

website screen shot

What defines you?

Hi, guys! This post is not directly connected to leadership, but I think this story or speech deserves to take much gravity than leadership, since it will applied to all the people.
 In TED, I've found a great speech by a women named Lizzie Velasquez.  She is one of three people on earth who born with unusual genetic ailment which prevent one to gain weight. Never getting over 62 pound (28kg) and sightless in her right side, she had hard time on her . One day she found herself  being posted on Youtube with tag saying "The Worlds Ugliest Women" and with  heartless comments by some of the viewer, she felt depressed and hopeless for a while. However, she changed her attitude to what she is. In the speech she said "Am I let people calling me define me as "monster" or "kill it with fire"?""No. I'm going to make my goal, accomplishment, success to define myself. " So, she fight back and stand from hopeless situation by working hard to achieve her goal. I think we got lot to learn from this person. She taught us that even you were put in a harsh situation, by working hard you can bring yourself out of them and don't have to feel any anger, depressing or hopeless.
I would like to share this video with you.
                                                       TED talk by Lizzie Velasquez 

great Leader 1.

Kounosuke Matsushita(松下　幸之助)

Last day on TV, there was a program featuring the life of Kounosuke Matsushita (the founder of Panasonic). I was shocked by the unique personality as a leader that he had and led me to write this post.

We, in the class, learned that great leaders are thoughtful, optimistic and creative.

He applies to all the characteristic above.

He is thoughtful. He loves his employee just like his family, focusing the good side of his people, introduced first lifetime employment system in Japan.  He also famously saying "Developing people should comes first than developing products(ものを作る前にまず人を作る)."

  He is optimistic. He believes that "Bad times have their bright side."  If one goes so well, they don't notice any problem. It is only when things don't go well(bad times) can one find their problems to bring it to right track and develop a better products. 

He is creative. He thinks "Management is perpetual creation." One have have a plan, then they have to create environment or facilities, lastly they hire people. But in order to success, they also have to follow the trend and modify their company. That makes management as an endless creation.    

In conclusion, great or successful leader surely have great similarities between each others. Notice them and apply them to our daily life is definitely change our life, because those leaders also did the same thing as what we are doing.


P.S.
I found a video clip of the TV program that I watched. I hope you will also learn many things from this.
昭和偉人伝・松下幸之助 FC2video