Reflective Analysis on Leadership

In many years running businesses, there is one thing I have consistently experienced, and that is, leaders need to convince others of the merit of their ideas, and engage them into actions toward that vision, inspiring and motivating. However, along the way, there were many situations that I have struggled to overcome obstacles, which has led me to rethink about leadership as a dynamic process.

For the past 10 years I have been on a journey to learn from leaders who are able to find the best in themselves and in turn inspire, engage, and mobilize others, even in the most demanding circumstances, and in fact leaders that get the best results are those who have the capability to adapt to changing circumstances (Obolensky 2010). Besides, I have perceived the importance of formal learning, by which theoretical support allowed me to develop a critical understanding of leadership in organizational contexts, and more important, it helped me to develop insights that undoubtedly contributed to my growth as a person and as a leader.

This essay presents a reflection on my personal journey and a critical analysis of leadership, based on my work experience for over 10 years in leadership positions combined with my formal education. Here I chronicle the development of my thinking on leadership, discussing the dynamics between formal and informal leadership structures and leadership as a state of mind.

Over the last decade, the flux of organizations and people, with different culture and values, has increased considerably. Globalization has created a world market for skilled professionals. International corporations have been among the first to take advantage of this globalism by restructuring their approach to their workforce and their way of doing business. Hence, in a world where the differences of distance, culture and language are of less and less relevance, leaders have to be more and more contextual, finding meaning in work, converting emotions such as fear or stress into opportunity, leveraging connections and community, acting in the face of risk, and sustaining the energy that is the life force of change. Heifetz (1998) suggests that only contextual leaders are able to make and implement decisions to help individuals and organizations adapt and thrive in complex and competitive environments. Indeed, in this complex living system, leaders must be visionary, creative, inspiring, innovative, and courageous to explore new opportunities (Dubrin, Daglish & Miller 2006). The ability to lead effectively is a rare quality, and it has become more and more difficult to find genuine leaders.

Despite the anti-leadership argument, in which it is defended that leaders does not influence organizational outcomes (Dubrin 2010), I strongly believe that the individual leadership style is an essential fact in organizational performance. Furthermore, when considering the impact of leadership, and how to improve the leadership culture, it is crucial to deliberately analyze all the key factors that may influence outcomes, evidencing the need of ongoing adjustments and synchronizations between every component of the organization’s internal and external environment (Hollenbeck and Hall 2004).

One of the events through my career that have shaped my perspective on leadership was when I worked through the merging of two companies, in which operations were shut down and transferred to the acquiring company, and many people lost their jobs. Contractor and Lorange (1998) argue that interactions between two companies can be complicated especially when there is lack of knowledge of the capabilities of each business.

Working as operations manager at that time, my role was to elaborate a long-term strategy for the growth of key business areas from process and technology perspective. Thus, I started concentrating in identifying problems and developing solution for them. However, unfortunately, I soon realized that my engagement in embracing new ideas was not aligned with the interest of some shareholders and even with some managers. Burnes (2009) suggests that the relationship among stakeholders is crucial to determine and control the strategic direction and performance of any organization.

I confess that I was very enthusiastic to be an operation manager of a big company. In my mind, I was there to bring strategic changes to the business and I could not see any impediment to develop great projects. But truly, this was not the case. The new company was highly bureaucratic and its decision-making processes were extremely slow. Staff did not have access to their managers for direction and many projects were not being completed. Situations that demanded urgent decisions simply failed because there was no clarity as to who had decision-making authority. Additionally, many meetings where called to make the same decision, because often one of the key persons was not present, and the group could not discuss the issue. I gradually perceived that there was no engagement of the top management in the decision-making processes, and also it seemed to me that, despite the organizational belief of collaboration, there were no discussions and no knowledge sharing. Ireland and Miller (2004) state that the decision making process requires constant refinement of knowledge gained from previous experiences. Moreover, formal analysis of techniques, behaviours, personal characteristics and power politics are all important parts of the decision making process (Blake 2008).

While I was brought into the new company to help in the development of innovative operations strategies, I realized that interest in changes was driven solely by the immediate short-term demands of specific clients or executives, not by what could really impact the status quo.  Thus, I decided to write to the President of the company pointing him the problems in the way we were working and it ultimately resulted in a reorganization, in which I became an internal consultant. The President, my grandfather, was a genuine leader; he was passionate about the business and the people involved in its activities. But for him, and I agree, the fact of being relative does not qualify anyone to be a good leader. Of course my grandfather gave me the opportunity to do something bigger, however my passion and attitude undoubtedly were decisive to start my career as a leader. In fact, passion motivates self-expression, providing a deep foundation in values (Bass and Riggio 2006). Naturally I become more and more involved in my family’s business.

According to Dubrin (2010) some personal traits of effective leaders are closely associated with task accomplishment such as passion for the work and the people, emotional intelligence, flexibility and adaptability, internal locus of control, and courage.  My grandfather recognized my leadership qualities when I acted as an adaptive leader, setting strategies on both the customer’s needs and the strengths of the company, attempting to bring all of the different parts and people of the organization together to work towards a common goal (Obolensky 2010).

The beginning of my career was extremely difficult, yet significant in shaping my views of leadership. It was a period of a deep self-searching as I left a middle manager position to be part of the board of directors of the company that my grandfather built. I did not see that as a boom in my career, but a big change of my responsibilities to the future of our family. Indeed, this was a period of deep reflection on my sense of identity, personal integrity and my values; a period when I started understanding that leadership involves formulating an exciting vision to direct an organization, dealing with change, inspiration, motivation and influence (Dubrin (2010).

In fact, there are many definitions for leadership, which is largely about inspiring confidence and supporting people through the achievement of common goals. But one of my favorite comes from Sun Tzu in the Art of War: “The way [of leadership] means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger” (Tzu, 2005, p.43). For Sun Tzu, leadership is a strategy that stimulates relationships that involve a shared vision and collaborative actions that transcend personal self-interest, where follower and leader are connected and prepared to both enjoying benefits and taking risks.

I interpret this merging as the beginning of my generation in the company, in which leadership was seeing as a strategy, recognizing the importance of relationships to constantly adjust and synchronize every component of the organization’s internal and external environment (Hollenbeck and Hall 2004). Tozer (2012, p.96) argues that leaders need to be good at ‘system thinking’, which is the ability to analyze activities, moving forwards and backwards along the chain of cause and effect, in order to identify and understand systems.

Additionally, my readings about systems thinking and human communications led me to adopt the principle that more flexibility means more power to exercise influence on the system (Senge et al. 1999). The idea reinforced the importance of self-command, suggesting that the person who has the greatest command on their own behaviour and attitudes is able to exercise the most influence with others. Bass and Riggio (2006) supported this notion emphasizing that transformational change occurs when people choose to change themselves, often by choosing behaviour that is self-sacrificing in nature. I decided to learn to be a person I would admire, and develop my personal flexibility and positive attitude.

Unfortunately, when I think about people and the kind of attitude we have towards our own attitudes, I see far too many people having a half-hearted attitude.  I think we all know that we should have a positive attitude, but we do not fully own the responsibility for that.

I remember my first class in the Army when I was eighteen, the commandant asked us to write down the word A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E and note underneath each letter the numerical place in the alphabet that each letter represents. That class made me understand that, as the result, we are hundred percent responsible for the choice of our attitude, positive or negative.

A leader must possess a positive attitude because it is infectious. This is why I prefer to have the unofficial title of CMIHL [Chief Make It Happen Leader] over my official title in my organization. My official title does not really define much about the way I will choose to do what I am supposed to do in the organization.

In fact, every person on a team has an official job title that defines what they are supposed to do in their job; however, a team value for possessing a positive attitude with a corresponding heart conviction will actually help inspire each person on a team to be someone who will serve others with a positive attitude (Anderson 2001).

The decision to change myself liberated me from self-concept that delivered value from titles and power roles (Gardner 2006).  Besides it drove me to explore leadership outside the mainstream hierarchical power structure that could mandate actions through positional authority. Being part of the board of directors of my family’s company, it really opened my mind and made me feel free to exercise my leadership in a variety of ways. Additionally, it made me to see the business as an intermixed system of relationships, a living organism in a complex living system. Burnes (2009) defends that organizations are no longer perceived as a static system, filled with cogs. They are now regarded as self-organising systems in a complex organizational life support system (Bar-Yam 1997), where it has been incorporated the human social dimension of organizational life (Burnes 2009).

For many times I found myself imagining the ebb and flow of people as they move about their work, all the process of activities that enable this living organism to thrive in such complex environment. Senior and Swailes (2010) suggest that organizations are complex dynamic systems where activities do not happen in a linear manner demanding people’s ability to self-organize.  

I realized that we could be more attentive to the signs of turmoil that very often resulted in a disruption of activities, when minor problems exacerbated others that could become major problems. I saw myself discerning critic of our company processes and operations, attempting to identify the systemic pain point proactively, therefore finding solutions to the pain points before they become chaos.

Indeed I perceived that people do not worry about situations that have not reached yet the pain point, and how a proactive approach could reduce the impact to effectiveness and efficiency of business performance through better processes.    This made me understand that the ability to see and overcome limiting beliefs to jump into a self-transcending construction (Allen et al. 2011), is a crucial skill of leaders who have to decide when to act for best advantage, since knowing accurately when to take actions, will lead to best effects (Needham 2008).

Furthermore, as organizations are increasingly confronted with complexity inherent in this new generation of globalised system (De Wit and Meyer 2010), it is evident that the ability of changing themselves, as well as the adaptability to a changing environment may be decisive to attain and maintain business advantages (Duhaime et al. 2012).

My view about leadership were always firmly aligned with the idea that effective leaders are those who convince others of the merit of their ideas, and engage them into actions toward that vision, inspiring and motivating. Thus, based on my belief I often attempt to express my ideas for the future, and frequently perceived that many others could not think that far, and were not able to see the future I was envisioning. I realized that our managers were failing to align individual actions with long-term goals, which should occur at all levels of the organization (Jaques 2006), not only stimulated by senior executives. Moreover considering the complexity of business environment, people need to be more involved in long-term goals. Relating this strategy to time horizon, Jaques (2006, p. 24) states ‘the picture of the future that people vaguely think and talk about, but can actually deal with, forecast and control by doing things on a scale that they can feel comfortable. My leadership studies gave the opportunity to ‘recognize the range of factors that motivate each employee’ (Chreptaviciene and Starkute 2012, p. 164) and use this to achieve competitive advantage.

Every organization at some point will face disequilibrium. A certain amount of disequilibrium helps fuel change in an organization (Plowman et al. 2007), but too much can cause people to fight, flee or freeze. Likewise, too little disequilibrium does not provoke people to ask uncomfortable questions and make difficult decisions. Companies must find the right balances so that disturbance is productive rather than destructive. Depersonalizing conflict is important to maintaining the right level of disequilibrium (Plowman et al. 2007). Disagreements should be focused on the issues, but it is important to understand the viewpoints of interested parties as well. A culture of courageous conversation should be instilled so people feel free to discuss difficult topics (Mone & London 2010). Thus, disequilibrium is an important state in the dynamics of an organization, and only resonant leaders can provide crucial insights to clarify the situation and address emotional issues.

I was one of the leaders called to speak to the employees immediately after the announcement that some operations will shut down and many people will inevitably lose their job. That was a real test to me. After months of talk about the benefits of the merge, more than 45 people were told that they were losing their job of years. Everyone was devastated. I realized that at that very moment my role was to comfort people and give them hope to continue their lives and so I did it. Thus, I gradually perceived that despite the shocking news, they started trying to find solutions instead of crying. That showed me the power of emotional intelligence and therefore contributed to my personal development.

Boyatzis and McKee (2005) suggest that resonant leaders have the ability to manage the feeling and emotions that motivate groups to achieve goals, evoking strong emotions and inspiring people through their positive thoughts and clear vision. Moreover resonant leaders are alike to have a high degree of emotional intelligence, developing their resonance through compassion, hope, mindfulness, and maintaining their resonance through the process of renewal (McKee at al. 2008).

Additionally, this disequilibrium made me immerge into a deep organizational analysis (Plowman et al. 2007), driving me to the conclusion that our company assessing risks and our leaders were not proactively anticipating and influence changes before problems become critical, which is fundamental as organizations operates in complex adaptive systems (De Wit & Meyer 2010).

In fact, leadership is a continuous process that enables knowledge sharing and promotes the maintenance of good intelligence moving through the organization (Dubrin 2010). Hence, I understood that organizational structures exercise strong influence on leadership, as ineffective structures in the systems are not able to promote the development of employees’ capabilities into their work and communication flow (Jaques 2006). Further, leadership should be used to generate more leadership deep in the organization, because organizations are highly interdependent and it may not be the executive team alone that identifies the best way into the future (Jaques 2006).

Another situation that I experienced and really contributed to my thinking about leadership happened when I started working in this company as an operations assistant manager. At that time, studying production engineering, I was very passionate about processes and technology, and so I identified that our company could invest more in a system to better control our operations as well as improve communication between our branches. Everyone saw my suggestions as unrealistic therefore, despite my convincement about the benefits that it could bring to my family’s business, my ideas were not considered. Nowadays, I see my company always engaged in operations improvement, as without updated technology in this complex living system it is impossible to thrive.

This experience reinforced the principle that the process of leadership starts when a person, regardless its formal or informal authority, identify a particular need and choose to take actions even in the face of obstacles (Needham 2008).  In certain circumstances an actor can emerge and take actions that would be interpreted as leadership (Quinn 2004).

I have come to see leadership as a state of mind. Leaders can develop a state of mind that enhances leadership capacities. It starts with me, and a belief in myself. A belief in new possibilities, a belief in my abilities to make changes in the world, and an appreciation that I cannot do it all on my own. My reflections as a leader have helped me grow and learn as a person, making me understand that all we need is motivation, inspiration, and sometimes be a dreaming kid.

When we are kids everything we wish is much easier than it looks like. Building our own fortune, reach the moon, have the dream job, travelling around the world. The funny thing is that, we grow and most of those desires remain with us for a long time. Some of them will continue be only dreams, others may become reality. However, to make it happen we need to answer a simple question: What do we want to be when we grow up? Knowing this answer will not be the end of our search, but the starting point for several others. It is through this question ​​that our future begins to be drawn. It is this question that turns crazy plans into something quite possible.

With me is not different, just like everyone I want the improbable, the surprising, the innovative. I want to do what no one else would be able to accomplish, I want to go so far that nobody can reach me, I want to be the discoverer of a new era, or who knows, the discoverer of a new time. Actually, what I really want is to fulfill my desires, and like in a child's game, win everything seemed improbable; the dream job, the perfect family, and why not? Travelling into the space.

Being a leader I gained experience to grow in humility, mature, having responsibilities. Leadership tests my capacity to innovate, and be ahead of the time in which I live. It has taught me to not regret my luck. It has taught me that I must be a dreaming person, and experience the new, looking at the realization of my desires every day, doing what I like to do, not just what brings me money. As a leader I learned to be loyal to my values, and always do the best in what I am engaged, because I am solely responsible for my destiny.

Finally, as a leader I have learnt that we all can be everything we want to be and when tough times come, I can set back and simply answer that question: what do I want to be when I grow up?

 

 

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