A633.7.3.RB – Leader-Follower Relationship

Leader-Follower Relationship

Leadership Quadrant Strategies Survey Result Assessment

            Based on the score from my responses from Chapter 10 exercise, according to Obolensky (2014), my leadership strategy of S3: Involve, meant I am working too hard and taking an approach that is too direct.  The result has definitely changed my thinking over the course of the past six weeks.  Re-assessing my leadership style and strategies, I have discovered that I have an immediate need for developing and enhancing my leadership-follower relationship with my team.  To strengthen my leadership-follower relationship and improve my leadership skills and abilities, pursuing a resonant leadership style will be to my advantage.

A resonant leader is someone who conditions, selects and influences a follower or followers with different abilities and skills and who aligns the follower or followers’ mission and goals to the organization's goals and mission.  Resonant leader, validates his/her commitments to the values of a) showing humility; b) displaying mercy and belief to the actions of his/her follower(s), and c) controlled discipline (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005).  As a leader, my attitude has the power to either tear down or uplift my followers or team.  Negative or lousy attitude compound faster than the positive and when left unattended can ruin everything.  A positive attitude with a drive to succeed will make my team members see the greater good in a project, our team, and celebrate our successes. 

Eight Resonance Must-Dos

Resonance is a collective energy that resonates with a joint group that boosts heightened creativity, productivity and a sense of purpose, unity, and results.  Resonant leaders use social and emotional intelligence skill to breed and foster a positive relationship and thriving environment engaging the workforce to a common purpose.  According to Boyatzis & McKee (2005), the eight Must-Dos, if accomplished and applied appropriately will assist me in inspiring and engaging a future of sustaining and building resonance with members of my team and be an efficient and successful resonant leader. 

Must-Do Number 1: Start with Yourself.  Reflecting on my responses from the exercise, I discovered that to be a successful resonant leader I need to find a balance between overworking myself due to being too emotionally invested to my work and at the same time be authentic and genuine to myself finding a balance between work and my own life.  Our mind whizzes us away like a washing machine that keeps on turning trying to deal or process different emotions that are complicated and confusing (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005). Those conflicting emotions are distractors that pull me away from the most significant and essential things of my life, and subsequently, I am no longer present in the world that I dwell in.  Sometimes I assume that this is normal, and just get on with it thinking that I cannot do anything about it. 

I need to learn to be more mindful of my personal psychological and mental condition by doing nothing for about thirty minutes on a daily basis to recharge and relax.  Having the ability to trust my intuition and not allow other feelings or thoughts overpower me that may lead to my demise.  Paying attention to my intuition and senses will assist me to be a smarter and strategic decision maker and a resonant leader.

Must-Do Number 2: Build Resonance with Those Around You.  Through the exercise, I have discovered that to be a strategic decision-maker or a resonant leader, it would be of my advantage to consider the key stakeholders.  This approach will be an asset to me, but I acknowledge that sometimes may be very challenging.  For example, right now, I have been asked to be a member of a Committee that is focused on the retention and turnover within the Central Florida Division – North Region.  With my first meeting attendance, I was concerned about the credentials of the members involved such as their expectations to gain from this committee.  Do they represent their department or team or are they serving their own expectation and purpose? 

Before my next meeting, I will have to make sure that I know what my objective and focus as a member of this committee and know every member of the committee.  As a leader or a team member, I need to have to understand every stakeholder’s purpose, vision, and commitment to the success of our team.  I have to overcome my own biases and not be judgemental of the other member’s culture, education, position, etc.  The Committee will be presenting our recommendations to improve retention and reduce turnover to the Central Florida Division – North Region’s Executive Team.  Our proposal has to be of high standard and reasonableness for our Executive Leaders to take action. 

Must-Do Number 3: Attend to All the Levels of Your Social System.  As a leader, I am accountable for the creation, development, and leading a team to the highest standards of performance outcomes.  It is of utmost importance for me to embrace the diversity of members of my team.  Being a leader in the healthcare industry, it is of utmost importance that I presume or deduces the best way to react or respond strategically to a disruption or change.  Supporting local or company-wide organized efforts by analyzing and blocking disruptive innovations that are unsafe or untested is one of the ways to navigate through the disrupters.  I could also influence our organizational leadership team and team members to study and maybe follow other healthcare industry leaders’ strategy of obtaining notoriety as an innovator through pioneering, diagnosing, and advertising disruptive innovations as a business juncture. 

Must-Do Number 4: Explore the Power of Subjectivity.  Leading the human resources team comes with different challenges and benefits.  I have always believed that improving communication, enhancing transparency, building trust, and strengthening collaboration within the organization nurturing a culture of innovation and a collaborative team is of utmost importance for the success of my team.  Promptly recognizing and addressing my team’s issues at hand is of significance for my group within my organization to be cohesive.  I find it of the essence to foster a team that challenges each other positively through building a stronger, creative and innovative team. 

Must-Do Number 5: Discover Your System’s Real-Self.  As a healthcare organization, healthcare reforms and the consumers’ shift to value are pushing organizations like mine to deliver enhanced outcomes and patient experienced at a reduced cost.  We are under pressure from regulatory agencies to align our patient care standards and initiatives in providing high-quality patient care with cost efficiency.  Organizations like mine are trying to reassess our existing capabilities and technology to manage our workforce, finances, and elevate our standard of patient experience re-defining focus on investments to best approach the challenges we face and expand for the future.

Our corporate leadership focuses on innovating for a better future for our patients, employees, community, and stakeholders, in short, leadership and innovation are interrelated.  Reinvigorating and renewing a new culture of innovation within my organization from the old way of thinking is a powerful way to encourage our workforce to focus or aim their direction to usefulness, today and in the future.  Insight to Innovation pathway will be useful and efficient if we make our determination to new ideas based on potential value. 

Must-Do Number 6: Engage People’s Hearts and Minds.  As a human resources professional, one way of influencing my company’s cultural shift is by developing and implementing a two-way mentoring program.  New hire employees when strategically paired with a seasoned employee, the newer employee can gain invaluable knowledge from the seasoned employee.  Strategically partnering a seasoned team member with a new hire employee, can perk up the seasoned employee’s imagination and acceptance of new ideas and new technologies.  Implementing a two-way mentoring program is not only to the benefits of the mentor and mentee, but my organization as a whole will gain the benefits. 

Must-Do Number 7: Unleashing Resonance Through Collective Visioning.  At Adventist Health System, all staff and leadership are encouraged and empowered to adopt a behavior of producing or involvement giving them stakes in the decision making or leading initiative that has a direct effect on their jobs or positions in the organization.  We, at Adventist Health system, shared a unified vision of improving the people’s health and living a more productive life in our workplace, community, and the globe.  The culture of producing, co-ownership, empowerment, and involvement has translated to increased productivity in our team, our organization as a whole, and the community. 

Fostering a team to challenge each other positively can also be of importance in building a stronger, creative and innovative team.  Collaboration reinforces critical thinking and creativity in our place of work.  When our well-structured team focuses on elements of their expertise will naturally bring in their outlook to complete a group project without the presence of a leader.

Must-Do Number 8: Express Personal Accountabilities and Commitments.  A powerful way to encourage a culture of innovation is to focus or aim our direction to usefulness, today and in the future.  At Adventist Health System, we hold our workforce to be committed and accountable in performing and behaving based on our mission of Extending the Healing Ministries of Christ is by reinvigorating a new culture within our team and organization as a whole from the old way of thinking.  When employees do the same thing every day for multiple years, there is a tendency that they will settle for less and will result in organizational stagnation. 

At Adventist Health System, we ensure that the cultural changes are embedded in our system taking a firmer root and making sure that there is no rebounding from previous thinking and expectations.  The emphasis on making sure that our system is performing at a high level is crucial to attaining our new system-wide brand promise.  Our executive leaders are guaranteeing that we are hitting a high-performance system and no one in the organization is allowed to blemish our brand promise of “Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ.” 

Conclusion

What defines success or failure of today’s organization is the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall behavior of an organization’s leadership team.  To be globally positioned with a competitive edge, it is imperative that leaders like me embrace change to satisfy the needs of our customers and stakeholders and retain highly skilled employees.  As a leader, I have an empirical need to identify a new set of desired behaviors and develop a strategic plan that collectively leads to organizational behavior that is effective and efficient to achieve our stated goals and improved organizational performance.  In addition to, I have the responsibility to develop my team’s followership level ultimately reaching a level 5 Followership.  Lastly, I also have to find the balance of employing the quadrant of leadership strategies, i.e., S1 (Tell), S2 (Sell), S3 (Involve), and S4 (Devolve) to achieve Level 5 Followership (Obolensky, 2014) for my team.

Becoming a resonant leader will enable me to find a balance between employing the four quadrants of leadership strategies.  Practicing resonant leadership will allow me to grow and be a strong individual with a strong foundation of principles, values, and ethics having the ability to support and nurture my team members.  By achieving and pursuing resonant leadership, I can inspire and motivate my team in taking action on their accord without creating an aura of negativity or threat in the workplace and instilling hope when things are not working right or are not working right or when things seem to be failing.

References

Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant leadership (5th ed.). Harvard Business Press.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership (2^nd ed.). London, UK: Gower/Ashgate.

Rowe, W. G., & Guerrero, L. (2012). Cases in Leadership (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Winston, B. & Patterson, K. (2006). An integrative definitions of leadership. International

Journal of Leadership Studies. Retrieved from http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol1iss2/winston_patterson.doc/winston_patterson.pdf