Development leadership plan

This project must be something useful for us and not a self-actualization

process for showing and talking about ourselves again, again and again. Taking
this fact into consideration I will just focus on two main examples in order to
understand and point out which are my weaknesses. I assume that the word
useful will vary depending on our priorities. The process of improving can
imply an increase in your strengths or in your weaknesses. As the leadership
concept is based on high variety of skills the most important index might be to
know those skills in which you are not good enough. The more capabilities you
have for dealing the better leadership decisions you will be able to take.
I know that I am not a leader. And I also know that changing some parts of my
behavior are going to be hard to change. In fact, a leader must be a person
that is able to adapt to all the circumstances because he is who creates the
required environment for the group dynamics. I am used to try to adapt the
circumstances to make me feel more comfortable rather than adapting myself
for making other feel comfortable. This kind of approach explains the main part
of my problems with the new theories of leadership: the main mind setting.
Weakness
The main weakness I have to face up with is related with my constant necessity
of reaffirming my personality and individualism. The best briefing I can do
would be that I am confident about what I think and not about what I am. The
consequences are that it is difficult to really open your mind and your opinions
to other points of view. Sometimes renounce to your opinions makes you feel
as if you were renouncing to part of your essence
A fact such as delegate can represent a problem. It is really difficult to trust
in together peoples skills. At the same time there are great performers in who I
really trust. It is funny because thinking that you are always right is, in fact,
being always completely wrong. It is interesting to think that since I had learnt
about napoleons life my conclusion has always been the same until we started
this class. Delegating was his disaster. Now I think that the reason now was
that he didnt know how to get the best performance of his family and friends.
Before I thought that he was the only person that could deal with the
magnitude of his actions. Therefore all the people around him were not at the
same level than him and failed
This fact is related with my poor empowering power. It is important to
understand the magnitude and the challenge that represents to help people to
show that their ideas and performance are much better than our expectations.
Instead of that I prefer to focus on my staff and just forget them.

Thus the empowering time is related to trying to expect and motivate others to
perform at their max capacity. The problem here is that I really do not care
about how the other people perform because I assume it is their own
responsibility. Another issue is the relation between enabling others to act with
being a building team behavior. For creating a cooperative climate and for
being a team player you must be open minded. First you need to understand
the value of other peoples contribution and have faith in the other peoples
performance. This fact is related with tolerate mistake. It is interesting to notice
that tolerating mistakes is also in line with the expectations that you have from
the other people. It means that as you do not expect a really high performance
from your teammates your toleration of mistakes is not related downplaying
the situations. In this specific case you are tolerating the mistake because your
expectations.
During this master I realized that there are a lot of situations in which I could
see why I am not the appropriate leader for dealing with the groups that I
worked with. Working with people from other cultures is quite different because
of the different mindsets. When I was trying to get some outputs from them
instead of really understand their point of view and create expectations related
with their way of thinking I analyzed them under my own perspective. When I
asked questions to them I expected an answer based in a shared way of facing
the logical and the communication. As I never received anything that under my
(ignorant) point of view was useful and was not expressed in the appropriate
way during the meeting (concept of time productivity is so important for me in
working) I began to do not expect great answers and I became frustrated. The
point is that my way of dealing with them was just carry with them. The
consultancy project for the microfinance department of Caixa Catalunya is a
good example to understand the words written before.
Our group was formed by 5 people: 1Spanish, 1 American and 3 Taiwanese. As
we had been already working with other classmates before the Microfinance
project Mike and me (I really trust in his way of working and I think it is
reciprocal) decided the outline and discuss with them how to approach it and
how to divide the work. Maggie, Cash, Sherry have each own culture and each
own education. It implies a different approach that we didnt do. Instead of
expecting from them our own way of understanding their best performance we
should have taken care of how to understand which kind of performance should
we expected from them. Furthermore we didnt include them into the designing
process outline. Instead of creating an environment in which they can develop
their best outputs we assumed that their mindset is not able to work in this
kind of dynamic. Encouraging the heart or enable others to act are not showed
in the whole consultancy project process.
Low expectations results in a poor performance had more implications rather
than just collaborating to create a negative environment. As our expectations

were low they were frustrated and were not involved in what we were doing. As
they were not involved (plus their education) they did not tried to get into the
management process. As they were not motivated, were not involved and were
not enrolled into the taking decision process their performance was really low.
As they performance was really low and their motivation for working was
almost 0 our directions were very specific and we said them what to do and
how to do. Thus we thought that we could not bring them the important issues.
Then our delegating process was just inexistent. We were working a lot during
a lot of hours while they were not doing anything. (example: during our week in
Paris Mike and me were working a lot of the days while they visited the Torre
Eiffel or other locations). The consequence of our lack of delegation was an
increasing lack of involvement on the project. We were not able to empower
them and expect their best performance. We did the opposite; we expected a
low contribution (with or without a reason), we did not delegate and we did not
create the required environment for them. Thus we didnt provide a safe
environment for taking risks and we did not talk about that in order to avoid
the conflict. I assume that they thought that there was no toleration with the
mistake. Using feed-back for self-improvement was impossible because once
we introduce a conversation about the groups dynamic we would started an
argument. Our point of view was that they were not interested in the project.
As they were not interested in the project we had to work more. Thus we only
saw that not only they were doing a few things without relevance, but also their
performance for this kind of low value-added work was frustrating.
As we can see there were two points of view completely different. Both sides
think that their perspective is the right one. The dynamics within the group
were poor. The lack of commitment created conflict and the different points of
view created an atmosphere in which all the acts were analyzed under a
negative perspective.
Another example was the game that we played last day in class. At the
beginning we decided to talk together about the different actions to take in the
game. We distributed them within the stages of the changing process. Then we
decided which ones we rejected. During the elimination process I failed again in
a leadership aspect. Instead of being enough cold and clear minded I acted
all the time trying to impose my point of view. (The thing here is that I am not
always like this. In different situations I like to interact with other ideas. But I do
not why I cannot control the feeling that I am right. By doing this I am not
increase the team diversity. Instead of fomenting different ways of dealing with
the same issue (divergence) I always try to get my idea as the groups one.
Although I am looking for the best group performance I enter in a no dynamic
process. This kind of dynamic creates some consequences. The first one is my
overall image and the agreement and involvement they are going to have with
me in a critical situation. Second we lose a lot of feedbacks by erasing
constructive conflict/discussion and losing win-to-win opportunities. And the

third one is that my way of talking make other people feel that I am attacking
their leadership or role within the group). In a simple process as discussing the
different options I created negative synergies in a non cooperative atmosphere
that wasted peoples energy.
Once we decided the 12 actions we went to class. When we started the game
we suggested to do our own lists using a similar base of the common 12. While
doing the work I decided to change a lot of things and introduce a lot of my
rejected actions. My option was about 28 actions and luckily it got more than
60 at the first try. When we had to put in common our actions and create a
common result for the group the problems appeared. We were in a privilege
position and we could not take profit of that. It was so frustrating. Instead of
focusing on the main result and develop our strategy and discuss the
improvements as a group we decided to continue working by our own. The final
picture was a final chaos with a lot of people trying to introduce their
combinations without any sense. It was impossible to introduce each actions
without calculating the time and the money required. It was a mess and it was
because of a lack of leadership and organization.
If we talk about the leadership behavior we have to say that my performance is
really poor. Inspire the vision and enable others to act are one of the biggest
problems that we can see in the examples above. I am not used to think in the
necessity of transmitting and involving others into a shared vision. I just
understand and assume that each member of the group is able to understand
the needs of the team and his role. In the modeling way aspect it is important
to remind that one of the most important things in the human behavior is being
consistent. Act as your principles dictates. Therefore I just act as I expect the
other works. I cannot encourage the heart because for doing this you need to
share a vision with your group.
Finally there is a really important factor related with management of the stress.
I have a huge problem with my need of transferring my negative feelings to
others in order to feel more comfortable. I tried my best last years but
sometimes it is almost impossible for me to control this instinct. The problem is
that if the people that you are working with are not involved with you, they do
not understand you really good, and there are some difficulties in the
communication this lack of control derives in a critical stress situations
Maybe the point is that I can just work with a so specific kind of group. If being
a good manager means being able to manage in a bunch of different kind of
situations it means that I have to change. I have to be able to work for the
dynamic of the team and not only for the final performance of the group.
Now I understand that leadership is about taking care of the other people.
When you are the leader of a group you do not necessarily have to be the

smartest one. The best soccer player usually will look just for his performance
and the way he can contribute to the team for winning the game. A coach must
see, analyze, and understand the skills of everyone, their relations, create
symbols and vision shared by all, create team feeling and create goals for
fighting as a group, understand the strengths and weaknesses, create and
challenge the actual processes etc. I am not the best soccer player and I am
not a coach because my understanding of team working is focused on
performance my best for improving the overall results.
For analyzing the leadership role in a process we can take the outcome
performance or analyze the leader roles performance. It means that in order to
conclude the appropriate leadership we can think in a pragmatically point of
view (goals and final results) or think in the dynamics and relations within a
work group. The problem is that in the examples showed above the result were
really good and were better when we worked with a lack of leadership and
working by our own. The conclusion in this is quite intriguing.
Future
It is easy to see that the main point here is related with involving others into
the process and putting the other members of the group first. Group people are
more important than individual and global performance. I have a huge problem
with this concept. Even I assume that there are some parts that it is impossible
to change (mainly because there is no interest in changing that) there are
others that can be really attractive to improve.
My first global approach is a really easy activity that can bring really positive
consequences. The action is based in taking a bunch of the most relevant roles
in a group and plays them. My problem is that my closed mind does not let me
to practice different behaviors. I assume my personality and I never try to
experiment with different reactions. For example taking the position of the
person that never say what he thinks I would understand the implications of
having ideas and not sharing them. Or understand, listen and analyze the
choosing process of the group by a more realistic point of view. This approach
will help me in the next process that is based in the group involving actions.
For improving my empowering and energizing skills, my team building ability
and my ability for playing the behaviors based in inspiring shared vision and
enabling others to act I cannot have a real solution or practice. The only way
that I have learnt for improving things is based in taking a lot of efforts and
practicing a lot. The point here is how to practice certain behaviors and skills
that you do not own is quite complicated.
The first step would be related with focusing in the group dynamic. I should
take some days just for taking care of the relations within the group. Although
it is easy to say I think it is not easy to do. Our group class in the master can be

a really good opportunity for applying this process. As everyone is focused in

playing correctly their role I can be just focused in a new role. I can just focus in
help everyone feel that they are doing their best performance, that they are
relevant for the group and that they have the recognition for their work.
Focusing in these three aspects I can get better feelings and level of
involvement of the group.
After improving the level of satisfaction it would be necessary to constantly
play the empowering role. The trends in my group are so clear and show that it
is difficult for some components to develop and perform their best. The
leadership role in our group is how it is so the main point here must be to
create an environment in which all the members are able to contribute and feel
that their contribution is useful and is recognized as it deserves. A good
indicator or goal to achieve can be that all the days that we meet each
member must say at least one thing that he feels is useful and has a public
reward or recognition.
Once they feel comfortable for acting it will be important to build in the team
family/friends sensation. It is difficult to figure out how we can improve this
situation. Anyway it would be necessary the participation of the entire group.
After an explanation of the goals and the requirements for improving our team
building I would be able to monitor and help the group to improve the
atmosphere. It implies changing our way of discussing, erasing any previous
role, encourage the WE vs the I
After getting the required atmosphere it will be necessary to change the stress
issue. And even it seems the easiest one I think it would be probably the
hardest one. And the only way I can figure out for approaching a change is just
shut up.
Finally I have to change my tendency of trying to persuade others to adopt my
point of view. In a group dynamic divergence is necessary to get as much
possibilities as possible for then being able to discuss and decide as a group
which of them is better. By erasing the ability of having other options you
cannot fail early for succeed later and you can not erase the main benefit of
working in group: feedbacks based on a variety of perspectives and
backgrounds.
By taking these actions I think I will be able to improve my weakest behaviors:
enable other to act and inspire shared vision. Thus I have a plan for improving
the relations within my group in the next two months and a half. By improving
the situation with a logical perspective I will be able to develop my weaker
leadership skills.

As a final conclusion it is important to remind that for making a change you

need sacrifices, practicing and the most important one: the desire of changing
something.