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I’ve been a team lead for couple years now, and I have always wondered what kind of leadership I should be when I become a manager.  Taking this course has enlighten me a lot about different leadership styles, and when I become a manager I would become an interactive type of manager.  Reading through the dimension of leadership described by Denning, interactive leadership works with the world rather than against (Denning 2010).  This will impact the way I lead in the future because I’ve always work in a team environment and this is the perfect approach to successfully lead a team.  It support collaboration and progression.  This type dimension will manifest in a problem solving situation where it is critical to solve the problem on a timely manner.  As identify by Denning (2010), employing the interactive mode of leadership means engaging the world with a mind-set of active participation rather than detached observation.

In addition, interactive leadership builds on personal integrity and authenticity (Denning, 2010).  Leadership that connects.  For example, as a manager I will get to know each of my employees and what they see themselves doing in the company for the next five years. I will promote employees engagement and program that will help them achieve their goals in the organization.  Clear conversation is the key to achieve and overcome any obstacles.  Working in a team environment, communication is a critical skill as everyone has to be on the same page in other to successfully achieve their objective.  Communication will be one of the top priority of my team when I become a manager. I have seen way too many teams that failed due to poor communication.

Reference

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey – Bass.

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Often times, it’s hard for me to strike a conversation with someone out of fear the person would not be interested in chatting with me.  I have attempted to strike conversation with strangers before and usually I would get a stare back and then they would walk away.  Sometime, they would smile and then walk away.  The rejections I’ve been getting a lot recently are the people that would pull out their cell phone and pretend to be on the phone with someone in an attempt to avoid talking with me as I started a conversation with him or her.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to “work a room” with ease.  Simply because I tend to be more reserved in crowed room.  I would engage in conversation with people or groups that initiate it with me only.   I tend to have a bit of the personality of the folks from the nineteenth century.  As stated by (2009), “Nineteenth century rules mandated that strangers must be introduced by a third party before initiating conversation”.  I grew up in this environment where it would not be recommended to talk to strangers as a precaution for your own safety.  Growing up the only thing I would ask a stranger is either the time or direction to get to a place.  It just was not in my nature to engage in a conversation with strangers. To make matters more awkward strangers were also not interested in talking to anyone other than the people they already know. Therefore, they were isolated from people around them as well.

I have learned a lot from this chapter, and I will use what I’ve learned to improve my ability to connect with others.  For example, I will stop using global labels to describe myself, labels such as lame, and quiet.  I will use descriptive rather than negative labels in my internal monologue.  I’ve made a list of my positive qualities and I’ll read it to myself every morning, in an attempt to boost my moral and self-confidence.  I will reframe my approach behavior to be more positive.  As identify by (2009), Your fear of rejection is mainly a product of how you conceptualize, or frame your meeting with an interesting stranger.  Therefore, I will start framing my meeting with an interesting person as an opportunity to begin to get to know someone who I’m interested in.  I’ll be more curious about what will happen in the conversation, but not so concern or worried about the outcome.

References

McKay. M., Davis. M., & Fanning.F. (2009). Messages the Communication Skills Book. (Third. Edition). New Harbinger Publication, Inc.

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To communicate effectively one needs to make sure that his/her messages are direct, immediate, clear, straight, and supportive (McKay, Davis, & Fanning, 2009).  Ms. Duante did that in her presentation and many more.  Her presentation structure has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  She started her presentation very strong with a catchy phrase. “You have the power to change the world” (As quoted by Duarte from the video, TED, 2010).  This opening statement catches the audience’s attention and make the audience more intrigue to hear the rest of her presentation.  This is a technique use by many public speakers in an effort to get everyone to pay attention during the presentation.  I have also used that technique in both school and work presentation, and it always works like a charm.

A clear message is a complete and accurate reflection of your thoughts, feelings, needs, and observation (McKay, Davis, & Fanning, 2009).  Ms. Duante delivered that, a clear message with a lot to learn from.  As quoted by Duante from the video (TED, 2010), “A clear idea, from a human’s mind…can actually rewrite the future, but an idea is powerless if it stays inside you. If you never pull that idea from inside your head for others to contend with, it will die with you”.  This statement is more of persuasive and aggressive approach, encouraging the audience to get creative, and share their ideas with people. As an idea is a terrible thing to waste if it stays inside your head only.

She also takes a story telling approach in her presentation and uses examples to convey her message across.  From the "I have a dream" speech to Steve Jobs’ iPhone launch, she reveals many great talks have a common structure that helps their message resonate with listeners. The common structure is the way of communicating that idea. It is essential that the idea is communicated well so it can resonate with listeners.  She also uses graphs as a technique to convey her message clearly. A graph can be the upstager, specifically for quantitatively minded audience (Whalen, 2007).  She stands on the left side of the graph and uses the G-shaped scan to explain the graph to her audience.

She ended her presentation with a big quote “The future isn’t a place that we’re going to go, it’s a place that you create” as quoted by Duante from the video from the video (TED, 2010).  That is a powerful statement as it encourages to take charge of my future because I have control of it. I’ve certainly learned a lot from her presentation. I will absolutely use all I’ve learned from her presentation starting from the structure and technique she uses to capture her audience’s attention. She uses humor and common experiences to establish a common ground with her audience. That allows the audience to see her as a person of level headed similar to them and that also helps drive her idea across. 

 References

McKay. M., Davis. M., & Fanning.F. (2009). Messages the Communication Skills Book. (Third. Edition). New Harbinger Publication, Inc.

TED. (2010). Duante Nancy: The secret structure of great talks [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks

 Whalen, D. J. (2007). The Professional Communications Toolkit. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

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I work in the aerospace industry for the world leader in commercial airplanes manufacturing.  The organization I work for is an organization that support testing of new airplanes and is constantly working under tight budget and schedule which result to a high pressure environment.  Fortunately, I work in a high-performance team that applies and share their knowledge with each other and that have a common goal. Our goal is to educate each other while getting quality job done at the same time.  As identify by Denning (2011), high performance team carry out their work with share passion. Certainly, that is one of the elements of high performance that my organization is truly passionate about.  Another element as identify by Denning (2011) is as follow, high performance team grow steadily stronger, within time, members come to know one another’s strengths and weakness and become highly experience and coordinate their activities. Indeed, the team I’m part of in my organization knows each other very well. The leader assign project base on the members capabilities and willing to learn something new. He also assures that everyone in the team is challenged to a point where he/she can learn something new while expending his/her capability.   

Shared values are very important elements to have in an organization.  It allows the members of the organization to have one common interest and have a common ground that the members can use to relate to each other and help the company grow as they’re growing within the company.  Shared values have helped my team be more transparent with leadership and fellow teammate, vice versa. Because we share values, we overcome the obstacles as a team and constantly looking out for one another and assuring that each individual in the team has what it take to accomplish his/her activities right.  As a result, this allow the organization to become more competitive in its marketplace and dominate its competitors.  

The four patterns of working together are work group, team, community, and network (Denning, 2011).  Work group is essentially a group at work, it doesn’t imply a team collaboration to certain aspect. In fact members of that group may even have different managers. An example of a negative experience I’ve had is as follow: In one of my previous work I was a member of a work group working on project design release.  Members of the group didn’t share the same manager and did not have the same shared values.  Each manager as well as the group members were only interest on his/her self-interest only. As a result, that behavior induced animosity within the workgroup, and it could not function well at all.  To influence this outcome, I would make sure that all managers have the same goals and share the same values workwise and that the members of the work group work more as a team and support each other when needed.   Another pattern of working together is the team aspect. A team is essentially a grouping of individual who share common goals and values. The team works together to achieve any given activities and overcome any obstacles.  One positive experience I’ve had working in a team environment happened this past winter, 2016. I was assigned to a project that I knew nothing about and had no idea where to start to get the project going.  Fortunately, the team I was working with was very team driven and wanted me to succeed. So, they set up off hours meeting with me to teach me the concept of what the project was about and how to implement it. After a few session with the teammate, I was able to contribute to the project and be productive.

Furthermore, community is another pattern of working together. A community can be heterogeneous as identify by Denning (2011).  However, it shares the same values and interest as an organization interest.  Because it’s a community and people come in go in a community there are possibilities that it may not remain as effective as an organization as the group may lose energy at some point.  Last but not least, network is another pattern of working together. Due to the rapid growing of social media, most of the networking nowourday are done on the worldwide internet. It allows people to create instant networking with individuals across the globe in a second. As identify by Denning (2011), it can be used to remain informed about events, books, or articles of common interest and sometimes discuss issues. 

Reference

Denning. S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey – Bass.

 

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The process of developing and aligning organizational values in my opinion should starts from upper management and flow down to lower level management then into the working level employees who will put the process into work.  This ideology makes it essential to have clear and constant communication relationship between the working level employees and management.  Communication is a must to have in any type of organizational values.  There are many kinds of organizational values, however, four kinds of values are in work in organizations today, (Denning, 2011):

(1) The values of the robber barons

(2) The values of the hardball strategists

(3) The values of the pragmatists

(4) Genuinely ethical value

Developing the robber barons strategy is to take a no value approach other than bare-faced greed, such as, lying and cheating in breach of the law for the sick of winning (Denning, 2011).  Developing the hardball strategy is technically to take pride in being lean and mean, not only hurting their competition, but to enjoy hurting them and watching them struggle (Denning, 2011).  The pragmatist organization is an organization that practices their values every year, and it lives and breathe those values daily (Denning, 2011).  Ethical values can be developed by using the employees of the organization not as a shifting population of workers that come and go, but as a community of human beings to whose welfare the organization.   Certainly, those values will define the organization culture as it will become a day to day type of re-occurrence event.  Preferably, an organization’s core values clearly define how the employees will behave with each other and with customers.  When organizational values are aligned, the daily behaviors of the employees will represent the core values set forth by the company.

The three basic components of an ethical community are trust, loyalty, and solidarity (Denning, 2011).  Trust is the general expectation among employees that their co-workers will behave ethically toward them (Denning, 2011).  Loyalty is the agreement of the duty to refuse to break one another’s trust (Denning, 2011).  Solidarity is to care for others interest and ready to take action on behalf of others (Denning, 2011).  Certainly, those three basic components of ethical community can be applied in my previous organization; the company I worked at.  There has been a lack of trust between employees and management in that organization. Somehow, the employees think that management don’t have their best interest and is out to get them fired at any moment.  Establishing a trust relationship between the employees and management will do that organization very well and make the organization stronger. Trust can be established by having more candid conversation between the employees and management.  Management would have to step up and show the employees that they do care about their wellbeing and not just the products they deliver.  Loyalty can be applied by showing the employees that have been in the company for more than five, ten, fifteen years some appreciation from management and upper management. Dinner and award certifications should be given to those who work hard and support the organization.  Solidarity can be used by showing the employees that management care about their interest and how they want to grow up into better position in the company. Management can give guidance to those employees and show them the right way to earn the most from the company and get promoted. 

Nonetheless, looking at that organization in detail, the value that’s been missing is the ethical value.  I would develop those values my changing the managerial style from a top down management to a transparency managerial style of leadership.  I would involve the employees in the decision making that would benefit both the organization and the employees.  I would require each managers to have one on one meetings with each of their employees to discuss his/her interest in the company and how the company can help him/her achieve his/her goals in the company.  I would show act of appreciation to the hard work employees by rewarding them, and encouraging the not so hard workers to do a better job.  As a result, the employees would notice that management has their best interest at heart and is attempting to align them with the values of the company and succeed as one team.

Reference

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey – Bass.

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Some of my nuances during a verbal message or communication with a group or individual includes not being able to make eye contact with the person I’m communicating with, lost attention in the communication and my body language sometime would reflect that I’m not engaged in the conversation.  Reading this week modules have helped me a tone already.  They’ve helped me identify my weaknesses and how I can reduce or eliminate them so I can become a more effective communicator.

How I will use the information in these reading to improve my ability to communicate with sincerity and congruence begins with me to fully understand the concept that the author is conveying.  Denning talks about to be authentic and that an effective leader’s life story is authentic; furthermore, he mentions that it is important for a leader to tell a story with a positive tone (Denning, 2011).  Certainly, I had instances where I did not talk with a positive tone and wasn’t authentic at all.  I remember an instance when I first joined my company and new little about the work I was doing.  That was in the first year I was hired as a manufacturing engineer, level 1.  I was presenting a project on a new complex design and the audience was full with experienced engineers, managers, and supply chain analysis.  I began my presentation by telling my name and what the presentation was about.  Less than minute within the presentation, my voice started trembling and I started to sweat at the podium as I tried to make some eye contact with some of the audience members.   My mind started wondering what are they thinking of me as I was presenting the project. Do I have their attention enough to get my point across?  I attempted to use humor and fail badly at it; only one person from the audience got my jock.  Then I realized that my presentation wasn’t consistent. It didn’t have the right beginning and end.  I just went into the details soon after I told my name.  As a result of that it made my message incongruent and I felt horrible that time and wanted to get off the stage.  It didn’t notice how bad I was until I started thinking about it after the presentation was done and no one asked questions on the presentation.

The changes I would make using the technique of Jargon are the following:  Begin my presentation with a story. A short story of myself that can relate to most people in the room and the presentation; that would allow me to be more authentic and the audience would pay more attention to the presentation.  Furthermore, the story would have to be said with a positive tone and context to display confidence in myself and lure in the audience. One of the stories I could have mentioned during the presentation is one about customers’ management since we had suppliers in the room as well. I could have started of by saying that success in today’s market place implies having a skilled workforce that is passionate and committed to customers of the organization and then entice those customers to share their success stories, obstacles overcome in the process with other customer. Furthermore, what I should have done is as identify by Whalen (2007), take control of the meeting and the room and develop a good feeling of raptor with your audience. Certainly that would have made a big difference in the outcome of the presentation.

Reference

Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. John Wiley & Sons/Jossey-Bass

Whalen, D. J. (2007). The Professional Communications Toolkit. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

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I grew up on an island in the West Indies, Haiti. The island was politically unstable and unemployment was high.  My parents had to struggle to make ends meet.  I’m the youngest of 4 sons.  At the age of 12, my mom decided to venture out of the island to America in search of a better life and career to support the family while my dad stayed on the island to raise four boys and making sure that we go to school to earn an education.  My family didn’t have much money.  My dad was a carpenter and my mom is now a retired nurse.  What both of my parents strongly believe in is that education is the key to a better life anywhere.  Without an education life will most likely be a struggle for most people.  Both of my parents didn’t have a high school diplomat, but they live their lives in such a way that would enable their sons to see their struggle of life without an education and making sure that we stay in school to earn our diplomas and degrees.   When I was 13 years old, my dad started teaching me about responsibilities and the way of life.  He started taking me to his workplace and let me shadow him all day, seeing the work he does and questioned him about details of is job and the ups and downs.   I remember few specific stories he told me about work that has an impact on me until this day.  My dad told me that in life if you find a career or a job no matter what the job is, make sure that you excel at it and you know it well.  If you can maintain that good work ethic, you will become an expert at it and have lots of credibility which would bring lots of clients to your business.  I grew up with that mentality to strive and learn what I do and do my best to do it well. 24 years later, now I’m working in the world leading aerospace company as a Lead Engineer while pursuing higher education at EARU.

What my dad taught me has helped me work better in my organization and becoming a better team player as well.  I’ve maintained great credibility at work due to the work ethic my dad taught me and the education I’ve earned during my childhood.  Now, I excel at my job very well, and many people come to me for guidance to complex projects.  Now, I can proudly say that I’m an expert in my field with lots of credibility.  As identify by Whalen (2007), two of the main credible characteristic of people are expertise and trustworthy. My expertise has help me feel right at home in my organization and work greatly in my team environment.

Reference                          

Whalen, D. J. (2007). The Professional Communications Toolkit. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

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Ms. Adichie delivers a powerful story to her audience, well presented and spoken. Her story has a beginning, a middle and an end that everyone in her audience can absolutely relate to.  She begins by introducing herself, and tells the audience what she does for a living which is storytelling among many of the skills she possesses.  She starts off her storytelling by telling the audience a story on her background, given a date, where she grew up, and when she started reading and writing.  As shared by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009), as a child growing up reading Americans and  British children’s books, when I started writing at the age of seven the characters in my books followed the same characters of what I read about as a kid.  All my characters were white and blue-eyed, played in the snow and ate apples.  Ms. Adichie started off by telling a clear story.  A true story about herself that will help capture and retain the audience’s attention.  Here are few of the main elements of springboard story that she covered in her speech intro; as identify by Denning (2011), “The change idea being communicated by the story is clear and worthwhile and the story is based on an actual example.  She goes on by giving an additional example of how powerful a single story can be.  Which she illustrates by mentioning how she replicated the characters in her book base on what she had read about as a child in her kid novels.  As quoted by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009), “My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer.  Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was”.  Certainly, what Ms. Adichie is implying is that the story she had been thought as a child replicates itself in her work and creates a preconceive notion of certain things in life without knowing all the details or facts.  That can be a dangerous thing, and she wants to change that way of thinking so no one is pre-judged or miss-judged.  Another key element she used in her story to make it a good springboard story is as identify by Denning (2011), the story makes clear what would have happened without the change idea. 

Her storytelling skill is very similar to what is discussed in the book and what I have learned thus far from this course.  She dresses casually and uses proper grammar throughout her whole speech.  She maintains eye contact with her audience and share few jokes every now and then, and then bring them back to her story.  She tells a springboard story that is authentically true and that can be validated or checked, if needed.   As stringboard story is about something that has really happened, not a made-up story about something that might occur (Denning, 2011).  Her story also has a single individual as the story protagonist which is herself, and she plays the hero role of trying to change the preconceive notion of people from Africa.  She does that by telling stories as well as writing books to help educate the young minds and the grown-ups.  Her stories has no pitfalls as she tells it in a minimalist fashion.  She gives numerous examples of how a story or a preconceive notion can impact someone’s life.    As stated by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009),) “So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate's response to me.  If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide's family “.  This is a great example that put things in perspective, pretty much seeing the image of Africa from an American view point and help relate that vision to her audience.  Ultimately showing them the negative preconceive notion that she would like to change from people perspective of Africa.  To conclude, she links the change idea to the story by closing with a very powerful ending.  As stated by Adichie, “I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise” (TED, 2009).

References

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey – Bass.

 
TED. (2009).Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en

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I work in the aerospace industry for one of the world leaders in commercial aircraft manufacturing, Boeing.  The company enrolled over 159,469 employees globally (Boeing, 2016). One of the common stories being told by leadership over and over again is about safety. Safety in the workplace is one of the number one concern for the company. The company wants to reduce the amount of injuries that occur in the workplace, and make the workplace a safer place to work at.  The company has defined a logo called “Go for Zero” and is posted in every building and every floors as possible.  As identify by Employee Safety (2016), “At Boeing, our goal for employee safety is as clear and simple as our workplace safety program’s name: Go for Zero – One Day at a Time. We aim to achieve this goal day by day by eliminating all workplace injuries and ensuring an environment where all employees go home in the same shape as when they came to work” (Para.1). In every team meeting or employees all hand meetings, safety is brought up to remind the workers to work safely.  The implication that this story has on the organization is that it encourages and reminds the workers to work safely and shows that the company cares about the wellbeing of its workers.

Certainly this safety storytelling promote the goal and ideals of the organization.  Since the program started there has been a reduction in injuries occurrence in the workplace. If we look at the Propulsion Systems organization of Commercial Airplanes as an example. That organization had a huge decline in injury rates. As quoted by Kim (2009) “The organization’s lost workday case rate fell to 0.4 in 2007 and 0.19 in 2008. What’s more, it’s working on a streak of more than 500 days and 1 million hours without a lost workday case “(p.25).   The organization statistic has shown how this mindset or storytelling has taking hold in the company and help creating a culture of safety.  Furthermore, this story has helped describe what the company stands for and who its employees are.  It shows that the company has deep concern about the safety and wellbeing of it workers.

Hence, this storytelling about safety has created a culture of safety in the company.  Therefore, the company has outline the meaning of injuries and demonstrate Boeing’s commitment to driving safety for all employees, one day at a time.  As stated by Employee Safety (2016):

• We value human life and well-being above all else and take action accordingly.
• All incidents, injuries and workplace illnesses are preventable.
• We are personally accountable for our own and collectively responsible for each other's safety.
• By committing to safety first, we advance our goals for quality, cost, and schedule

Certainly with a low or zero injury workplace more workers will show up to work daily and perform their tasks; as a result, it will help boost the production rate of the company and its revenue or profit.

References                                                          

Boeing. (2016, June 3).Retrieved June 3, 2016, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing

Employee Safety. (2016). Safety Guiding Principles. Boeing. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing#Employment_numbers

Kim. J. (2009). There Really is a “YOU” in Safety. Boeing Frontier. Retrieved from http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2009/june/ts_sf01.pdf