I recently graduated from the US Air Force's second Basic Developmental Education (BDE) course, which is better known as Squadron Officer School (SOS). The curriculum of SOS is undergoing a revision (as indicated here). One aspect I noticed was the retirement of Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory in favor of the Full Range of Leadership Model (FRLM) as the model of choice to mid-career AF Captains. Of course, the AF added its own spin on FRLM.
One aspect that was taught by my flight commander and the main lecturer was that both transformational and transactional leadership preferences have their place at different times. The claim boils down to that being a master "Management by Exception" (MBE) leader could be preferred over "Inspirational Motivation" in some circumstances. One example discussed was the under-fire scenario. In this scenario, the effective AF leader would use MBE to direct their troops, relying on the base relationship and training that the leader set with inspirational motivation to prepare the forces for battle. Transactional and transformational, under this theory, are now viewed as equal - the traditional "up and to the right" from laissez-faire up through transactional and up to transformational is replaced with a model in which laissez-fair is discounted and transactional and transformational are put on an equal horizontal footing.
This issue was debated at a fevered pitch in my flight room. A special forces officer commenting that transactional leadership is essentially dead and that he get the best results in the field using idealized influence and inspirational motivation. Other officers commented that sometimes the leader's attention may be over too many issues, so that using a more transactional approach can ensure a critical, single operation succeeds.
SOS did help prepare young officers to use the FRLM. SOS used several different methods: a lecture on FRLM, some discussion classes that attempts to build strategies for using FRLM in our home units, and a self assessment for each officer against the FRLM. Unfortunately, we used a different model to assess each other later in the course, which may be an artifact of being in the middle of the curriculum revision.
So, does this view hold? What issues do you see in advocating transactional preferences as being equal to transformational preferences?
Read More......
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Mentoring in a Systemic Leadership Context
These thoughts inspired by "Leaders urge airmen to turn to peer mentors" from the USAF AIM Points (here)
Mentoring is a key concept in transformational leadership. Mentoring, in the personal communication mode, that leads to the development of personnel into what the larger organization needs them to be can be very powerful. I have personally sought out my own mentors, choosing those who have excelled, lead successful projects, and do so composure and tact. By looking towards these people, I hope to learn their lessons and being applying them in my own way.
Mandatory mentoring, on the other hand, tends to become a "check the box" activity. In different circumstances, I saw other people do their mandatory mentoring with people they didn't know and not caring to learn from them. My wife always hated her mandatory mentoring sessions with women in higher-up management roles - you see, my wife wanted to become a master engineer, and wanted nothing to do with supervision and management. She couldn't learn what she needed to succeed from her mentor.
Ultimately, the organization does need to place value on people getting a chance to mentor and be mentored. This enables the training of the next generation to be done "above the line", and not have the mentor and mentored feel like they are "slacking". But if too much value is placed on mentoring, the activity runs the risk of becoming an organizational mandate, a contingent-reward, or worse - a directed activity.
Does your organization do mentoring? How do you feel about your mentoring relationships? Read More......
Mentoring is a key concept in transformational leadership. Mentoring, in the personal communication mode, that leads to the development of personnel into what the larger organization needs them to be can be very powerful. I have personally sought out my own mentors, choosing those who have excelled, lead successful projects, and do so composure and tact. By looking towards these people, I hope to learn their lessons and being applying them in my own way.
Mandatory mentoring, on the other hand, tends to become a "check the box" activity. In different circumstances, I saw other people do their mandatory mentoring with people they didn't know and not caring to learn from them. My wife always hated her mandatory mentoring sessions with women in higher-up management roles - you see, my wife wanted to become a master engineer, and wanted nothing to do with supervision and management. She couldn't learn what she needed to succeed from her mentor.
Ultimately, the organization does need to place value on people getting a chance to mentor and be mentored. This enables the training of the next generation to be done "above the line", and not have the mentor and mentored feel like they are "slacking". But if too much value is placed on mentoring, the activity runs the risk of becoming an organizational mandate, a contingent-reward, or worse - a directed activity.
Does your organization do mentoring? How do you feel about your mentoring relationships? Read More......
Friday, August 28, 2009
News article on new USAFA Leadership Center
Today's USAF AIM Points feature article was:
Academy to transform character development program
The article discusses the development of a new leadership and character development center at the USAF Academy (USAFA) in Colorado. Although the article doesn't describe the new curriculum, which I am very interested in learning more about, it does start me thinking about good questions for the new center director.
Knowing how leadership was taught to me at my commissioning source, in the Air & Space Basic Course, and in my correspondence course for Squadron Officer School, the focus was on the Übermensch of leaders with very specific traits: charismatic, outgoing, and married to their one vision of the future. We know these leaders had the right traits because their visions came true. They were unlike all those other leaders whose visions didn't come true, but were none the less charismatic and outgoing.
My wondering is will USAFA continue trying to develop Übermensch leaders, or will they focus on helping the students discover the students' individual leadership preferences and help them build plans for using their strengths and overcoming areas that... well aren't preferred by that individual?
This idea of developing mitigation to a leader's leadership preferences is central to the journal paper Frank and I wrote a few years ago (and honestly, we need to blog about shortly). Considering that each system is a different mix of challenges, by which different leadership preferences are needed, then leaders can only excel if they are either lucky enough to only encounter problems matching to their preferred way of solving problems or have developed contingency plans for problems that the leader would normally try sub-optimal methods.
Our challenge, as systemic leaders is to understand how to reign in our preferences and develop plans that help us see when our preferred methods may not yield fruit and intentionally choose other methods that are more likely to succeed.
If this type of leadership self-exploration is going to be embraced at USAFA, then my hats off to them. But until they provide something for us to review, we will have to seek other ways of getting our message out and hoping they hear the good word. Read More......
Academy to transform character development program
The article discusses the development of a new leadership and character development center at the USAF Academy (USAFA) in Colorado. Although the article doesn't describe the new curriculum, which I am very interested in learning more about, it does start me thinking about good questions for the new center director.
Knowing how leadership was taught to me at my commissioning source, in the Air & Space Basic Course, and in my correspondence course for Squadron Officer School, the focus was on the Übermensch of leaders with very specific traits: charismatic, outgoing, and married to their one vision of the future. We know these leaders had the right traits because their visions came true. They were unlike all those other leaders whose visions didn't come true, but were none the less charismatic and outgoing.
My wondering is will USAFA continue trying to develop Übermensch leaders, or will they focus on helping the students discover the students' individual leadership preferences and help them build plans for using their strengths and overcoming areas that... well aren't preferred by that individual?
This idea of developing mitigation to a leader's leadership preferences is central to the journal paper Frank and I wrote a few years ago (and honestly, we need to blog about shortly). Considering that each system is a different mix of challenges, by which different leadership preferences are needed, then leaders can only excel if they are either lucky enough to only encounter problems matching to their preferred way of solving problems or have developed contingency plans for problems that the leader would normally try sub-optimal methods.
Our challenge, as systemic leaders is to understand how to reign in our preferences and develop plans that help us see when our preferred methods may not yield fruit and intentionally choose other methods that are more likely to succeed.
If this type of leadership self-exploration is going to be embraced at USAFA, then my hats off to them. But until they provide something for us to review, we will have to seek other ways of getting our message out and hoping they hear the good word. Read More......
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