Here are a few soon to be famous quotes from Professor Austrom from this semester:
“You are CEO of your mini-bus”
“All major life issues can be resolved in 48 minutes”
“I can do it all day long with my hands behind my back”
“It’s not about Kumbaya and group hugs”

Upon the start of this course, I thought I had a good idea of what leadership meant to me. I still think a lot of my beliefs hold true. If you would have asked me six months ago what makes a great leader I would have stated two things; someone who acts with integrity and leads by example. I still hold these as the highest characteristics of leadership. I would now add a third, accountability.
• Integrity: I have stated many times that we as individuals have only one thing to sell in this world, ourselves. If you do not have integrity you have nothing to sell and will suffer for it. Integrity builds trust, respect and character. Without it we will have no chance of ever becoming a successful leader.
• Lead by example: I believe that we should all being willing and able to do the hard work. Nothing will motivate people more than a leader who shows others what do to do by setting the example. This is one of the easiest and most effective tools there is in leadership.
• Accountability: This semester has taught me what accountability truly means. I have always looked at it as being accountable to others for your responsibilities. Now I know that accountability really means to be accountable to you. Your words and actions will define you to others; always being accountable for those is a concept that has opened my eyes. When a situation does not have a desired outcome, I have always looked to find a reason (blame) why outside of myself. I see now that this is not being accountable. I believe if I am ever to achieve my goals of leadership I need to start being accountable for everything in my life, if not, these goals will never be realized.

As an observer in of the Tinker Toy exercise, one thing stood out to me, the difference in leadership styles. This is some that I have talked about in other situations but this exercise demonstrated this clearly. Every team leader took a different approach to orchestrating the construction of the Tinker Toy building. As the ten minutes were ticking away I thought that some teams clearly had an advantage and had “figured this out”. When the ten minutes were up, I was wrong. All the teams had constructed about 80% of the building. This surprised me. As I observed, some leaders spent a lot of time organizing the pieces and clearly making a plan for the construction process. I mistakenly took these teams as being behind and not as effective. In the last few minutes however, the time spent up front to organize paid off as everything started to fall in place. These teams quickly caught up. The other teams that had started off fast slowed down or “hit a wall” because they had not thought through the entire process. Congratulations to all the teams for very successfully demonstrating that a diverse range of leadership styles can be equally effective.

Listening to Coach Wooden speak about life and his Pyramid of Success was very enlightening. Obviously Coach Wooden has had great success as a leader; he is arguably one of the best in history. What is intriguing is the structure has put around his philosophy. This is something that is becoming a theme this semester. I always knew that leadership was valuable and very important to business and life. I am amazed at the level of structure and the purpose leadership is giving, especially from Coach Wooden.
There are many important aspects of Coach Wooden’s Pyramid. The simple fact that he shows all of them need to be tied together through faith and patience is what I find special. There is not one magic formula but many great qualities a leader could have. It is how one ties the qualities into their life that determines the success a leader has is valuable insight. I took a lot from this video but this fact really brought a lot into perspective for me.

This has long been one of my favorite quotes. I have found myself frequently reminding or stating this to co-workers throughout my career. People seem to get so caught up with titles and only following direction from others because they are labeled as managers. This class has reinforced my belief that no matter what your title or position within a company, one can always lead others!

My LPI feedback was very encouraging. I was surprised to find that my self assessment was in line with the feedback I received from my observers. Only one observer was an indirect report, all others were co-workers or fellow students that I have done a considerable amount of group work with. Because of this I expected some discrepancies. Since I do lack experience with direct reports, it came as no shock that the one area I needed to work on is inspiring others. This has been a great eye opener for things to work on as I move in my career and continue to work with others in this program. Once again, this was very insightful and encouraging feedback.

I have been interning this semester as part of the FIND enterprise. I am working with a company that I sought out for some value experience. The team I am working with is small but has opened up a lot of opportunities for me. As the semester has progressed I have found it difficult to get on the same page as one of the partners. I know he is a great leader and can do a lot for, especially within this industry. This got me to thinking about how leadership styles can vary greatly between individuals and how different subordinates might respond or take to these leadership styles. This partner has held high expectations for me and my work since day one. This is good but I believe even the best workers need to shown some guidance or vision to know what expectations have been set. This has not been the case thus far. This partner has made comments like “MBA students don’t need to be spoon fed.” I consider myself a fairly independent worker but have not been comfortable in this situation. Even though we have come to an understanding of expectations now, taking the time to clearly set these upfront would have saved a lot of time and work in the long run.
In contrast, I have set up another internship for the second half of 2009. Just in my initial meeting and through a few emails, I have an understanding of the work that is being required of me better. It probably took two months for me to get to this level of understanding at my first internship. This is very much a product of the personalities of the individuals I am working with. One is extremely out going while this other is more reserved. Both are great leaders and I will have learned a lot from each when the internships are completed but sometimes the personalities at play dictate struggles we have in our interactions/communications. I do believe to be an outstanding effective leader, great communication skills are a must.

I found the Global Tech Simulation to be very interesting. Our team came prepared to work through the issues that Global Tech faced. Everyone had a slightly different idea of what needed to be done but for the most part we were on the same page. As we started working through the simulation we used our research and prepared data to make some good decisions. Our buy-in was increasing and things were going well. Then, we made a poor decision or two and things started to unravel. As our buy-in leveled off and then stared to fall, the group started to fall apart as well. The most interesting part of the simulation to me was watching my group members work under this pressure. The saying: one’s true colors will show under pressure, is an accurate statement. We all have the ability to draw on many different tools and personality traits in different situations, what I noticed is that the dominate characteristics of each of the group member came out when the going got tough. Those who tend to be more passive fell out of the discussion and those who are more aggressive tried to take over the situation. In short, we were no longer working as a group. Decisions were being made by individuals without group input and others were sitting back and letting it happen. In the end we failed to reach our 60% buy in goal and we failed. We then reorganized, placed people in different roles and tried the simulation again, this time making sure that we included everyone’s input or at least got them to agree to the decision. We were very successful the second time around because we work through the entire simulation as a group. The take away was to see how much individuals played to their strengths under pressure.

I was surprised at how my feelings had changed after last week’s class. Going into the discussion I was positive that I would have thought the Pinto was a bad decision from the start. I figured everyone knew that. The Pinto was before my time and I have mostly heard the horror stories of the fatal crashes and hindsight is 20/20. After watching the video it made me think of how we structure our decisions, especially at work. There are a set of rules/parameters that we follow and those sometimes take the overall decision out of context or does not allow us to see the big picture. I too would have struggled with the decision of the Pinto based on the information provided.
This also reminded me of a situation I found myself in a couple of years ago. I was working for a mortgage lender just before the sub-prime fall out. I was new to the business and learning as I went. We were never in the sub-prime business but did underwrite a lot of Alt-A loans (next level up from sub-prime). When I learned about the different products I was surprised to find out that one class of loan, SISA/SIVA (stated income stated asset/stated income verified asset) actually did not allow the underwriters to verify the income or asset depending on which one. My first thought was, how do you just take someone’s word for their income, this in an invitation for fraud? It is because of this, stated income, that the loan is much more risky, therefore allows us to charge a higher fee and/or rate. As a mortgage lender that did not carry asset on its books we would not care much about the long term risks as long as we could sell them. Looking back maybe this is something that some would say is unethical, I don’t know that answer but it is an industry practice and who am I to walk in and change an industry. It is difficult to bring change from a lower level position; the system is much bigger than any individual. Now it is clear that the sub-prime lending practices have had an extremely negative effect on our economy since foreclosure rate skyrocketed. But now I do realize how these practices can come to exist and how cases like the Ford Pinto happen.

Everything centers around one main idea when I think of the best qualities my previous supervisors have had. This idea is incorporating every team member into the team decision making process. A great leadership quality is to be able to involve all team members while making them feel a sense of accomplishment through their contributions. I think above all this quality makes a boss unite a team more than any other. At the end of the day we all want to feel that we contributed, our opinions were listened to and our skills were utilized. A boss that can bring out the best in a team will do this well.