A presentation on the 4 Styles of Leadership

[Bob White]

Thanks Eamonn, A good use of delegation. Not a style that would orkwith each person but certainly the an effective way to deal with the person you selected.

 

Mark also found a good way to "support" another member. Asking questons that allow the participant to reach the correct decision on his own is a good method of leading by support.

 

How about our shy scout, what leadership style will meet his needs?

 

Bob W.

[OldGreyEagle]

I have to make a few assumptions here, and I may be off on the wrong track, but if I am I know I will be told straight off.

 

The Coach/Counselor comes in and sees whats going on, the first thing he should do is ask who the patrol leader is. What's that? They havent elected a patrol leader yet? They are here for Wood Badge and to expperience the complete package, they have to elect a patrol leader.

 

Coach then congratulates the patrol for electing their leader. He then asks the group what they should do first. The intention is to have the newly elected PL run the meeting, but the coach will make sugestions to draw everyone into the process. Coach helps them set priorities and has them talk about why they are in the course in the first place. He helps the patrol start planning a patrol flag, yell, and design a totem. Coach watches to see the members strengths and tries to draw each one out when their strengths come up. He thanks and praises each member as they contribute and gets patrol suport for every suggestions, esecially the weepy and shy ones. He thanks them for attending.

 

When the initial meeting is over, the patrol leader has run it and all patrol members are talking to each other, they have priorities set, and they are used to praising each other.

 

They are far from a fully functioning high performance team, but they have started the process with a lot of support, not direction from coach.(This message has been edited by OldGreyEagle)

[Eamonn]

Man of Steele,don't keep us hanging we know your part in this, and you were never the shy guy.

I have heard that you climb 25' towers at JLTC to look at the lashings. But me thinks that Rockets are more your style then catapults.

What did you do?

And what style of Leadership, did you use?

[dsteele]

Eamonn:

 

Perhaps you know me too well You've called me out.

 

I was a coach/counselor for that Wood Badge patrol. I have to admit that I was angry when I got their brush off. I'd hiked quite a distance with my little tripod, flip chart, note cards and other materials for the session.

 

The first style was to try to coach them to the table. I pointed out that they had paid good money to attend the course and that I was there to give them their first training session. Let's just say that they demured.

 

So I switched to directing. "Get to that picnic table with your notebooks and pens or you're all going home right now!"

 

That worked. For the moment. They went through the session fairly well after that. And, yes, I would have backed up my threat to the fullest.

 

The rest of the week took every bit of leadership skill in my book of spells to get through. PErhaps I'll play out the examples as we proceed through this thread.

 

Had to leave you with a teaser, Eamonn.

 

So what other problems do you think would have come up with such a patrol such as I've described during a week long course? Or summer camp with a group of boys such as I've described.

 

PArt of leadership is the anticipation of problems.

 

DS

[evmori]

Great topic! Great examples! And that's all they are - examples.

 

The delegation example isn't really delegation. it's the QM doing the job he was appointed to do.

 

There really was no directing/telling example. Just reasons it would be used. How about a positive directing/telling example, Bob!

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[evmori]

Great topic! Great examples! And that's all they are - examples.

 

The delegation example isn't really delegation. it's the QM doing the job he was appointed to do.

 

There really was no directing/telling example. Just reasons it would be used. How about a positive directing/telling example, Bob!

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[OldGreyEagle]

Directing:

 

A Scoutmaster has his troop settled in for the evening. He notices a wild lightning storm way off in the distance, he sees a bolt strike the earth and then an orange glow appear, the wind is comming from the glow. He shouts every one up and put your boots on and leave your gear, take water only we have to get out now!

 

A SPL is walking around camp, he sees a tenderfoot scout holding an aerosol insect repellent can in one hand and a lit match in the other getting ready to make a blow torch to start a fire,

He yell across the camp, drop the can and put the match out now!!!

 

A patrol leader is talking to his assistant after a patrol meeting. All the guys are in the front yard passing around a football. One guy misses the throw and is going blindly into the street between two parked cars to get it. The Patrol Leader sees him doing this while a low slung sports car is comming down the street very fast. The Patrol Leader yells, Charlie Freeze!!! and saves a life

 

 

Theres three for you Ed, Bob may have a few as well

[Eamonn]

Ed. You are right. The Quartermaster is doing his job. In fact he is doing it with little or no supervision.

Who asked or delegated the job to him?

If we look back to his "First time out" we might note that he forgot the tarps.

What do you think the Patrol Leader did the second time out?

I would think that he might well have fallen back and used a different style of leadership. He may have thought that the Quatermaster needed a little Coaching, in order to get the job done.

I suppose if we had the Utopian Scout Troop, we might not have the need for different styles of leadership. Everyone who just get on and get the job, that they were asked to do done.

However, while the goal is that we can just delegate the tasks that need to be done, we do at times need to use the other styles of leadership.

If we were to change the Camping trip to a canoeing trip and the Quartermaster had never been on a canoeing trip. He would still be the Quartermaster, he would still be willing to do a good job, but he would need a lot more help. Then a different style would be needed.

Of course at any time the Patrol Leader could decide that he is in charge and stop asking and start ordering.He might be able to get the job done. But he would then not be the team leader, he would be ruler/tyrant. How do you think that the other patrol members would feel about being ordered to do things?

We might also note that the Quatermaster noticed that the Dutch Ovens were needed but not on the patrol equipment list. As an empowered team member he took the iniitive and added them.

Yes sir, he was doing the doing the job that the patrol leader delegated him to do.

Eamonn

Of course it would be super if anyone else would join in and give us their take on how these Leadership Skills, work or don't work??? For them.(This message has been edited by Eamonn)

[dan]

Okay one that I did not do so well on.

High Adventure trip, canoeing.

On the portages 2 scouts would grab the lightest packs carry them through the portage and than sit down and say they where just to tired to carry anymore. While the other 2 boys would head back to grab another pack. (Yes, I now know we had too much gear) The PL tried talking to the scouts about sharing the load, made no difference, I and the other leader talked about how much easier the portages would be for all if everyone shared the load, and how a scout is helpful. After about 4 days of this one scout started grabbing the heavier pack, the other one never did. It finally came down to directing, from me. Do we chalk this up that we can not reach every boy? Or what could I have done to not turn this into a directing leadership style?

 

 

[evmori]

OGE,

Thanks. Excellent examples!

 

eamonn,

If the QM was never on a canoe trip then it is his job to ask his PL what the patrol will need. Still don't see any delegation necessary.

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[OldGreyEagle]

Dan, one thing you could have done was take the PL aside and suggest the youth sit down after dinner to discuss the problem. All the adults would take a walk to watch the sunset, and give them about an hour. When you get back, ask if the problem is resolved, it most likley will be.

 

I guess this would be delegating the job of fixing the problem to the PL

[OldGreyEagle]

If you ever want to study a true leader, I would have you research Leslie Groves, the military coordinator for the Manhattan project.

 

He had to control the most brilliant minds the country had to offer to complete a task not everyone on the team was sure was possible, under strictest secrecy and before the Germans. He was a trained engineer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon.

 

He was leading men who were uncertain they could do as requested, and he didnt have a real good idea of exaclty what it was they had to do.

 

Yet he succeeded, thats Leadership

[Eamonn]

Ed

When the QM, asks the Patrol Leader for help, the style of leadership that the Patrol Leader needs to employ needs to change.

He can no longer delegate the job.

He may need to Coach or guide, until such a time as the QM is able to undertake the job.

We are not really looking at the role of the QM.

We are looking at the Leadership of the Patrol Leader.

Just as at work, my boss has given me tasks that need to be done and there are methods to get these accomplished. For the most part, he is happy to leave me alone and has faith in me that I will do the job. He has delegated that task/goal to me.

However there are times when the job/task/goal will change. Without some sort of leadership I could end up not being able to get the job done.

[Bob White]

Evmori,

There are many positive examples of the proper use of the "Directing" style of leadership.

 

When a PL sees a scout about to touch poison ivy and says, "Stop! Dont do that!" When a Lifeguard tells a group to "buddy-up". When an adult tells a scout to stop bullying another person. These are all proper uses of directing and by no mere coincidence all have to do with safety.

 

Bob White

 

[fotoscout]

Hi folks,

 

I applaud you guys for trying to communicate something that is so complex, that even the best American business leaders have not been able to get these concepts across since the post war reconstruction of Japan, and even then it was not the Americans who were listening.

 

Back when they tried to teach these concepts as a thing called TQM, almost 20 years ago, the key word was empowerment. Congratulations to Eamonn!! Whether you direct, support, coach, or, delegate, you need to let the person know that you have faith in their ability to do the job, and trust that they will get it done. This is the hard part for all leaders, and rightfully so. The leader is, ultimately, the one responsible for getting the task done.

 

Key to making this work is for the leader to have an almost intimate understanding of his subordinates strengths and weaknesses, as well as a good understanding of the subordinates skill set. Lets be clear here, you cannot get up in front a group of scouts and arbitrarily say to yourself, Im going to delegate to this one and coach to that one, and, maybe Ill direct that one over there. The reason we see mature (not by age) work groups work well together is because the leader has had time to learn what works best on each member of the team. We often see the same in scouting.

 

A Leader using a Directing style does not ask others for input, does not consider alternatives, and offers little or no positive reinforcement.

 

Bob, I believe that weve discussed this before, your view of this style seems to be a little too gung ho. Many people use this style all time with great success. For good or bad, its simply in the personality of the leader. Within this style nothing precludes one from offering support, soliciting comment, or providing positive (or negative) feedback. This may not be the best way to develop your personnel, but it works very well.

 

One last thing that should be pointed out. Each of these styles needs to, and can, overlap with the others at some point in the life of a project.