Influential Leaders do it Right
Tools-n-Tips #4 offers six lessons in how NOT to practice Influential Leadership!
The six lessons are illustrated through a short video below.
While the video is put together to demonstrate ideas and principles other than leadership, it nonetheless offers a great platform to think about leadership and mis-leadership.
The nature of the human engagement you will see is commonplace.
It happens in our homes, educational institutions, teams, workspaces, meetings, parliament, the United Nations… wherever humans congregate.
As you watch the video, observe carefully what each person does, either individually or in the group.
Imagine you are one of the subjects—the lecturer/teacher/boss, group member, or ‘victim’.
What would you have done?
(If needs be, set your video playback to the highest quality available.)
We learn how to do things from seeing best practice, and worst practice.
The video illustrates six Influential Leadership lessons based on worst practices.
Here is a little practical exercise.
Identify the ones you experience before you read my six—they are not exhaustive.
You might need to watch the video several times to pick up the various behaviours.
List yours in the green panel below, then check mine.
I shall be delighted if you share your ideas. Once you have filled in your thoughts below, and finished reading the Note, send it back to me.
My six Influential Leadership lessons from the video:
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Here are my six leadership lessons seen through the prism of Influential Leadership:
Lesson 1:
The teacher/lecturer is a typical bully, and he sets a destructive example. He offers no reason to expel the student from his class. He uses his institutional position and power to belittle and disrespect the student. It might be that he is also using his physical size and gender to intimidate a younger, smaller person. From what we see in the video we have no idea whether there is a reason (legitimate or not) for her expulsion. If there was a reason, unbeknown to us, the time and place were inappropriate. What would the Influential Leadership approach be for the lecturer if there was a legitimate reason to refuse a student’s presence? A private conversation between the parties, depending on the nature of the reason.
Lesson 2:
The targeted learner/student lacks self-efficacy. Why did the student not push back? Why would a person who has committed no wrong to justify the lecturer’s behaviour, comply? If she had refused to leave, what could he have done? The Influential Leadership response would have been to ask for a reason, with due respect. In the absence of a legitimate reason, the student should have simply held her ground.
Lesson 3:
The student group was complicit in the lecturer’s action. The silent killer. Indifference.
This is a great example of how wrongs can happen because people are indifferent. As long as the ‘bad thing’ is not happening to you, we let it go. People look away, hide away, find excuses…
Let us be reminded of Martin Niemöller’s words about the Holocaust…
If only one other student had stood up, others might have too.
This is a powerful leadership moment:
Who will stand up for the one who is different, ‘other’, bullied, ostracised, victimised, wronged…?
Who will just do the right thing, go first, change things for the better…?
Lesson 4:
The lecturer fails—not falls, fails. If you were a bit like me, as the video nears the end and the lecturer admonishes the learners about justice and even critical thinking, I wait for him to open the door and try to recall the expelled learner. He does not. He makes no effort to repair what he has done. If he had, we could say, as we do in Influential Leadership, that we made an error, we fell off our bikes, but we got back on. In that instance, we fall but do not fail. Furthermore, because he knows that what he did was unjust, wrong, and he does not remedy it, we can say he falls victim to the ‘knowing but not doing’ syndrome. Influential Leadership is not a theory, it is a practice. Knowing what to do, but not following through is worse than not knowing. This is what makes us ACTIVISTS, not theoreticians, talkers and certificate collectors!
Lesson 5:
The rest of the students also fail! Not even one suggests to the lecturer that the expelled learner must be recalled. They put their heads down and are ready to learn some more theory about justice.They too failed the activist test. There is justice for all, or justice for none!
Shame on them.
Lesson 6:
The nature, the culture of the organisation. An organisation has a culture (a way of doing things) that is established over time through the habitual behaviour of the people who make up the entity. A culture (standard way of behaving) exists in individuals too, but is mostly thought of in a collective sense, in families and any other human group.
For example, we refer to such-and-such a team or business or school as having a culture of innovation or excellence or openness.
What kind of culture do you think exists in that represented in the video, where a person with institutional power behaves as they did, and the targeted student responds as she did, and the group silently goes along with it all?
An organisation infused with Influential Leadership would have a culture of respect, dignity, inclusiveness, participation, innovation, personal responsibility, self-reflection, thoughtfulness and so on.
The conclusion is clear.
If each of the parties in the video had applied Influential Leadership, they would have been better off, individually and collectively.
Leadership, choosing to lead, is tough. But the benefits always outweigh the effort—we are left better off, and that is why we do it!
Just do it, #keeP_pedallinG!
Regards,
Colin @ Karoo
We Close the Leadership Gap!
Leadership Weekly Note: 4623. 131123
e: colind@karoo.world
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