Response to Organization and Systems Thinking from Kamal Badesha

Thank you, Kamal, for giving me a glimpse into your work and what it means to work in health.

Before going into the questions you pose at the end, I would like to highlight some comments you made in your post. Having a shared vision and making sure co-workers own this common vision, I believe, is always a challenge. More so for big institutions. Lepsinger (2010) mentions in the first chapter of his book of the troubling gap between vision and strategy. He goes on to share that one crucial element is to make sure that the employees feel like they exist, they need to feel respected and feel that their viewpoint matter (p.14). If my staff feels they are essential for the institutions, they will also be more willing to own the vision. Another observation Lepsinger (2010) makes is that the leader and the employees should not have two sets of values (p.17). As a principal, I need to make sure that I do not give myself certain freedoms that I would not allow my employees to do. Employees need to feel that they are just as important as their leader.

You also mentioned the challenge to communicate. I believe that improving communication has been a goal of mine every year since I started. We never communicate enough. Culturally communication in Paraguay is difficult. People do not always trust, and people think that it is better not to tell everyone what is going on. One has to fight against culture as well. Although we have worked at establishing protocols in how, when, and where to communicate, my secretaries occasionally still forget to inform everyone what has happened and what is going on in our school.

Regarding one of your questions about being heard. I remember when I was a teacher that we would complain and say that the principal did not listen to us and we felt distant from the administration. Although I related well to administrators, I did not think they took the time to listen to teachers. Now, as a principal, I wonder if my staff would say the same thing. I want to hear them. I have also attended different teacher roundtable discussions to make sure that people realize that I care. This year I have interviewed every single staff member mid-year to hear them. Is this enough? Probably I can still apply other strategies as well.

Recognizing staff members is probably the most challenging topic in our school. I acknowledge staff individually as I talk to them and we mention something publicly when they receive a prize or an award. Since we are a non-profit Christian school, I cannot recognize staff members with an increase in pay. There is always a lot of cultural mistrust, and it would also be very difficult to explain our reasoning why someone gets paid more than others. I would agree when Galbraith (2014) who says that the recognition system is probably underused and should be used more frequently than is the actual practice (p.51). I still need to work in finding creative ways to reward people who are doing excellent work.

Blessings,

Reference:

Galbraith, J. R. (2014) Designing Organizations: strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lepsinger  R. (2010) Closing the Execution Gap. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwood (2014) and Paraguayan Culture

The Equipo Directivo (Leadership Team) is the top management team that has the role to guide and lead our school, Colegio Johannes Gutenberg Campo 9. I, as a principal, work with this team weekly as we meet and discuss all school events and activities and as we plan future direction for our institution. The equipo directivo is composed of the principal (me), the campus pastor, the business administrator, my secretary, two teacher coordinators, and our social worker. It is not always an easy group to work with since we have inherited our position in the team through formal position. Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwood (2014) mention that one of the reasons such top management teams might have difficulty working as a team is because the right mix of skills is often absent; instead, members are chosen based on their formal position (p. 201). Every member of the equipo directivo was hired for our job and then told by the board to work together as a Strategic Leadership Team (SLT).

Hughes et al. (2014) pose several questions for SLT development (p. 213). Hughes et al. (2014) also mention why SLT struggle. I can identify that some members seem to feel the threat of one’s position, there is sometimes a trust issue, and disagreement on the team about key priorities. We, as a group, need to improve on several fronts. There is still much work to do. As a member of the team once said, we have to yet close the circle in our team development, and it is natural that we might still experience a certain amount of difficulties.

More than any of these struggles, I have to add the cultural factors. I would like to mention a few that have played a factor while trying to work as a strategic leadership team. Alfred Neufeld (2006) goes into great length into the fact that Paraguayans are very fatalistic. The people fall easily pray of believing that one cannot change the future, “it is what it is.” Our destiny has been determined already, and we cannot change it. There is a deep feeling of inferiority, much of what happens to us is luck or misfortune, and history will repeat itself, to mention a few.

Much of my job these last few years have been trying to understand the mindset of my team members and trying to build their sense of confidence and ownership of the mission of the school. Besides our weekly meetings, we have also made time for an annual retreat, going out for dinner, traveling together every two years, and encouraging each other. As suggested by Lepsinger (2010) I have also allowed each member to express their point of view and share freely their thoughts and concerns to make them feel like key players in this leadership team (p. 14).

Systems Thinking

I have been fascinated, in the last few years, by the Butterfly effect, which is part of the chaos theory. Senge (2006) mentions that this same theory can be applied to cause and effect where it might take years before one could see the effects of the decisions (as cited in Atha, 2018). One can get quite discouraged in one sense while making decisions today and not seeing the results, on the other hand, one might not realize what effects one small decision today might create in the future. As strategic leaders in our equipo directivo we occasionally fail to see things long-term and fail to reflect on the possibilities. Senge (2006) in a similar note also says that in systems thinking one should not expect immediate results. These are some of the shortcomings that I have encountered in our teamwork.

I would like to add another limiting factor in my team systems, “there is no blame.” We try to find someone or something to blame but do not take complete ownership of what has happened. Some team members are more willing to do so than others. Much of this has to do with the culture. Because of low self-esteem, people are less willing to confess shortcomings.

Currently one of our biggest bottlenecks is that systems cannot be fully perceived with one set of eyes (Atha, 2018). As a leadership team we have worked at finding solutions for problems, but we still fail to involve more people into the process. We still need more sets of eyes. I have gently encouraged members of the team to create more groups to tackle difficulties. For example, we have once a year food and fun fair with students and families. After five years, I wanted to do a more in-depth review of the festival. Members of our equipo directivo thought that we should take a few minutes in our weekly meeting to do the review. In reality, I wanted them to go and schedule evaluation sessions with different groups of parents and different groups of students. Not everyone was very encouraged because it meant more work. I hope that the results will show that it is worth the process when you have more sets of eyes. The results of the process will prove the validity of the process and encourage team members to involve more people in the process, using more sets of eyes.

Formal Groups

Just today we evaluated with our elementary teachers last week´s science fair. One observation I made was that the science teacher heading the fair did the work mostly by herself. We agreed that a formal group should be formed next year and that we should have teachers from elementary school and high school participate in the committee. Galbraith (2014) says that while staffing the group, representatives should be chosen from each affected unit (p. 91).

Galbraith (2014) also mentions the importance of the leader role in these groups (p. 92). Since projects are such an essential part of our school´s education, we will give our high school science teacher the role as a project coordinator and leader of our project-based education. From my experience, especially in Paraguay, it is imperative to have a specific leader in charge. I would not recommend rotating leaders since people would get very confused about who is responsible. The long history of dictatorship in our country has something to do with this need to have a direct leader responsible.

Reference:

Atha, D. (2018). Systems Thinking.  Course Learning Notes. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/ldrs501/unit-3-learning-activities/

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations. Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer Imprints, Wiley,.

Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie  D. (2014) Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.

Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. John Wiley & Sons.

Neufeld, A. (2006). Contra la sagrada resignación. Cristianización y cosmovisiones fatalistas en el Paraguay. Un análisis histórico, cultural y teológico. Asunción.    Editorial El Lector.

Thanks, Stella for the comments. I liked very much you bringing up the need of the leader to ask questions and to be informed before making a decision or forming an opinion. Knowing what has been done before is an essential part of this process as well. It is very much what a critical thinking leader should do (Atha, 2008). Many times I also have to learn to read “between the lines.” I must speak from what I experience. I am aware that Paraguayans do not speak directly, but one needs to learn to interpret what is being said. One can easily make a mistake when you don’t understand correctly specific observations or does not understand the comments. Example, I have had prominent people from the community who currently do not have children in our school come to my office and start asking about the school’s registration requirements and class size. The person knows already ahead of time that the classes are full, that we have no space, and about the registration requirements. What they are trying to do is to see if I am impressed by their status in the community and if I will make an exception and allow them to register their child, when in reality there are several other children on the waiting list.

You made great questions and sorry if I assumed people would understand.

When I say that some people do not respond well to some servant leadership skills is that occasionally people do not want to take part in the decision-making process, for example. People want me, as a principal to decide. They don’t want me to ask, “what do you think?” Some are so used to the top-down decision-making process that they believe the leader has all the authority to decide without asking. I had my secretary tell me the first year that I was not a leader since I allowed others to decide as well.

I believe that situational servant leadership should be used when people have not yet understood the concept of servant leadership and because of cultural traditions seem to not respond well to servant leadership. I add the word situational because the leader picks and chooses the time and with whom to fully apply servant leadership skills. I might be wrong of course, but this has been my experience.

I wonder what other peoples experience has been on this. Is situational servant leadership possible, or is it all or nothing?

Reference:

Atha, D. (2018). Learning activity 0.2: Critical thinking.  Course Learning Notes. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/ldrs501/activity-0-2/

Thanks, Sally for leading this week.

Excellent title you gave your post. It seems that as we look at the characteristics of a TSL leader one should personally embody this style of leadership. You did well to say that there is “no alternative” than to use TSL.”

“This need transcends the system of education in any country and can only be truly filled through the TSL path which prepares people to face challenges, develop consistent flexibility, and continually build strong relationships through mutual trust, respect, and reliability.” (Hinksman, 2018, paras. 2) I would like to high light “education in any country” since I believe we are entering a global education era and the need to implement TSL regardless of the country is a must. One has only to be aware that in some cultures, TSL will be initially much more challenging to implement. For example, in Latin America, the current styles of leadership being implement are the opposite of the servant-leadership model (McIntosh & Irving, 2008, p. 4). We still struggle with the idea of a leader being a chief and a dictator. The people that are currently in leadership grew up during the Stroessner dictatorship which ended in 1989. Just yesterday, while teaching my leadership class in high school, I told students they were a generation that was already born after Stroessner’s dictatorship. It is an excellent opportunity for us to do something different and incorporate TSL into their mind frame.

Another observation that I would like to high light from your blog is, “a servant leader is not someone who is weak (my underline) and unable to lead others in a common direction.” Amaral (2007) says that in Brazil, while a pastor was implementing the servant leadership model, the members of the congregation believed that their leader’s ability to influence had declined (as cited in McIntosh & Irving, 2008, p.9). I can say that I have been experiencing the same which, sometimes, forces the leader to fall back into other styles of leadership. It will take some time to convince followers of the benefits of TSL.

Blessings,

Reference:

McIntosh, T. A., Irving, J. A., & Seminary, B. (2008). Evaluating the Instrumento de Contribucion al Liderazgo de Siervo (ICLS) for reliability in Latin America. Servant Leadership Roundtable at Regent University, Virginia Beach.

Thanks, Sea Breeze for your thoughts on Transformational Servant Leadership (TSL), Servant Leadership (SL), and Strategic Leadership.

I also believe that a transformational servant leader is a strategic leader. You mention that a transformational servant leader “is a visionary leader” and you also mention that such leader “has an eye on the future.” As much as that is key, we cannot forget that strategic leaders and transformational servant leaders are not just focused on the future, but they also have a good understanding of the present. Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwoodie (2014) remind us that a strategic leader has a good understanding of the challenges he or she faces as referring to the present (p.85) In your reflection, you go on and also high light this idea as you say that a TSL teacher knows where students are. A transformational servant teacher knows what the students needs at the moment to bring him or her to her future goals. We see the future yet do not forget the present.

Regarding keeping servant leadership (SL) central to strategic leader. I very much believe that SL helps foster engagement and improves the work environment. From my experience in Paraguay, I would like to add that some staff members are not yet ready for SL, which is why I would advocate for situational servant leadership in some cases and with some staff members. I have realized the last few years in Paraguay that some of my staff members do not respond well to some servant leadership skills I use. I hope that eventually, I can bring them all into a place where they will learn to appreciate SL and practice SL.

To finish, thank you for your faith statement in your last paragraph. I appreciate your openness. You said that TSL could be practiced fully in a Christian school setting. I agree, but I am reminded every day that it is challenging even among Christian teachers to practice TSL. I remember an observation posted on the Seventh Adventist online website that says “it seems hypocritical that we as Christians who love Jesus and that follow Him as his disciples practice secular styles of leadership” (Service and Servant Leadership, 2017). Maybe we have used leadership skills that are contrary to what Jesus teaches for too long. Many times we are also conditioned by our culture and our surrounding which can make it especially tricky to practice TSL.

Blessings,

Reference:

Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie  D. (2014) Becoming a strategic leader. San  Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.

Service and servant leadership. (2017). Retrieved from            https://www.sabbathschoolpersonalministries.org/  html?code=RTFL2Q17WK07&file=/assets/earliteens/Lessons/2017/Q2/English/STUDENT/R-17-Q2-L07.pdf