Category: LDRS500

I cannot believe this is the last learning activity. This course was a big challenge for me. When I started, I even did not know the definition of leadership. Each topics every week were new and exciting to learn. If I could only pick two of them which attracted me the most ,  I would pick servant leadership and critical thinking.

Servant leadership studied by Greenleaf challenges the traditional leadership style and emphasizes the leaders serves followers the first(Northouse, 2019). I did not know any types of leadership before except transactional leadership and thought leadership came from personal traits and only certain charisma people who have special traits can be leaders and I was not one. However, studying servant  leadership opened a door for me to the idea which everyone can be a leader. The ten traits which Spears developed following Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership also gave me some concrete vision of what are my strength and what are my weakness and how to pursue my leadership style, too.

Another impact for me from this course is critical thinking. Though I have already done post graduate education in medicine in Japan, it was very different from this course. In the science field, we have the same only one answer and when I research we pursue an absolute fact.  Learning of the skill of critical thinking reminds me that we always have to think positively not passively awaring our own bias, even though we think it is our own idea. It is  a big challenge for me every week that writing my idea based on my learning and backed up with other scholars’ ideas through scholastic articles.

Alongside this course, I am impressed with technology development and power of team learning. A lot of assignments and new environment sometimes worn me out. However, the existence of the professor and the classmates who even we did not meet each other support me and encourage me. I appreciate all the environment and support I was given.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
——————————-
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

By William Ernest Henley (Cited by Watson, 1951)

References

Northouse, P. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

Watson, L. E. (1951). Light from Many Lamps. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

According to John Smart(2015),the three technology including communication technology, computing technology and nano technology has accelerated to change our world.  The uprise of the new communication technology with the internet has been bringing our life drastic change in many ways. The society is changing at an unprecedented speed and complicity that many companies face on the issue of how to adjust themselves.

The long strike of Canada Post union reveals their severe situations. Canada Post has been a monopoly corporation in charge of mail delivery. Decline of mail volume stuck their revenue from the postal monopoly and forced them to an acute countermeasure. Based of the situations, Canada Post developed Five-point Action Plan in 2013 including using transit to using community mailboxes instead of door-to-door delivery, introducing tiered pricing, reinforce of the retail network by opening more franchise postal outlets that cost less than corporate post offices, more efficient streamlining operations, and decrease the cost of labor(Government of Canada, 2016). While the size of letter mail business has become smaller, the demand of parcel business has been growing rapidly due to growing the popularity of online shopping among people. (Government of Canada, 2016) Canada Post is trying to shift their main business from letter mail to parcels. Despite their efforts, their innovation is slow and still they need to seek further fundamental and transformational changes to catch up the world changing at the accelerating speed. However, reformation seems not to be easy for Canada post because of their labour costs, a large pension obligation, and most of all, their culture which is slow to change(Bickis, 2018).

John Smart states that “futures are blend of Possible, Probably, and Preferable. (2016). Possible contains knowledge management ideation and innovation in the organization on the evolutionary side. Probable contains foresight to deal with risk management to protect and prediction on the develop side. Then, leaders lead people to Preferable future using visioning and strategic planning. Finally, these three components blended each other to define the organization’s future (Smart, 2016). Therefore, when an organization has to change, leaders must have the ability of foresight as well as planning and visioning. Greenleaf also defined foresight is one of the ten abilities which leaders should foster as a servant leader(Northouse, 2018). Addition to it, certain framework is important to produce idea generation for organizations, especially small and medium size of business (Perkins, Lean, & Newbery, 2017).

I think the history of monopoly of Canada post  for 200 years caused the deficient of framework of innovation prevent from their flexibility for changes. If I could add something for it is bringing the outside power to innovate because public organizations often hardly have the climate to bring innovation easily.

The change of modern society is so acute and revolutionary that we hardly predict and foresight to plan for the future but we should not forget to put the customer as the most priority following the lesson from Jack Ma (Cited by E-learnig, 2016, June 23) and be flexible to adjust the changes.

Reference

Bickis, I. (2018, November 21,). ‘Canada Post is dying before our eyes’: Strike exposes how postal service has changed in online era. Financial Post. Retrieved from https://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/canada-post-strike-reveals-the-shifting-nature-of-the-postal-service

E-learnig. (2016, June 23). Keys to Success from Jack Ma | Self-Made Billionaire and CEO of Alibaba [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WjHZ5wLe6w

Government of Canada. (2016). Canada Post in the digital age: Discussion paper Retrieved from https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/examendepostescanada-canadapostreview/rapport-report/consult-eng.html#a2

Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice. (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Perkins, G., Lean, J., & Newbery, R. (2017). The Role of Organizational Vision in Guiding Idea Generation within SME Contexts. Creativity and Innovation Management. 26(1), 75-90

Smart, J. M. (2015, April 8). John Smart – Leadership of Tech Change – WFS2013 [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhdWqLNUJns

Normally inclusive is invisible and hardly recognized, whereas exclusive is quickly recognized, hardly ignored (Nugent, Pollack and Travis, 2016). For this problem, I think unconscious bias is the important key. For gender equality, people thought it was normal to treat male and female differently for a long time in the past.  The society has changed but still now the stereotype and the bias clearly exist. In my opinion, it is hard to diminish all the stereotypes and the bias from us because there is difference between male and female. We should not put our stereotype gender idea to a certain person to say something, however, surely we have some general idea about each gender has more certain traits.(For example, men are more aggressive, female are more empathic.)  Secondly, although there are increase of female leaders in the society but still female leaders is not common.  For us, female leaders are still new concept and have not got used to it. Naturally human being has a nature to exclude  what they are uncertain or familiar. It is natural ability to protect ourselves from danger. My score of Implicit Association Test (IAT) shows I do not have bias but I guess that it is just because I AM the female leader and easily can connect leader = female.

Nugent et al. suggests leaders to make inclusion visible for improve this situation. However, I do not agree with this suggestion. For gender equality, I think we should focus only to reduce exclusion and not to focus visible inclusion because our ultimate goal is  to make inclusion taken for granted or overlooked and also too much unnatural attention makes people feel exclusive or biased, too (Nugent, 2018). Northouse (2019) states promoting gender equality, we should make changes in organizational level, societal level, individual level and interpersonal level respectively (p. 413). With this changes, if more female leaders rise and people get use to female leader more in the society. Inclusion will become unconsciously.

Reference

Nugent, J., Pollack, A. & D. Travis, (2016). The Day to day experiences of workplace inclusion and exclusion. Retrieved from http://www.catalyst.org/system/files/the_day_to_day_experiences_of_workplace_inclusion_and_exclusion.pdf

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Case study 15.3

In spite of uprising of movement of gender equality, there is still the existence of general gender difference. Although “the glass ceiling” is often used for a metaphor for the barrier of women leadership, the situations around female leadership is more complicated and rather use “the leadership labyrinth” (Northouse, 2019) . The barrier does not only happen when female leaders are going beyond certain higher-level positions but starts already from the very beginning of the steps.

Nowadays social situations have improved to actualize the gender equality more and more, even the term “gender” seems to just indicate the biological genetical sex categories (female and male) and the definition of gender itself does not mean psychological gender, the things related to marriage and pregnancy will be the last issue to be solved because biologically our role for reproduction never will be equal and only women can be pregnant and give birth.

Case study 15.3 reminds me of my own experience of marriage and pregnancy on the path of becoming a plastic surgeon. When I finished 2-year doctor residency and few months after I started to train for plastic surgery, my husband and I decided to get married. At that time, there were few female surgeons in Japan, most female doctors didn’t marry. I was the first person to get married during the training of becoming a specialist in my university hospital. The first words I could never forget or even I did not imagine when I reported to my professor about my decision were, “That will be a big trouble unless you make a contract not to have a child until you finish training.” As male doctors had no problem to celebrate their marriage. There was no celebration for me at all. The training of plastic surgeon was so tough that it was common that female surgeons in the past who discovered their pregnancy gave up their career. Plastic surgery is normally a very small department in the general hospitals and normally they foster only two positions in each hospital. In Japan, we do not have the system to hire a substitute doctor to cover the absence during someone’s maternity leave. It means each doctor’s responsibility is quite high. Also, Professors were not happy that they trained and taught female doctors to be a specialist, then they were pregnant female doctors quit and their teaching became nothing. I myself did not want to get behind the training and give up my pursuing the career, I promised not to have a child until I passed the exam of specialist with my boss. In fact, I kept a promise with them. It happened 15 years ago in Japan and the situations has been changing and is not as bad as 15 years ago.

I am impressed that Canada has a good system which both men and women can take maternity leave and ensure the salary too. For the barrier of pregnancy, first having a system which ensure that work will be covered with a substitute during absence and maternity leave will not influence the career. Furthermore, changing our mindset of not only men but women is important. The news that New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern took maternity leave became a big news this summer. She is not the first woman to take maternity leave while a prime minister. The incident become news means still this incident is unusual for people. We should construct the society where female leaders can take maternity leave without it being news. For prosperity of humanity, it is necessary for women to be comfortable to surely have the environment to be pregnant and raise children with support and without any barriers.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8^th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Since Bass states in his book that “transactional leadership may lead to expected performance, transformational leadership has the potential to result in performance beyond expectations” (as cited in Wang, Oh, Courtright, & Colbert, 2011). Transformational leadership has been in the spotlight. However, it was not clear how and what kind of performances transformational leaders influence. Wang et al. (2011) performed mata-analysis to compare transformational leadership to transactional leadership to demonstrate that transformational leadership has positive relationships with individual-level follower performance by increasing contextual performance rather than task performance in all level settings. Especially transformational leadership works the most within teamwork and collaboration of employees. This research shows employees work more happily and efficiently for ethical reasons such as improving themselves rather than monetary reasons with getting rewards.

Leaders should be aware of these facts. As we work to get paid salary, our system of contexts as an employee has an inseparable relationship with transactional leadership. Also especially in Asia, transactional style is still a standard in the society. We should apply some transformational leadership to strengthen a weak point of the transactional leadership.When we would be a transformational leader, first we must build a good relationship with employees. In spite of leadership style, being an ethical leader to get trusted from employees is always important, too.

The definition of ethical leadership and important components.
It does not matter leaders use any leadership styles, all the leaders should have ethical leadership. This is a start point and a foundation to be a leader. Leaders should have the self-awareness to try to be ethical which means to lead the followers to the direction where he believes right.  Sometimes being ethical may not seem to be accepted by followers or contexts. Many famous leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi struggled to pursue their belief which they believed right. It is important that the ethics of leader should not be self-satisfied. When leaders try to use ethical leadership, they also need to develop to be a good, worthy human being having virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty, sociability, modesty fairness, and justice (Northouse, 2019).

Northouse also defines five components for ethical leadership (2019). What I think are the most important when it comes to ethical leadership is, first of all, the ability to show justice. Employees have to be treated fair in a reasonable way. Northouse (2019) states that ethics give leaders the system of rule or principle for making a decision with judging what is right or wrong. However, “ethic” has a grey zone because every person has their own perspectives and belief. The ethical framework may be different depending on each person, employee’s background, culture, and working conditions. Therefore, respecting other is the second most important for me to build ethic leadership. Respecting others to listen to their opinion, leaders can keep being an ethical leader in any situations.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice, (8^th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

George, I., Page, D. & Williaume, D. (2018). Monograph 2: Transformational servant leadership In Monograph 2018. Unpublished manuscript, MA in Leadership, Trinity Western University, Langley, Canada.

Wang, G., Oh, I. S., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), 223-270.

According to BuildingCapacity (2013), ethics is “values and beliefs that define what is right and what is wrong behavior”. Regardless of the leadership style, ethics is the foundation of leadership style directly related to leaders’ behaviours and decisions (Northouse, 2019). Ethic gives leaders criteria of judgements.  However, there were few articles about ethical aspects of leaders (Northouse, 2019). Avolio and Gardner (2005) define authentic leadership as the root underlying all positive forms of leadership and its development. Authentic leadership focuses on how to be moralistic and fair to all the member not only inside the organization but outside the organization. Either authentic leadership or ethical leadership is what we have to have as a foundation before thinking about leadership styles.

Building Capacity states very famous influential leaders such as Ghandi, Kennedy, Martin Luthur King also struggled with ethical challenges in their context (BuildingCapacity, 2013). Defining ethical or authentic is sometimes different from each other and contain grey zones. Some researcher tried to define “an inauthentic leader” first. (Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L., 2005).

Furthermore, it is very important for leaders to create an ethical climate in the workplace. A strong organizational culture that supports high ethical standards will have tremendous influence in the community and employee behavior.

Avolio and Gardner (2005) mention Luthans and Avolio (2013) defined the process of constructing authentic leadership in organizations “a process that draws from both positive psychological capacities and a highly developed organizational context, which results in both greater self-awareness and self-regulated positive behaviors on the part of leaders and associates, fostering positive self-development.”

BuildingCapacity (2013) suggested six ways for leaders to grow and flourish an organization in ethical climate.

1. Leaders should be a visible role model to show the examples of what moral behaviours are.
2. Leaders should communicate ethical expectations. Leaders have to create an organizational code of ethics which shows the followers organization’s primary rule and ethical framework.
3. Leaders should try to promote effective financial management using the resources in a socially responsible way.
4. Providing ethical training to show the followers organization’s ethical code.
5. Institutionalize an ethical culture by measuring performance focusing on “means” and “ends”.
6. Provide the place to discuss about unethical behavior which enable protecting an ethical climate such as a whistleblower policy, ethical counselors and ombudsman.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3) 315-338.

BuildingCapacity. (2013, March 29). What is Ethical Leadership? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks2QGoIq5nA

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8^th Ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

According to Northouse(2018), it is important for transformational leaders to  “exhibit greater individual consideration and promote intellectual stimulation for followers”(p.183).  Also, for servant leaders, follower’s career development is the first priority. Servant leaders help employees grow and succeed with providing the followers mentoring and support.(Northouse, 2018)

Here is an imaginary employee training plan if  I need to train a physician to use a new operation technique.

1. I will share the vision, in another words, I will clear the main purpose of the operation. What we can do with this operation and why we have to do it. Sometimes an operation procedure is one small piece of whole treatment, so it is important to clear ” what this operation is for”.
2. Ask the doctor to read some articles and textbook related to the new procedure
3. Ask the doctor to search YouTube or past operation recordings to watch the same procedure.
4. Let the doctor join the operation as an assistant to watch how I perform the procedure until she get used to the operation and remember all the procedure in the brain.
5. Allocate a new patient who needs the operation.
6. With the real case, do some simulation with drawing.
7. Let the new doctor perform the operation technique.
8. Use the recording to reflect the doctor’s performance.
9. Give the feedback.
10. After he learn, let him teach somebody

For the physician training, most important thing is simulation before apply to real patients. Nowadays YouTube is quite good to give resources to learn. Another important thing is feedback from leaders. For that, SNS, using modern technology to create platform which we can share the information have become the great tool. Doctors do not always work together. Sharing information is quite important also if we post the case, we can get feedback and advise as well. I put teaching somebody is the last step because if you are not clear you can’t teach people.

For my employee development plan, the important step is simulation and giving feedback. Recently we could use the technology to easily achieve it.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.