Category: Post 3.1 (page 1 of 1)

Marcelo’s post can be found here: https://create.twu.ca/marcelowarkentin/2018/10/16/mssl-et1-el-equipo-directivo/

Marcelo, thank you for your post. Are you sure this post isn’t about the Philippines? You wrote about Paraguayans being fatalistic, believing in a predetermined destiny (Warkentin, 2018). Filipinos also have a reputation of fatalism – our expression is “Bahala na”, or whatever happens is Bathala’s will (Menguito & Teng-Calleja, 2010). This expression has both negative and positive implications – negatively, relying on the omnipotent may result in “irresponsible and passive resignation” (Avelino & Matienzo, 2015). On the other hand, the positive side of “bahala na” is “acknowledging our role in the overall design of nature in which there is one Supreme Being watching over us” (Mengutio & Teng-Calleja, 2010). If anything, I can see the common Spanish roots, as quoted by the famous song, whatever will be, will be!

Further, you note in your section of systems thinking the discouragement of making decisions and not immediately seeing the results, expressing an occasional failure to see long-term (Warkentin, 2018). Northouse (2016) concurs, noting the Latin American culture cluster as scoring low on future orientation, which includes “planning, investing in the future, and delayed gratification”. It can be difficult to focus on future ideas when the present threatens to drown us in a myriad of concerns.  McChesney, Covey, & Huling (2016) talk about the whirlwind or the urgent day to day activities keeping us from achieving the wildly important goals. I emphasize with the struggle to encourage your team to “create more groups to tackle difficulties” due to the perception of more work (Warkentin, 2018). I also applaud your attempts to connect with your team through the various team-building activities you do. Your actions are your way of building community, one of the ten characteristics of a servant leader according to Spears (as cited in Northouse, 2016).

Finally, one of your points that hit home for me is the concept of “there is no blame”. Like your team, Filipinos do not want to lose face, or “the positive social image that individuals want to maintain in the presence of others” (Miron-Spektor, Paletz, & Lin, 2015). Accepting blame would be difficult, especially when there is a “deep feeling of inferiority” (Warkentin, 2018). Yet, a TSL has the characteristics of empathy and healing to understand and support their followers (Spears as cited in Northouse, 2016). I emphasize with your challenges and will pray for you and your team.

References:

Avelino, R. & Matienzo, R. (2015). Revisiting the philosophy of bahala na folk spirituality. FILOCRACIA: An Online Journal of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies. 2. 86-105. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from http://www.filocracia.org/issue4/Matienzo_Aug2015.pdf

McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2016). The 4 disciplines of execution: Achieving your wildly important goals.

Menguito, M. L. M. & Teng-Calleja, M. (2010). Bahala na as an expression of the Filipino’s courage, hope, optimism, self-efficacy and search for the sacred. Philippine Journal of Psychology, 2010,43 (I), 1-26. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from http://lynchlibrary.pssc.org.ph:8081/bitstream/handle/0/1543/03_Bahala%20Na%20as%20an%20Expressinon%20of%20the%20Filipinos%20Courage_Hope_Optimism_Self-Efficacy%20and%20Search%20fo.pdf?sequence=1

Miron‐Spektor, E., Paletz, S. B., & Lin, C. C. (2015). To create without losing face: The effects of face cultural logic and social‐image affirmation on creativity. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(7), 919-943.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

Warkentin, M. (2018). MSSL ET1 – “El equipo directivo”. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from https://create.twu.ca/marcelowarkentin/2018/10/16/mssl-et1-el-equipo-directivo/

This post is in response to Samson’s post here:

https://create.twu.ca/chiefanalyzerofthings/2018/10/16/response-to-strategic-leadership-teams-hc1-post-leader/

Thank you, Samson, for your response to my post. I apologize if my post sounded utterly negative. It was not; I did find much of my experience beneficial.

I will provide more background on the care organization. This leadership group oversaw four facilities with shared leadership. The organization only had ten staff at most, comprised of directors and managers for various departments. Contractors provided the frontline staff for the care and environmental departments. The contractor organizations had their own owners and managers.

The organization was set up with a geographical hierarchical structure as described by Galbraith (2014, p. 34). There was a board of directors for each facility, but one executive director for all four sites. There was one director of care for one site and one director of care for the three other sites (this was the daughter of the executive director). Each site also had its own care manager and environmental manager. I was the care manager for the one location.

My site had the experienced director of care. Her style of leadership resembled an opportunistic style as per Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Grid (Northouse, 2016, p. 77). She wanted her site to be the best, so she aimed to have the best employees. She accomplished this by providing lots of education. Frontline employees appreciated the training, with many of them saying they learned a lot from working at that site.  She also wanted her facility to look good within the health authority, so she regularly volunteered the home for multiple projects, thus forcing the staff and me to learn. She also protected some of the staff from the wrath of the Executive Director while at the same time expressing her ire when she deemed it necessary.

The frontline employees also found support from the contractor organization, especially the owners and the care manager. We tried to support them when they felt harassed or bullied by upper management, but also had to show them their missteps. The owners used a paternalistic leadership style (Northouse, 2016) where they regarded most of their employees as family. Part of their rationale for using this style was the common ethnic bonds; 90% of the frontline employees shared ethnic backgrounds.

Given that background, here are some of the critical lessons I learned from the experience.

Leaders must account for intragroup dynamics.

For the contractor, the sense of family was evident in the way they treated employees during incidents; they would scold some of their employees like children. This behavior aligns with the dimension of culture called in-group collectivism – people from Southern Asia score high in this dimension (Northouse, 2016, p. 435). Further, the pressure exerted by the care organization’s leadership group caused a sense of “us versus them”; in other words, solidifying the idea of the contractor being its own in-group. Employees worked together for the sake of the contractor organization, not the care organization. Finally, many of the staff engaged in behavior intended to enforce status and save face. This is not surprising considering many of the staff came from Southern Asia and possess values from that culture (Northouse, 2016, p. 446)

For the care organization, family dynamics quite literally existed with the care organization’s leadership group as there was an employee-boss dynamic superimposed on a mother-daughter relationship. This confluence of relationships led to rifts within the leadership group, especially between the two Directors of Care.

Leaders must also account for intergroup dynamics and power imbalance between the groups.

Positive results do not always mean a healthy team. Bartunek (2010) says relationships between care providers and administrators may be positive and respectful, sharing similar goals and working together on joint aims. However, cooperation is not always positive; Dovidio, Saguy, & Shnabel (2009) note “cooperation is often achieved at the expense of silencing disadvantaged groups, whereas conflict can be a process that recognizes dissent, allows the expression of minority views.” One possible reason for high performance during that period was the drive for cooperation and alignment with the care organization’s goals. As part of the contractor leadership team, we felt we were in the disadvantaged group, as the care organization held the power in the intergroup relationship. The care organization was our client and we felt we had to meet their expectations even if they seemed irrational.

Results are important but do not tell the whole story.

I had many frontline employees come to my office and express their sadness and anger from workplace circumstances. I even had some staff cry in my office from the treatment received by leadership. Despite this, very few employees lashed out – many of them chose to continue to do the work as best as they could. Again, culture may have played a part – many of the staff come from a culture which is steeped in fatalism, and so they feel they must persevere no matter what circumstances they face.

I feel I have learned much from this time in my life. As I reflect on leadership experiences, I believe these three lessons are the most important ones, and I seek to improve on the positive aspects of that experience while avoiding the pitfalls.

References:

Bartunek, J. M. (2011). Intergroup relationships and quality improvement in healthcare. BMJ quality & safety, 20(Suppl 1), i62-i66.

Dovidio, J. F., Saguy, T., & Shnabel, N. (2009). Cooperation and conflict within groups: Bridging intragroup and intergroup processes. Journal of Social Issues, 65(2), 429–449. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01607.x

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

Years ago, I was part of a high-producing health care team. We had consistently achieved the highest levels of accreditation. We had a low risk ranking from our local health authority. Families gave us excellent feedback year over year. Turnover was very low, and we had an exceptional annual sick time of 0.1%. However, despite these accomplishments, I would rank this team to be a poor performer in strategic leadership. I give my former team this ranking based on the Strategic Team Review and Action Tool (STRAT) as described by Hughes, Beatty, & Dinwoodie (2014, pp. 290). Hughes et al. (2014, pp. 299-302) present STRAT data based on 12,364 respondents and rank the questions answered by score. For the sake of brevity, I discuss three of the top 20 items.

The highest ranked question in the STRAT is “This strategic leadership teams [sic] exhibits a high level of integrity” (Hughes et al., 2014). The team was part of a non-profit organization, and one of the unwritten expectations was to spend all annually allocated monies to prevent future claw backs. Sometimes this extra spending meant more supplies and equipment for residents, but sometimes the money was spent on additional education among selected staff members with no perceived benefit to the organization. Other times the money would be spent on expenses obfuscated from the team. The mindset of spending, even if superfluous, showed a lack of stewardship and by extension a lack of integrity.

The fourth highest ranked question in the STRAT is “Different opinions are welcome” (Hughes et al., 2014). Although the organizational chart had one Executive Director and two Directors of Care, one of the Directors of Care was the child of the Executive Director. The other Director of Care possessed decades of experience. These two did not get along and formed their armies within the team. Only the iron will of the Executive Director kept these two in check. Further, the Executive Director often pursued her interests or deferred to her child for the direction of the Care department. Therefore, the Executive Director’s goals restricted the diverse leadership perspectives of the team.

The eleventh highest ranked question in the STRAT is “There is a positive sense of energy and excitement around here” (Hughes et al., 2014). As I reflect on my experience, I recall episodes of positive energy, especially after completing an accreditation period. Otherwise, morale was low. The primary cause of low morale was the organization’s approach to accountability. The organization liked to hold people “accountable” for incidents, failing to address defensiveness. Leadership would respond to defensiveness through anger and doubling down on their stance. Lepsinger (2010) says empathy works better to combat defensiveness, but leaders lacked understanding and focused on blame.

These questions, among others, show the team’s ineffectiveness in strategic leadership. Blake and Mouton would instead describe the leadership style as Authority-Compliance (Northouse, 2016). Most of the staff were not consulted for direction but were tools to achieve results. The weakness of that leadership style became apparent when a new Executive Director joined – the team could not function in the old ways and suffered severe setbacks.

In my new role as Director of Care, I believe I have learned from this previous experience and now desire to avoid the missteps of others. I do not want staff composed of sycophants or the silent majority filled with resentment. I want a team that enjoys their work now and looks forward to making a positive impact.

Building this team will be a challenge. My current staff members have expressed an unwillingness to engage due to their experience with past management. They felt ignored, suppressed, and disenfranchised. Management and union leaders also built up an adversarial relationship over the years, reducing trust between leaders and workers. Further, a national team sets the overall direction of the “child” organizations, hampering local leadership’s ability to set the path.

Despite these factors, I believe my team can be effective. I have started asking team members, “what are we good at?” Salyers, Firmin, Gearhart, Avery, & Frankel (2015) call this appreciative inquiry, or discovering what works well and looking for ways to makes those things better. If both employees and leaders feel they excel in certain areas, they can set higher expectations for themselves. Stavros, Torres, & Cooperrider (2018) say a manager’s belief in an employee’s success increases the chances of an employee succeeding. Lepsinger (2010) calls this the Pygmalion effect. As the team grows its accomplishments, the team will move on to lofty goals and will continue to believe in themselves.

I believe this success can extend to my present working team and my team for this course, even though the composition of the teams differs greatly. Working teams in healthcare are generally interdisciplinary teams, defined as “different types of staff working together to share expertise, knowledge, and skills to impact on patient care” (Nancarrow et al., 2013). Galbraith (2014) would classify this group design as complex, as different disciplines including nursing, recreation, and dietary teams would work together for patient care. In contrast, my course team is simpler. Even if the team members have varying backgrounds, we are all students in MALEAD working towards group assignments and group learning. Despite the variation in teams, both teams require direction, alignment, and commitment (DAC) (Hughes et al., 2014) to accomplish their goals. In the case of the course team, we can develop DAC through increased communication and collaboration throughout the course. Currently, we are still working on strengthening our course team. Increased communication and cooperation would also assist in my current work environment.

Finally, challenges will test any team, be it the course team or a working team. Many of these challenges will happen because we seek change; indeed, there is no strategy to “keep everything the same” (Hughes et al., 2014, p.21). Ungerer, Ungerer, & Herholdt (2016) say people resist change actively and passively. Change in the working team could include new practice guidelines or better goals, while change in the course team could consist of working together on a project with new members, each with their backgrounds and perspectives. Ungerer et al. (2016) say empowerment moves the needle from resisting change to initiating change. Empowering others will solve many of the struggles and challenges any team faces.

References:

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels.

Hughes, R., Beatty, K. & Dinwoodie, D. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader : your role in your organization’s enduring success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Nancarrow, S. A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P., & Roots, A. (2013). Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human Resources for Health, 11, 19. Retrieved October 15^th, 2018 from http://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-11-19

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

Salyers, M. P., Firmin, R., Gearhart, T., Avery, E., & Frankel, R. M. (2015). What we are like when we are at our best: Appreciative stories of staff in a community mental health center. American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, 18(3), 280–301. http://doi.org/10.1080/15487768.2015.1059383

Stavros, J. M., Torres, C., & Cooperrider, D. L. (2018). Conversations worth having: Using appreciative inquiry to fuel productive and meaningful engagement. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Incorporated.

Ungerer, M., Ungerer, G., & Herholdt, J. (2016). Navigating strategic possibilities: Strategy formulation and execution practices to flourish. Randburg: KR Publishing.