I’m writing the last paper for my class in Leadership and Administration. I’m concentrating on Transformational Leadership Theory.
Here’s the crash course for you!
30 years ago Transformational Leadership got some traction and it focused on something nothing else had: Followers.
What motivates and develops Followers created a paradigm shift in Leadership Studies that continues to be researched and written about quite a bit.
(The image shows 5 factors Transformational Leaders employ.)
The 4 Main Components that define Transformational Leadership
The four key components in play[1]:
- Intellectual Stimulation – In Transformational Leadership the leader challenges the status quo, encourages creative solutions, and leads followers toward exploring new ways of doing things while offering new opportunities to learn and grow.
- Individualized Consideration – In Transformational Leadership the leader offers support and encouragement to individual followers that help to foster supportive relationships among the team, and endeavors to help followers keep the lines of communication open to more easily share ideas. There is also recognition of team members’ unique contributions.
- Inspirational Motivation – In Transformational Leadership the leader has a clear vision that is articulated to the followers. With this clearly articulated vision followers may share and experience similar passion and stay better motivated to see the vision through to completion.
- Idealized Influence – A Transformational leader serves as a role model for her followers. She exemplifies the values she hopes to engender. This builds trust and respect for the leader. (This had been called “charisma” but has grown more nuanced.)
[1] Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations by Bernard M. Bass (1985)
The Book that started it all:
Updated and expanded in 2005
New Beginnings!
Today, I’m synching up with the Deeper Leader blog over the question:
What new beginnings will there be for you or your team?
Well! I just started my second 9 week class in my Masters of Arts in Christian Leadership. (It’s sort of like a power-packed Christian MBA)
This weekend we met for class (the rest of the learning happens online).
The time was packed with insights and new material, all of which will be so helpful not just with getting to know my fellow-learners, but in every environment I am leading in and will lead in.
The course centers on leadership theories and involves a lot of searching and self-awareness, learning of one’s strengths, temperaments, and personal leadership styles. Sometimes this is encouraging, but other times the process reveals blind spots, wounds, and flaws.
I’ve realized that a wounded but healed leader is the easiest for me to trust.
The insights we gain from knowing ourself and others better works like getting bionic limbs just before we climb a mountain. Things that were confusing, personalities that seemed perplexing, and the power for gifts and talents laser into focus.
Here are a few of the books I’m learning from that I’ve really been enjoying. (Two Big thumbs up!)
Another test I took for the course has to do with using a social and emotional competency inventory tool (ESCI). Social and emotional intelligence is too rare a commodity in bosses, in case you haven’t heard. :)
Plus, I did the Myers-Briggs Test. (I’m an EN(F/T)P, almost split F&T)
Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs test? (If so, what are your letters?)
Have you taken the Strength Finder test (it comes with the book)?
I highly recommend it! You will be blessed and so will those you influence!
When & How to ask a question in class
If you’re a student or a teacher it’s nice to have a quick primer for the classroom environment.
Teaching styles and applications vary (and should vary) to accommodate the variety of learning styles and to improve retention.
A group environment where sharing is invited doesn’t and shouldn’t stay in the format need for some instruction.
But, when a lecture format occurs…some guidelines can help students and teachers alike.
By pure chance I landed on this…. (tell me what you think!) Click image enlarge.
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Scripture as literal: Genesis 1
As promised, I’m sharing some of my current class on Evil (and the Justice of God) here at the blog.
The sound system, or lack of one, was poor in class, so I wanted to make this available to my class and the rest of you.
Tell me what you think.
To Cuss or Not to Cuss…7 Tip Offs
Cuss / noun
1 an annoying or stubborn person or animal : he was certainly an unsociable cuss. 2 another term for curse (sense 2).
Disclaimer: I’m not using a moral arguement against cussing, though you might expect I would, at a site with spiritual flavor like this one. While, many may say it’s a sin to cuss, I think what may be the truest thing is that the intention of using the vulgarity that is the real issue at stake. Nevertheless, I won’t go in that direction. My contentions are not nearly so deep or heartfelt. This is simple practicality and common sense at work:
Simply put: I don’t think foul language is powerful enough. I finding it lacking. Any great use of the stuff tips me off that I’m in the company of communication amateurs.
In truth, I’m not very offended by expletives. The shock wore off in high school. And high school–childhood–is about the only time a certain amount of cussing is, sort of, understandable. By nature, kids don’t know how to express themselves very well. Salty language makes rookie humans feel older and more formidable. It gives them a sense of power, as they flex their ” ‘I’m growing up’ muscles”. Yet, it’s the running myth that if something is bleeped on tv, it resides in the realm of “grown-up language”, and signifies something more heady and legit. In fact, expletives are quite banal.
I cuss quite rarely, and when I do it’s actually because I’m having trouble expressing myself. In some foolish desperation I concede to inferior “describing words”. So, really, cussing takes away from our points, rather than aids them.
Just for the sake of developing better communication, we needn’t use them. Maybe you enjoy tossing around a swear here or there. I don’t really care. But here are 7 points to remember on this topic:
7 Cussing Tip Offs
1. Cussing quickly reveals one has a diminished vocabulary or the inability to use their vocabulary very well. (This can become a worsening habit also. Hence, it is sometimes combated with a Swear (fine) Bank.)
2. It displays a rather uncreative mind. (What could help? Simple: A thesaurus.)
3. If a cuss word can be used as an adjective, noun, and verb, it’s hackneyed, and by consequence, impotent. Let’s just say it’s, “lame” in a hobbling sense.
4. While cussing may somehow help one reveal emotions, or relieve stress, it doesn’t help one’s case. Quite the opposite. Logic is a better choice. Give it a try.
5. Foul language tells a bigger story about the person and his/her hang ups than it does about whatever the person is trying to convey. (It’s sort of sad, really.)
6. Cussing offends people for a myriad of reasons, but strangely enough, much use of it boils down to spotlighting simple bad manners and poor taste. Throughout history, “vulgar” language has some sort of reflection on social or economic status. [Ex: A mother says to her child who has been running around with the kids from “the other side of the tracks”, “No, honey, we don’t talk like that (or them).”] Most often people mentally associate foul language with an uncouth boorish social class, or uneducated and unrefined upbringing.
7. “Dirty words” are given meaning by a culture, not the other way around. What is the massively cussing person trying to prove, then? And why? [That’s the bigger question.] Here, subtext trumps communication. so probably a #fail
What are your thoughts?
My favorite cuss quote:
“Are you cussing with me?” -Fantastic Mr. Fox