Good morning!  Check out Barbara Kellerman’s (Bad Leadership) blog on Harvard Business Publishing. She always brings an interesting persepctive to the other side of leadership. – Scott J. Allen

Registration is now open for the Leadership Educator’s Institute, a three-day institute designed for New and Mid-Level Student Affairs and Leadership Educators.  The institute is Dec 4-6 in College Park, Maryland and is sponsored by NASPA, ACPA and the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.  It tends to be a smaller, more intimate group of people (approx 300) with great conversations through keynote speakers, round table discussion, and breakout sessions about a variety of leadership topics- both theoretical and practical.  Some of the key themes are co-curricular leadership programs, curricular leadership programs, leadership theory and models, and leadership assessment and research.  The Keynote Speakers this year are Gill Hickman from Jepson School at the University of Richmond and Richard Couto from Antioch University.  The institute takes place every 2 years- I attended in 2006 and got a lot out of it- the least of which was great networking.  Hope to see you there! – Paige Haber

I have recently returned to study, and setting out on the path of completing a PhD researching the intersection of “sustainability”, businesses and leadership. One of the articles I came across recently has intrigued me and I hope the abstract below is enough to intrigue you too. The article, Envisioning a Sustainable World is authored by Donella Meadows (1994).

“Vision is the most vital step in the policy process. If we don’t know where we want to go, it makes little difference that we make great progress. Yet vision is not only missing almost entirely from policy discussions; it is missing from our whole culture. We talk about our
fears, frustrations, and doubts endlessly, but we talk only rarely and with embarrassment about our dreams. Environmentalists have been especially ineffective in creating any shared vision of the world they are working toward — a sustainable world in which people live within nature in a way that meets human needs while not degrading natural systems. Hardly anyone can imagine that world, especially not as a world they’d actively like to live in. The process of building a responsible vision of a sustainable world is not a rational one. It comes
from values, not logic. Envisioning is a skill that can be developed, like any other human skill. This paper indicates how.”

Have a deep think about this. How often do leaders go through the motions of creating a vision as the beginning of a strategic planning process… and really the vision is anything but visionary! It ends up being a logical and rational process of thinking. But Meadows calls for something else – a response from the heart if you like (and may will not like of course!). Meadows calls for us to create a vision that is a picture of the way we would REALLY like to live.

For example, viewing the web site of BHP Billiton, now the world’s largest resource company, its hard to find a vision anywhere. BHP Billiton has a purpose and values – but not a vision that moves beyond exploiting resources. It has a purpose that is derived from a set of assumptions about how the world works – a paradigm. One of the underpinning assumptions of that paradigm is that “resources are in endless supply”, or at least we can act as if they are. Despite the fact that we know, on an intellectual level and within our daily life experiences, that resources are limited. 

I do not want to pick on this one company. It is not this company that is at “fault” – although it would be great to see a change of thinking there! It is the system set within an outmoded paradigm or the world view. We continue to operate within this world view despite the fact that feedback from global systems such as weather, is telling us what we are doing is not going to support future lives on Earth.

How do we shift paradigms? That question is enough for a book, but a contributing element is to follow Meadows’ line of thought and start to engage with vision in a way we have not done for some time. 

Meadows points us to the difficult task of thinking about and daring to dream about – the way we REALLY want things to be. And there is plenty of resistance to this process. I wonder if those resistances are arising in you as you read this now? Have you decided this is too fluffy; impractical; unrealistic? Does it sound silly? Do you ask yourself if this would make any difference anyway? Isn’t it better to just get on with it?

As Bob Dylan sang so many years ago “the times are a changing..”  and we are definitely in need of leaders who are able to be visionary and lead us to create a vision of a new future that will move beyond the existing paradigm that is founded upon an assumption of separateness or “what I do will not effect you”.

The feedback loops from global systems are telling us we just cant keep believing that our actions do not impact others. The feedback loops are telling us that we do have to take into account the impacts of our actions upon others. Another way of saying this is that we need to think in terms of systems and wholes – not parts.

The new paradigm is one of connectedness and interdependence. We need a vision of what this future may look like. If we cant do that – then what chance to do we ever have of developing actions that will lead us there?

So I suggest that the capacity to REALLY BE visionary is a leadership skill we desperately need to develop at this point in time. What do you think?

Josie

I have been reading a ton about developmental assignments as a way of developing leaders. In her article Developing Managers by Radical Job Moves, Rosemary Stewart shares a “Checklist for considering what a manager will find different between the present and the proposed job.” For those of you not in a corporate environment, don’t be fooled…this can be adapted to student leaders as well. – Scott J. Allen

1. Does he or she have the knowledge of the kind of business including:
   1. The language commonly used in it?
   2. The particular disciplines required in it?
2. What differences are in the responsibility:
   1. In the scale of resources controlled?
   2. In the extent of personal exposure from mistakes or poor performance?
   3. In the industrial relations climate?
3. Are there major difference in the frequency, speed or ambiguity of decisions?
4. How does the pattern and pace of work compare?
5. Relationships
   1. Will the jobholder know any of the people with whom he or she will be working?
   2. Are the motivations of colleagues similar to those of the present job?
   3. Is there a major difference in the cooperation required from colleagues over whom the job holder had no authority?
   4. In what ways are the codes of behavior different, including management style and the extent of internal competition?
6. What differences are there in policies and procedures, particularly in the amount of bureaucracy? (p. 53).

The Process of Mentoring

Prior to developing a mentor program within an organization, Forret, Turban, & Dougherty (1996) highlight a number of issues that should be answered in the development phase.

• Who should receive mentoring? The organization should determine if the program will be made available to all employees, high potential employees, underrepresented employees (women, etc.) or some other group.
• What type of training should mentors and protégés receive? Training should be based upon the objectives of the mentor/protégé relationship. For instance, if it just “showing them the ropes” then program architects need to determine “which ropes” mentors will need to show.
• How should potential conflicts with the protégé’s supervisor be handled? Program architects should build in a way to deal with this on the front end and clearly state the process in the training program. Further, supervisors should be kept informed of the process, etc. This may circumvent issues on the front end.
• How do formal mentor relationships last? This depends on the objectives of the program. Once these have been determined, program architects should determine what they feel is the appropriate length. A pilot group may offer needed information about appropriate length.
• What can help get the mentoring relationship get off to a good start? The most effective relationships begin with a strong bond created between mentor and protégé. Teambuilding activities can assist in this process as well as “get to know you” activities during initial meetings. Another idea mentioned by Forret et al. (1996), was a social gathering.
• How can mentoring programs be evaluated? Program objectives ought to be clear and measurable. If they are not, then it will be difficult to measure benefits other than whether or not the mentor or protégé enjoyed the process. Clear and measurable objectives are the key to evaluating.

- Scott J. Allen