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We the Leaders Reflection
Alexia Huesgen
Champlain College
MSEL-565-85: Shared Leadership and the Strengths Advantage
Professor Cockell
Assignment Due Date- March 14th
We the Leaders Reflection
After taking the questionnaire, I fall on the collaborative side on the continuum of conventional which doesn’t surprise me. I acknowledge that no one person knows everything so it’s important to utilize all strengths that different team members possess. Realistically, there will be things that I don’t know in my field of work that my colleagues may have the answer to. We have just a great rapport that we all lead together with the mindset of knowing that we’re all in it together.
The tenant of leadership that I would like to develop the most would have to be being leaderful manager that is compassion because this will extend my commitment to not only better understanding other leaders but also to the group of people that I am actually leading. I want to ensure that all stakeholders feel valued otherwise the team will start to loose drive due to lack of acknowledgement.
French and Raven’s YouTube video that was proving in this week’s material really allowed me to see how the different forms power are applicable in my current position. I bring this up because I think that knowing what kind of power I hold will allow me to have a clearer vision for how I would like to develop my tenant of leadership. Knowing that I have legitimate power and identifying how I implement it, will ultimately allow me to see where I could use improvement. Often times in the past, I’ve seen legitimate power being abused which is something I don’t want to do. Hence, why I would like to develop a sense of more compassion. If I am compassionate about something, it allows me to dig deeper than what’s just on the surface level. It will allow me to be a leader who is more involved with the team and more in tune with what’s needed for the overall growth of the company.
I actually experienced something that was a challenge recently but was achieved through collective leadership. As an Area Manager at Amazon, we are often faced with new projects that are given to us on top of our workload that we deal with on a day to day. I started this position back in January so I am still fairly new and am still getting acclimated with my daily responsibilities. My specific department that I manage is AFE which pretty much is where associates pack customers’ orders and then them off to the ship dock. My direct manager tasked with me a new box suite project about a month ago. We had to implement a new layout of the boxes as well as create a new station set up for them. We have in total about one hundred different stations that needed to be completed redone so. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to complete it at first because the thought of it seemed overwhelming and tedious at first. Thankfully, a manager from a different department voluntarily partnered up with me. We both had the same end goal in mind which was to create a more effective work environment which we were able to accomplish together through collective leadership.
I would like to add that leaderful practice creates creativity. A good leader really creates a safe place that allows for innovativeness. Often time’s people will keep their ideas that they have for an organization to themselves in fear of it being torn to shreds. No one will really communicate openly with their leader unless they have a good rapport with them. Really fostering the C’s of leadership allows for a space of creativity. This links to a big problem that I think a lot of organizations of faces with which is that of leaders not allowing feedback from employees who report to them. Working on ways to be an open communicator that isn’t intimidating would really benefit an organization leadership.
References
Lyon, A. (2017, November 13). French and Raven’s Bases of Power. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4V2FlNR_h4&t=4s
Raelin, J. (2003). Creating Leaderful Organizations, 1st Edition