As polyarchy is fast replacing the old oligarchical
ways of leadership, old leadership models are becoming more redundant but do
not need to be completely discarded. As
organizations start shifting towards more complex adaptive leadership
practices, they will still need to consider the natural evolutionary process of
these two types of leaderships that may co-exist in many current businesses (Obolensky, 2014). A clear example would be my organization that
is structured as a traditional top-bottom hierarchical institution, yet in
recent years is beginning to see the influence of polyarchical type
leaders. The implications of this shift
to complex adaptive leadership will affect my campus by allowing our team to
have more autonomy, flexibility, and decision-making power by creating a strong
followership foundation.
In the next three years my
leadership development will focus on creating stronger followership. My campus is only run by two people which are
the Director and the Assistant Director.
The leadership team that overseas all the campuses in the European
Region are not onsite and we only meet with them once a year and as it has been
stated by Obolensky (2014) “those at the
top do not know the solutions to the problems faced by the organisations they
lead” (p. 37).
With that said, the importance of
creating stronger followership is the key that will assist us in becoming more
self-organized. Obolensky (2014)
explains that “followers are in a state of ‘readiness’ or have a level of
independence which, depending on what that level is, will dictate to some
degree what the leader should do” (p. 157).
Because we are so removed geographically, I feel it is important for my campus
to take the necessary steps to increase our followership qualities and improve
how we communicate these needs to our leadership team. “Hirschorn and Gilmore stated that
“subordinates need to challenge in order to follow, and superiors must listen
in order to lead” (as cited by Obolensky 2014, p. 38). No one knows better than us the immediate and
long term needs of our individual campus and the needs of our local students. Drucker explains that in these types of
organization “you have to learn to manage in situations where you don’t have
command authority” ("How To
Lead," 2000, p. 1).
The followership development
should also include positive relationship building both bottom to top and also
laterally (Gabarro & Kotter,
1993). A strong relationship with
our leaders can help us ensure their support in linking us to other parts of
the organization and also helping our team procure needed resources for our
campus (Gabarro & Kotter, 1993). In a way, we are in a sense managing our
bosses. Over the course of the next
three years, I would like to start creating stronger relationships with those
departments that affect the decision-making power of our campus such as the
financial aid department, admissions and marketing department. This could aid our campus in procuring
necessary resources as well as helping us to expedite decisions on certain
issues.
Incorporating the 70-20-10 model
suggested by Google would be a great tool to help my team map out our future
followership development (Groth,
2012). Realistically, it takes 70
percent of our time to maintain the daily activities of our campus, sometimes
more. By keeping to this rigid time
allocation, we could set 20 percent of our time to building up our followership
skills by organizing meetings with leadership, strengthening our relationships
with internal departments and creating strategies that focus on creating more
autonomy for our campus. The other 10
percent could be dedicated to training in areas of weaknesses. For example, I could use more training on our
academic policies and procedures.
In conclusion, the next three
years will be marked by a gradual change to a more polyarchical method of
leadership due to the incorporation of new leaders with more complex adaptive
leadership skills. This trend will also
assist our campus in increasing our followership skills and allow us to have
more decision-making rights within our own campus. Using the 70-20-10 model used by Google will
give us an advantage by helping us to allocate time for team-building projects
and self-growth.
References
