Thursday, January 31, 2019

Opposites Attract - An Essay

I am in school studying for my Bachelor of Science degree in Healthcare Administration and Management through Colorado State University - Global. My Applied Leadership Principles class has been very interesting and challenging. This essay earned me 100% but more than that, it really caused me to dial in tight to the perspective of how important it is my Love and I work together to raise our sons. (the highlighted parts are apparently where I copied and pasted and it shows up on this background, sorry about that.)





Opposites Attract – Management and Leadership at Home
Jennifer Bogdanowicz
18 WB (ORG300-10) – Applying Leadership Principles
 Colorado State University – Global Campus
January 27, 2019

 Opposites Attract – Management and Leadership at Home
We have been married for over 27 years. We are opposite in almost every way. We have a few things we are passionate about together and that is our middle ground. We agreed years ago to prioritize our marriage first, raising our sons, flying hot air balloons, and serving our community. We give generously, fight hard and laugh even harder.  We combine our efforts and extremely different skill sets to manage and to lead in our home. We have agreed we want to create a family culture of empowerment, encouragement and resilience. The way we approach the creation of that culture is extremely different.
I appreciated the plows vs. bulldozers analogy because it paints an accurate picture of our contrasting management and leadership styles (Rao, 2016). Erik’s bulldozer-like ability to power through resistance and obstacles is effective and gets the job done. There is a clarity and intensity to his purpose and focus that I admire. His hard leadership skills increase pressure, production, and perseverance to get to the desired result. My soft leadership skills bring a cultivating perspective, like a plow drawing to the surface great potential for positive, transformative, and creative results (Rao, 2016).
Management
Erik exercises executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of our family (Bârgau, 2015). When it comes to empowering, encouraging, and building resilience in our sons, he is very clear about his expectations and specific about the goals to be achieved. He manages our budget, researches and shops carefully for necessary equipment for our family, studies for his commercial pilots license and somehow manages to get our laundry done too. He finishes every task he starts. He believes “early is on time and on time is late.” He is methodical about teaching our sons how to work our hot air balloon burners, fan, and other flight equipment. He is precise when it comes to repairs and adjustments needed in our home. He expects the boys to do a thorough job of every task they are assigned. If they don’t meet his standard, there is a price to be paid. There is no cruelty, only accountability and follow through. The pressure to produce quality men who will take responsibility for themselves and their families weighs heavy on him. He is also an excellent teacher at our local mountain’s free ski school and was awarded Instructor of the Year two years ago. On the mountain I’ve heard him use soft and hard leadership techniques that could also be utilized more at home.
He consistently provides opportunities for our sons to advance in learning, take calculated risks and keep moving forward even when it’s hard. I particularly valued the insight about the benefits of high involvement management practices of information sharing, power sharing, skill development, and recognition that improve employee commitment because, while our boys aren’t his employees, that is what it looks like in our home (Doucet, Lapalme, Simard, & Tremblay, 2015). This stretches his soft leadership skills and has continued to be an opportunity for growth. For example, he took each of our sons on a ski trip in 5th grade. They discussed when, where, and what they would need to do to be at the skill level they would need to be to ski whatever runs they wanted. Each trip was both a challenge and reward for each son and their dad.
Leadership
I lead with the soft leadership skills mentioned by Rao (2016). I see our sons and their time in our home as precious and factor in their personality, behaviors, and attitudes in my instructions to them frequently. It is important to me that they recognize the value of their contribution to our family life. I believe time needs to be used wisely, but must be flexible to accommodate communication needs. I collaborate with them, teach creative ways to approach and accomplish tasks, and focus on the long term results I pray for – wise, kind, respectful men who will care passionately about their wives, families and community.
I cultivate empowerment, encouragement and resilience in our sons by being in their processes with them with my soft leadership skills (Rao, 2016). I remind them of their capabilities from things they have completed with excellence in the past, I motivate them to move forward into their goals and dreams by being persistent and committed. This support looks different for each son.
Our oldest son swims on the high school swim team. Early in the season he wanted to give up because it was extremely difficult to practice in the open water. I reminded him of how often he swam throughout the summer in the same place and how his capability was not an issue. He needed to be reminded of the courage he contains and the abilities he already has. He didn’t quit the team, instead he improved his times consistently throughout the season and his dad and I were there to cheer him on. Our middle son has always been very charismatic and gains a lot of attention with his witty sense of humor. Some adjustments were needed early in the school year to remind him of his academic and personal goals. We collaborated on solutions involving improvement of focus for his grades, his classmates needs, he recognized that a funny student with As gets treated differently than one with Ds and the importance of timing and self-control in the classroom environment. Our youngest son has struggled with his new teacher this year who is also new to teaching. She is quite gifted, as is he, and it took some careful negotiating to come to agreement with him on how his behavior can affect the students and staff around him. I reminded him of the many times he has courageously navigated making adjustments to fit in to a new classroom each year. I encouraged him to consider the benefits of pursuing his goals in conjunction with his grades. We agreed it would take hard work and persistence to make the needed changes, but in the end it would be worth it.
Our Strengths and Weaknesses
Each individual scenario took time and energy to work through. I see where my strengths of leadership shine and also how my weaknesses in management glare when it comes to how long it takes to make the necessary modifications soft leadership requires. My leadership style can accommodate conflict and differences of opinion. Erik’s management style does not have much room for those things and when they arise, so there is often a significant issue. How we work together to solve those issues is also a source of challenge since we want to apply our skill sets to the situation. It often requires us to back out of the ruts of our comfortable skills and move into the middle ground areas of shared priorities, combine our skill sets, recognizing they are complimentary processes and move forward (Bârgau, 2015). We choose to have the boys present when we face these challenges so they can learn about handling differences and conflicts with the skills we both taught them. I am confident we could not produce our desired results of empowered, encouraged and resilient sons with only his management and hard leadership skills or my leadership and soft leadership skills.
Conclusion
Our contrasted efforts to raise our sons with shared focus and different skill sets reminds us regularly that we have to work together to produce optimal results. Our boys will make their own choices as they grow. We hope our commitment to manage and lead as a team will give them the courage to embrace their own skills for management and leadership as well as find friends and a partner with valuable contrasting abilities.
References
Bârgau, M. (2015). LEADERSHIP VERSUS MANAGEMENT. Romanian Economic and Business Review, 10(2), 197-204. Retrieved from https://csuglobal.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.csuglobal.idm.oclc.org/docview/1700066847?accountid=38569
Doucet, O., Lapalme, M., Simard, G., & Tremblay, M. (2015). High involvement management practices as leadership enhancers. International Journal of Manpower, 36(7), 1058-1071. doi:http://dx.doi.org.csuglobal.idm.oclc.org/10.1108/IJM-10-2013-0243
Rao, M. S. (2016). Hard versus soft leadership? examples and illustrations. Strategic HR Review, 15(4), 174-179. Retrieved from https://csuglobal.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.csuglobal.idm.oclc.org/docview/1850797110?accountid=38569



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