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