Spheres: What are they good for?

"There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it." - Abraham Lincoln

People have always had power over others, whether friends, employees, or entire regions.  These people have what's known as a sphere of influence.  Just like a planet keeps satellites in orbit around it by the sheer force of gravity, people can slowly attract others that have similar interests, or are willing to hear what what one has to say.  These people then open themselves up to be influenced.  That's not to say that one has to be high up in position to have a sphere of influence, or really have actual control of people at all.

For example, even though I am in no position of authority over others, I still have a sphere of influence among my friends and family, as they listen to my thoughts, and collaborate with me on decisions and steps to take for the future.

This leads to the heart of the sphere of influence.  One can only keep their sphere together as long as they align themselves with those whose values are similar.  For example, if you value helping the poor, a group could be formed with people that are just as passionate about this issue as you, and as the overall influence of the group grew, so too would the power and influence you would have over its members and the ability to find even more people that share your values.

The sphere of influence could be likened to a balloon, expanding as more and more individuals become part of it.  But unlike a balloon, it will never pop!

Communication: Can you hear me now?

"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." - Abraham Lincoln

In more situations than I care to admit, I have sometimes been told during discussions, "Get to the point!", "Great, but my question was...," or even the rare, "I think you have a run-on sentence or two in your essay."  I suffer from what I like to call verbosititis, or, talking too much but saying too little!  With that, I would like to discuss briefly* how communication is important.

I believe that one of the most important fundamental skills anyone would need in a leadership position, or any situation for that matter, would be that of communication.  It is up to the leader of an organization to state their expectations and delegations clearly, just as it is the responsibility for followers to provide constructive feedback and communicate with the leader regarding his/her expectations.  Therefore, the first step to a successful enterprise is establishing an efficient loop of communication among the different branches of a group, from the lowest root to the apex, and everything in between.  Otherwise, one may risk a breakdown in communication and failure in goals.  An example of such a breakdown is in this short story illustrating what is known among Discordians as the SNAFU Principle (Warning: this does contain some NSFW language): http://snafu.priv.at/jargon/html/S/SNAFU-principle.html

Of course, many forget the other equally important half of communication, listening.  Just as ideas must be expressed in a clear and concise manner, one must also ensure that whoever is listening gets the full picture, with no room for misunderstandings.  Going back to the example of the SNAFU Principle, by not listening or verifying the validity of what was being said, each "leader" passed on an increasing opposite view of reality to their superiors, resulting in failure.

So in conclusion, remember, if you need to ask a person "What was your question again?," or you hear "Go for it," instead place of "Don't do it," you should probably work on those communication skills.

*Or at least briefer than if I were given the opportunity to speak in person ... and maybe given enough time too.

Chaaaange! (Part 2)

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Lincoln

Last blog, I'd talked about change and how it might not always be the best choice, but what happens when it can't be averted, and is even needed in a group environment?  In that case the most important element to consider is establishing the best guiding coalition to get the change started.

Without support, the idea of change, whether good or bad, lives and dies with the origin of it.  The leader may create the change, use his/her referent power to build up support for it, and use his/her legitimate power to enforce it.  However, as soon as the leader is out of their position, the organization will slowly revert back to the way it was before the change, unless the idea is firmly rooted in all aspects of the organization.  That is where the guiding coalition comes into play.  Not only are they the ones who will create ways to implement the change, they are the movers and the thinkers that will make the pill just that much more easier to swallow.  

Changing views on changes

"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."

I share this view on changes with President Lincoln.  Not everyone likes change, and determining when it's necessary and when it's not not can sometimes be difficult, and implementing it is even more so.

Despite that though, I believe it is usually a bad idea for a leader to force change on anyone, whether it be a fellow leader or a follower.  The old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is the primary reasoning for this most of the time.  For example, someone might come up with a "more efficient" way to get from Point A to Point B, when it isn't necessarily better.  I think this could be likened to driving one's car through buildings to get from their house to the store, instead of going around!  In addition, when the change involves making a decision, more often than not changing something based on a gut reaction may end badly not just for the leader, but for the group for which the decision was made.

So when is change needed and how does a leader handle it?  I think that change is needed when there is some tangible problem that needs to be addressed or at least when a particular solution to a problem is truly better than the one currently in place.  Selling the idea of change to others may be the hardest part in all of this, however.  In my opinion, the best one can do, at first, is to make their case for change and garner as much support as possible before implementing it.  If that is not possible, such as when change will need to come soon or the change will never be immediately accepted by a majority, the only thing left for a leader to do is use their legitimate power to implement it, and use their referent power to put a positive spin on it.  This means that a new leader should never change something as soon as they achieve their leadership position, at the risk being antagonized by followers, decreasing their starting referent power, and threatening his/her ability to implement change in the future.

In the end, change is inevitable, and as future leaders we can only:

Passing Passive Thoughts

The picture above is a good representation of passive people.  As I'm passive myself, I would have to say that a lot of the times, what is going on in our heads is not the same thing that we show to others.  We passives like to avoid conflict, even if it means that our own viewpoints might be overlooked or even ignored.  Minimizing the tension in a situation and a speedy, albeit sometimes incomplete, conclusion is what we strive for.  For example, I personally am very agreeable by nature, and have a hard time saying "NO" to anyone.  The biggest reason for this is, I think, the fact that I hate getting into awkward, tense conflicts, and would much rather agree to something which is in my mind small compared to the conflict that I'd have to go through if I fought for my point of view.  Of course, if the issue at hand goes against my core values, I will usually make my stance known, and if it is an especially strong subject to me, I will defend my view.



As it is, passive people do not run the world.  That is where assertiveness comes into play.  As I just mentioned, I will only be assertive if my core values are challenged, but in a leadership position, that is not enough most of the time.  A leader, in my opinion, needs to assert his power even when his ideology is not at stake.  Whatever the group is, be it a club or a company, for it to be successful, at least some form of direction is needed from the head of the organization.  By putting off conflict, issues would not be resolved in a timely manner, viewpoints that are not necessarily for the greater good might be adopted, and the group as a whole would be aimless.  It would also be unwise to be too assertive of course, as a closed mind would create pretty much the same problems.

In the end, though, one must not let themselves be swayed too much by others, and at least let some assertiveness come into play.  I think I did some of that by putting in the opinions I did in this post!

Evaluating One's Values

Values are a tough concept for anyone to describe, mostly because they are abstract ideas that we don't really think about often.  I think Abraham Lincoln summed it up quite nicely with the quote, "Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."  In other words, our values are not influenced by outside forces, they are created from within.

Values play a big role in our decision making, and therefore our ability to lead.  Sometimes, when faced with a conflict that pits two values against each other, one has to choose which values they "value" most.  For example, for me, trust in one another and logical reasoning are among my two top values.  If someone I've recently met comes up to me to say something, I would trust their words, almost as a default.  However, if they said something like, "Meet me later in this dark alleyway after school,"  despite my current trust in them, I would have to assess the situation, and look at the logical reason behind the request.   At this point, I'd run into a block based on what I feel would be a tug-of-war between my current trust for this person and what seems to be an illogical request.  This same situation can easily arise in a leadership position as well, where one makes decisions for their group based on what they think is right and what is by the rules.  In either situation, a decision would have to be made over which value is higher.

Ultimately, our values do not make up who we are.  Rather, they steer us in a general direction to self-discovery.

 

The Person in Personality

Abraham Lincoln was a man of many quotes, and this one I think highlights the main idea about personality and how it relates to people as a group: "Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed."



In a group, it's inevitable that there'll be people with vastly different personalities, such as the extremely social extrovert or maybe the reclusive and meditative introvert.  Also, as a leader, one's own personality will have wide-ranging consequences on both leadership style and how one is perceived by his/her peers.  For example, a leader with a strong leaning towards the feeling side of their personality might be lenient with punishments from mercy and reward minor achievements, whereas a strong thinking leader would instead hand out punishments based on how severe they believe the error was and reward people only based on the amount of work the follower did.  Therefore, it's important that when personalities clash to work around and accommodate each other's differences, which is basically the purpose of personality theory.  For example, an extrovert would allow the introvert more chances to speak their mind, and feelers would remind thinkers to not always adhere to such a rigid style of thinking.

As an interesting side-note, when I was taking courses in Florida Virtual School, I was in the Leadership Service Program, which was basically the high-school version of LEAD.  There, I took a test similar to the personality test taken here.  However, it was different in that the test not only gave you a four letter code describing your personality, it also gave you a total rundown of all your high and low stats, from assertiveness to empathy to even what careers you might be most comfortable with.  That, and it was also slightly longer, consisting of 485 questions.  I've included the link below in case anyone wants to try it out!
http://www.funeducation.com/Tests/CareerTest/TakeTest.aspx