New Superior (eBook)

A Better Way to Be the One in Charge

John M. Collins (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
318 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-3613-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Leadership and teamwork are not natural, unlike hierarchies and the dominance behaviors that are common within them. True leaders are those who've experienced the critical transformations needed to develop a naturally high capacity for influencing the members of a team in a way that inspires collaboration. If they haven't, their efforts to influence are awkward, careless, and damaging. The good news, however, is that this transformation is always within reach, no matter how much or how little leadership experience you have. But it begins by confronting centuries-old attitudes about what it means to be....a superior.

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"e;The New Superior"e; is a tutorial on the fundamentals of contemporary high-stakes leadership, drawn from the unique experiences and insights of one of America's most respected forensic laboratory executives who reminds us that urgency is what energizes teams in the face of existential threats. Unfortunately, momentum is often sacrificed by toxic influencers whose need to dominate suppresses collaboration, even in matters of life and death. From the bombing of the 1996 Olympics to the brutal slaying of a young fashion model near Chicago, John M. Collins takes you inside of pressure-packed situations where two opposing styles of leadership confront each other in a primitive and dangerous struggle. In this struggle you will learn that both styles live within you, but only one will allow you to become the leader that people trust when everything is on the line.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION

A Choice to Be Made

 

 

Malala was only fifteen years old. After boarding the bus that would bring her home from school, she took her seat and bantered with classmates about the exam they had just taken and perhaps the homework to be completed before the day’s end. Education was more than just important to Malala; it was in her blood. Her father was an executive administrator for a learning institution in the city while her grandfather was a high school theology teacher. When Malala was but a mere toddler her father would bring her to his school where she would pretend to teach, waving her arms and babbling incoherent baby noises because she hadn’t learned to talk yet. Even now as a teenager, Malala still cared deeply about school and enjoyed the company of other kids who appreciated the liberating power of learning as much as she did.

Malala, however, was not an ordinary teenager, and the 9th of October 2012 would not be an ordinary day. She was the primary target of an armed gunman who stopped her bus as it proceeded along its route. Boarding the bus, a menacing bearded man scanned the faces of the children. Malala knew exactly who the man was and why he was there. As he barked out her name, she looked up and stared him directly in the eyes. He recognized her and Malala knew it. Crippled by fear, she gripped her friend’s hand so tight that her friend would later report that it still hurt days later. The man found what he was looking for. Time stood still.

The bullet that penetrated Malala’s skull arrived before the sound of the gunshot, ripping a hole in her left temple, grazing her eye, lacerating her facial nerve, collapsing her left eardrum, and breaking her jaw before exiting the back of her head and lodging into her shoulder. Unconscious, she slumped into her friend’s lap. High-velocity blood-spatter stained the white walls of the bus as the shooter fled the scene.

According to a report by The Guardian, the motive for killing Malala Yousafzai was recounted by a spokesman for the Taliban who complained that “the teenager’s work had been an ‘obscenity’ that needed to be stopped.”

The so-called obscenity for which Malala was targeted was her demand that her right to an education be respected. Living in the beautiful Swat Valley of northwest Pakistan, her community was overrun by a Taliban insurgency that, among its many atrocities, banned girls from attending school with promises of killing them if they disobeyed. A campaign by the Pakistani army to drive the Taliban out of the valley was underway and young Malala sought to support the campaign by attracting attention to what the Taliban were doing to her people.

So, she began writing a blog hosted by the British Broadcasting Company that attracted an international following. She told the story of how the Taliban burned down schools for girls and sought to bolster its own power and twisted ideology by accelerating the socioeconomic wasting of women who might otherwise pose an intellectual threat if permitted access to an education. Malala stood in their way and even had the audacity to express her intent to create her own political party and a school for marginalized girls in the valley. For both her courage and her efforts, 14-year-old Malala was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. When she did not win, Pakistan’s Prime Minister awarded her with what would become the country’s first National Peace Award.

Sitting on the bus on that fateful day, Malala knew the Taliban had found her and that her days of political activism and her life were probably over. Fortunately, they were not. Malala survived the attack and went on to become an international advocate for those she described as “the forgotten children who want an education.” At the age of 17, still recovering from the lasting effects of her wounds, Malala was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest recipient in the award’s history.

 

A Reason to Lead

The story of Malala Yousafzai is more than just a story about political will or the courage to stare down a barbarian. Her story is one about leadership and it began long before a psychopath boarded her bus and barked out her name. As the greatest of leaders do, she cared about something so much that it recalibrated her sense of self. In her own mind she was far more than just a young girl from the Swat Valley. She was a champion for the right of young girls to become educated, and she was a formidable enemy to anyone who might attempt to violate this right. One who sees herself as just a young girl will have neither the strength nor courage to take on a foe as intimidating as the Taliban. On the other hand, one who sees herself as an international champion of girls’ rights will, in fact, have the necessary strength and courage. When the moment requires it, she will find herself empowered by the primordial inspirations that are reserved exclusively for people having a purpose. Leadership is the act of protecting a purpose. In the absence of purpose, there can be no leadership.

Purpose, therefore, is the distinguishing trait of effective leadership, and this purpose must be sufficiently compelling to inspire individuals to set aside personal ambitions in the service of a greater cause. Too often, however, leadership is misunderstood. It is mistaken for a symbol of status when in fact it is a symbol of being trusted with the execution of purposeful action. As we learn from the story of Malala, true leadership emerges naturally when purpose is threatened by circumstance in the presence of a champion. Purpose is the treasure and leadership its guardian. For you to be known or perceived as an effective leader, you must be willing and able to champion a compelling purpose in the presence of a significant threat. If the purpose or threat are not clear to people, they will lack the inspiration needed to fully engage. It then becomes your responsibility to create clarity where clarity is needed. That’s what leaders do.

 

A Matter of Intention

Leadership is challenging because the blending of these ingredients does not come naturally. If it did, everyone would do it and everyone would be good at it. We wouldn’t need the countless leadership books that have been written, leadership podcasts that are hosted, leadership videos on YouTube, and leadership workshops being taught. And I would go so far as to say that leadership is not even something you can consciously create; it can only be perceived. When it is perceived, it tends to originate from rather imperfect, flawed human beings who made the right decisions, said the right things, and executed the right strategies at the right time. They are not trying to be great leaders; they are trying to be great people faced with a great opportunity to handle a situation of great importance.

Opportunities to perceive competent leadership, unfortunately, are quite rare. And there seems to be two fundamental reasons why. The first is because so few people can pull it off. They are eager to hold the titles of leadership but can’t seem to meet its responsibilities. The second is because leadership does not occur naturally in the human species. Quite the opposite, leadership is an unnatural phenomenon the defies the predictions of how animals, including humans, should behave when living, playing, or working together in groups.

That leadership is both rare and unnatural may or may not ring true to you personally. After all, you may know or observe people in your life you would describe as having natural leadership abilities. You get the feeling there’s something they are born with – something special that equips them to be confident, assertive, and influential. They motivate people. They inspire people. They get things done.

That which you so appreciate, however, is not natural, it’s intentional. What does, in fact, come naturally to human beings and other species is the sorting of themselves into hierarchies. Within these hierarchies, some individuals are naturally wired to assume roles of dominance while others naturally subordinate themselves. Dominance and subordination are like two sides of a biological coin; you can’t have just one. Dominators, like the Taliban, have a sharp instinct for asserting control over others in a group. Subordinators, on the other hand, accommodate this dominance by signaling their willingness to conform. Once the relationships among dominators and subordinators have stabilized and all know their place, we have a hierarchy. When these relationships are not stable or when individuals are competing for control or prominence in a group, there is conflict.

So, while dominance occurs naturally among human beings, dominance is not the same as leadership. And just as hierarchies arise naturally among people who’ve assembled themselves into groups, a hierarchy is not necessarily a team. In a professional environment such as a private business or government agency, creating a hierarchy is rather easy because it comes so naturally. We’re pretty good at that. We can identify decision-makers and contributors and create clear lines of reporting that govern how information is communicated and in what order people are permitted to make consequential decisions. But functioning as a team does not come so easily because the leadership necessary to unite and energize its members does not come naturally either. There are many hierarchies in today’s workforce who think they are a team, just as there are many...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.1.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Personalwesen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-3613-1 / 9798350936131