Assignment:
Post-1
Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Senge& Smith (1994) noted in the Fieldbook that the continuum of involvement (Telling, Selling, Testing, Consulting, and Co-Creating) indicates the level of dependence on a "boss" for the capacity of leadership. As the continuum moves from Telling to Co-Creating, dependence on a boss lessens while the capacity for leadership within the group increases. My organization is a US Air Force Maintenance Squadron. As a military organization, being able to pinpoint a specific point on this continuum can vary greatly when considering sub-groups, sections, tasks, and the mission. In some cases, specific sections could be operating at the "higher" end of the spectrum where vision is cultivated by all members while other sections may be operating toward the lower end of the spectrum. Factors that dictate this could include organizational climate, experience of the leaders in those sections, or the turnover rate in the section. In my office (squadron supervision), I would consider that we are in the Co-Creating realm of shared vision. Our Commander, our Superintendent, our Maintenance Ops Officer, our First Sergeants, and I typically discuss vision, mission and goals for the unit. Bolman and Deal (2013) note that "Teams with more informal ties are more effective and more likely to stay together than teams in which members have fewer connections" (p. 178). When leaders foster environments that promote interpersonal relationships, they set their organizations up for success. With that being said, team learning can be facilitated when teams are nurtured from an early stage. In order to accelerate team learning within my unit, I would promote feedback loops. As a unit, if we can garner feedback from all levels within our organization, we can understand the cultural climate better and improve our organization.
Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2013). Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., Senge, P. & Smith, B. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday
Post-2
My organization is definitely only at the selling stage of the five stages; Telling, Selling, Testing, Consulting, and Co-creating. The selling stage is describes as, "The ‘boss' knows what the vision should be, but needs the organization to ‘buy in' before proceeding (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross & Smith, 1994, p. 314). A year ago I would have said we were only at stage 1, the telling stage. This year I saw a difference in how they rolled out the new vision company wide and I believe they have made some improvements to include employee buy in, but there is a long way to move toward a shared vision in our organization.
The testing phase would be the next phase my organization needs to move towards to get to a shared vision. The testing phase is described as, "The ‘boss' has an idea about what the vision should be, or several ideas, and wants to know the organization's reactions before proceeding" (Senge et al., 1994, p. 314). In January this year all the leaders from my region went to a central location and the CEO presented us with the new vision and we got poster boards and hand out galore, so we could go back and tell the vision to our team. To move our organization forward the CEO should have brought a draft version to the meeting and gathered input. He could have asked for our support and gauged our enthusiasm towards the vision. It would have allowed us as lower level leaders to feel that our opinions count, which is a sign of engagement. Also to move us forward in the stages, smaller gatherings with local employees to gain feedback would also be beneficial. Senge et al., (1994) suggests that face-to-face feedback is important in the testing phase, that paper surveys alone are not as beneficial to getting valuable feedback. This would have put us in the testing phase, rather than the telling or selling stages.
Team learning "starts with self-mastery and self-knowledge, but involves looking outward to develop knowledge of, and alignment with, others on your team" (Senge et al., 1994, p. 355). Team learning is not the same as team building and it actually quite difficult. I can tell you that my team that reports to me is currently not doing team learning which means we do not have a shared vision. One area that my team could really focus on to become a learning team is to have skillful discussion. This is when the team has an intention to come to a decision. "...Skillful discussion incorporates some of the techniques and devices of dialogue and action learning, but always focused on tasks" (Senge et al., 1994, p. 386). This helps the team make their thought processes visible to all, to challenge assumptions among the team and look more closely at why the team is disagreeing. All these tactics put together will help my team move forward in team learning.
Resource
Senge, P.M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R.B. & Smith, B.J. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Post-3
According to Senge (2006), "A shared vision changes people's relationships with the company. It is no longer 'their company;' It becomes 'our company'. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook discusses the five different development stages of building a shared vision: Telling, Selling, Testing, Consulting, and Co-creating. After reviewing the 5 stages in the fieldbook (p. 315 - 326), Make a personal assessment of where your organization is on the path to developing a shared vision then describe how you can help move your organization to the next stage.
Unfortunately, after reading and reviewing the five stages of the shared vision my organization is in the "Telling" stage. According to Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Senge& Smith (1994) the "Telling stage" is when," The ‘Boss" knows what the vision should be, and the organization is going to have to follow it. Klein et al., also stated," People know that if they disagree...they jeopardize their career" (p. 315). This is so true of my current organization. Our leader (I do not want to use his name) came in and within two weeks had a new vision statement. Usually every new leader works together with the staff to develop a new vision statement, but this was not the case. In fact, after the new statement came out he held a townhouse meeting with everyone and I thought, "Yup, this is where he wants feedback" but the opposite happened. He directly told us what he did in his "last" assignment and he wanted to repeat that here. You could feel the tension in the air immediately! I was debating before that meeting if I should do another year in the military and with the feeling I had I dropped my retirement a month later. It was more than him of course but I did not feel his vision and I certainly did not want to work for a ""do as I say" arrogant mentality. Since I am a leader for my section I still of course had to share the leader's vision as we are taught to support our leaders. My Colonel and I sat with our entire section and went through the new leader's vision statement to ensure we understood the commander's intent and concept. This provided clarity even for me as although I considered him an arrogant person (my opinion that was not known to anyone else and by the way he proved to be one lol) he did have a good vision statement. It is just hard to get behind a leader if he acts to bossy and use other Army installations that he "changed" for the better.
Senge further noted that "team learning is the process of aligning and developing capacity to create the results its members truly desire" (p. 236). Team learning is an important component of building a shared vision. After making your assessment, review the graphic for accelerating team learning: https://qaspire.com/2017/04/03/how-to-accelerate-team-learning/ and discuss what actions you can take toward fostering a culture and environment of team learning in your organization.
TamneyVora (2017) said that to accelerate team learning quickly organizations must adapt to constant changes. For my organization I will use TamneyVora's (2017) "Gather feedback on system performance". As processes and procedures constantly changes in my organization my boss and I frequently (I say monthly) have a meeting with our section and discuss the "way ahead" in ensuring we keep up with the new operating procedures. For example, although we utilize the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) to make sound decisions our new head boss allows four Courses of actions (COA) instead of three. Then after he looks over the four COAs instead of him choosing one out of the four he creates a hybrid COA from the original four. This is not usual procedure for utilizing the MDMP, but it did create a panic among us staffers as this changed the culture of the way we did things with the old boss. The boss afterwards did say that this will be the new norm, so we had to change our system staff procedures and our environment that we were used to. At first, we were reluctant to change but my boss within our section instead of fighting the new system of planning embraced it and developed a new PowerPoint slide to guide our planners for success. In fact, my boss received a much-deserved kudos from the big boss for the new PowerPoint slide and was the new standard of planning for the entire unit. My boss authentic leadership is what truly developed and mentored us, He taught us that change is ok, but we must learn as a team to to succeed in a fast-changing environment. His actions are what inspired us to work as and our workplace is constantly a learning environment because of him.
References
Vora, T. (2017, April 3). How to accelerate team learning. Retrieved from https://qaspire.com/2017/04/03/how-to-accelerate-team-learning/
Senge, P.M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R.B. & Smith, B.J. (1994). The fifth discipline field book: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.