Respond to the following:
Examine your organization and leadership through the following questions:
1. What is vision in your work environment and how does one foster a shared vision in this kind of environment?
2. What signals (verbal and non verbal) do individuals send to leaders to communicate that they are inspired?
3. What metaphors/visual pictures are seen in your organization to communicate a shared vision? For example, some organizations use sports metaphors such as we are a team and others use family metaphors as we are one big happy family.
4. What do you think your/your leader's strengths are at creating clarity as a collaborative leader? Areas of improvement?
5. What recommendations/changes would you make based on your evaluation of your organization to Inspire a Shared Vision?
Your initial post should demonstrate and integration of readings and lessons.
This forum is reflective (No citations/references required). First person is acceptable.
Reply to the following response with *** 150 words minimum, including direct questions to the post***. (please make response as if having a conversation, respond directly to some of the statements in below post.This is not providing an analysis of the original post.Respectfully address it and even ask clarifying or additional questions.)
These responses are to be informative and contribute to advancing the knowledge of the topic .
1. The vision of my organization (California, MO R-1 Elementary School) is "equipping today's children for tomorrow's challenges" (California R-1 School District, n.d., para 1). The way this is handled is that all the faculty and parents take part in sharing their knowledge between adult to student and adult to adult. They due this through the all the faculty meeting on professional development days to express things that need to be addressed and the teachers do this on a weekly or sometimes even daily routine. "Sharing knowledge is one of the key ways employees increase organizational knowledge, leading to improving the organization's performance" (Tuan, 2016, p. 93). They go over all the subjects such as science, math, spelling, reading, and Missouri history (nation and world history is taught in the middle and high schools). They go over the technology (videos and websites) and any material that needs to be printed, created (student projects), or tested.
The signals usually are smiles on both students and teachers faces when they accomplish the set goals. One always wants to succeed, and people will do the best to help others exceed (not cheating). Just more instruction if needed. This is where parents as teachers come into play. They volunteer to assist students (1st thru 3rdgrades) at a desk outside of the classroom for a period of about two hours per a few days each week. When a person says a form of "thank you" that is very well appreciated.
One metaphor for our team is as a family we are "All In" which means everyone does their part to help the family team succeed. Whether that be handing out buddy packs, teaching students, or cleaning up after events, we all look to make the school a family friendly environment.
One thing that makes us collaborative is sharing emails between the principal and everyone. If someone is looking to find a video, piece of equipment to use, or just assistance, they will reach out to others through email. This is if it cannot be handled internally within the grade. As school faculty we should all act as servant leaders (helping and empowering others to succeed. According to Laub's (1999) servant leadership (as stated in Tuan, 2016) consists of "six elements of a servant-led organization: valuing people, developing people, building community, exhibiting authenticity, providing leadership, and sharing leadership" (pp. 92-93).
The only thing I think the organization could do better is more collaboration on information on students. There is a student information system (SIS) portal that both teachers and parents can use. This indicates behaviors, attendance, grades, and any other special information about the students. Most people are very unfamiliar with the system including myself. There are upcoming training sessions on how to use it. This is more for the administration/teaching positions and student's parents within the school. Some teachers have school website and/or a Facebook class page. This allows parents to see what their students did that day. But, very rarely are these updated. It is very difficult even with most work being on a computer these days for teachers to take time out to take pictures and post them on their websites.
References
California, MO R-1 School District. (n.d.). Equipping Today's Children for Tomorrow's Challenges. Retrieved from https://es.californiak12.org/.
Tuan, L. T. (2016). How servant leadership nurtures knowledge sharing. The International Journal of Public Sector Management, 29(1), 91-108.
2. My current environment is a well-defined hierarchical structure with leaders among different teams with the sole mission of being dedicated to serve, enhancing the value proposition of Union Pacific and the reach of their services. Loup is the result of a merger between four Union Pacific Railroad subsidiaries: UPDS, Streamline, ShipCarsNow and Insight Network Logistics. As a single entity, Loup currently offers a shipping and logistics services as well as a wealth of expertise that will serve shippers better than ever. As a team a shared vision allows employees to have clarity of why and for what of their effort, employees are more motivated when they believe that their values and the organization's values are aligned Kouzes, Posner & Posner, 2011). I found a great article that talks about the non-verbal signals individual send leaders to communicate when they are not inspired, direct eye contact increases the perception of coercive power, whereas a relaxed facial expression decreases power perceptions. So, employees with higher credibility when they were described as maintaining direct eye contact, in addition, a relaxed facial expression was related to an increased perception of reward, legitimate, expert, referent, and credibility power (Schyns& Mohr, 2004). Verbal queues will be direct and clear to a leader.
Our leadership sends out recurring emails with metaphors or recommended lectures that make reference to a shared vision, here is an excerpt of what our VP sent out July 4th.
"The Energy Bus. I started the book (and love it) and many of the author's quotes really resonate with me. Here are a couple I thought were worth sharing:
"Your positive energy and vision must be greater than anyone's and everyone's negativity"
"Realize that some people will board your bus and some people won't. That's ok. The people who get on were supposed to get on; those who don't were probably meant to get on another bus or perhaps they would have ruined your ride. Just keep on driving with your vision focused on the road ahead. If you waste your energy thinking about the people who didn't get on your bus, you'll have less fuel to pick up the people who want to get on"
"You are responsible for the energy you bring into the space"
Ok....I'll end on that one (there seriously are so many good ones).
We have a vision and a positive path forward that is exciting and full of opportunity. I'm looking forward to our second half of the year together. This is the time of year when the business really starts getting fun :)
Have a great 4th of July if I don't see you before!"
Our leadership team has a good way of sharing the vision but sometimes, there have been positive changes among the teams where we can see some involvement from other areas and not just a specific leadership team. I would recommend more inclusion from other team members to add value to the shared vision and keep in mind that not always a leader has the full facts, one must people who are real experts in certain areas to develop a more cohesive vision that will match the corporate strategy.
References:
Kouzes, J. M., Posner, B. Z., Posner, B., Books24x7, I., & Soundview Executive Book Summaries. (2011). Credibility : How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Schyns, B., & Mohr, G. (2004). Nonverbal elements of leadership behaviour**. ZeitschriftFürPersonalforschung, 18(3), 289-305.
Please don't just rephrase their info, but respond to it. Remember to answer question at the end if there is one.