Ideas for AIESEC - LC Meeting
1. Inspiration session: Delivered by alumni or H4TF members. Can also ask Ali about this. Design and implement in spring?
2. Partners visit: Could be Hub Tampere or New Factory next time. To be incorporated more closely - probably every 2 LC Meetings.
3. Update on current functional activities: Let members know what’s going on.
Output of my meeting with my mentor
1. Decision-making process:
When faced with a difficult problem to solve, my mentor has a process of his own to reach the decision. It goes like this:
- Consider the outcomes you would like to achieve.
- Then arrange the outcomes in the priority order.
- Then look at the possible options and think about their consequences.
- Evaluate the consequences and try to get rid of the downsize (Can we do anything to improve the situation?).
- Then try to make the decision based on the above information.
2. Exercises:
- Short story about my personal leadership philosophy.
- Then my goals and purposes in the near and far future (2010, 2015, life vision).
- Send him set of skills I already have and need to develop.
- Team Development Plan (Personal Guidelines).
I will establish team rules in the next meeting: 21.08. Then discuss about my communication skills with team at the end of September.
When you’re a beautiful person on the inside, there is nothing in the world that can change that about you. Jealousy is the result of one’s lack of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-acceptance. The lesson: If you can’t accept yourself, then certainly no one else will.
—Sasha Azevedo (via simply-quotes)
Leadership Teams
These Group Leadership or Leadership Teams have specific characteristics:
Characteristics of a Team
- There must be an awareness of unity on the part of all its members.
- There must be interpersonal relationship. Members must have a chance to contribute, learn from and work with others.
- The member must have the ability to act together toward a common goal.
Ten characteristics of well-functioning teams:
- Purpose: Members proudly share a sense of why the team exists and are invested in accomplishing its mission and goals.
- Priorities: Members know what needs to be done next, by whom, and by when to achieve team goals.
- Roles: Members know their roles in getting tasks done and when to allow a more skillful member to do a certain task.
- Decisions: Authority and decision-making lines are clearly understood.
- Conflict: Conflict is dealt with openly and is considered important to decision-making and personal growth.
- Personal traits: members feel their unique personalities are appreciated and well utilized.
- Norms: Group norms for working together are set and seen as standards for every one in the groups.
- Effectiveness: Members find team meetings efficient and productive and look forward to this time together.
- Success: Members know clearly when the team has met with success and share in this equally and proudly.
- Training: Opportunities for feedback and updating skills are provided and taken advantage of by team members.
Task - Team - Individual
Action Centered Leadership
Balancing task, team and individual
Imagine you’ve recently started a new job as a team leader. At first, you’re completely overwhelmed with all there is to do. You’ve got to get to grips with the group’s objectives, assign tasks, keep everyone motivated, and adhere to a strict schedule. And that feels like just the tip of the iceberg!
You also know that, under your predecessor, several of the team were struggling a little, so you devote a lot of your time to coaching these individuals. This seems to be working well, with the team members concerned growing in confidence as a result of your hard work. But after a few weeks, your start to realize that things are going badly wrong in other areas.
The group isn’t working cohesively as a whole, and an unpleasant blame culture has sprung up amongst several team members. And an important deadline is missed. You’ve been so busy coaching people that you didn’t see these things till it was too late.
Managing a team is very much like juggling several balls at once. Drop one ball, and it spoils the whole pattern.
Unfortunately, this is an easy mistake for managers to make, as they spend too much time on one responsibility at the expense of others that are just as important. This is where a management model like Action Centered Leadership helps you monitor the balance between the key areas for which you’re responsible, helping you avoid dropping any balls along the way.
In this article we’ll detail what Action Centered Leadership is, and how to use it with your team.
Action Centered Leadership
Action Centered Leadership (sometimes known as ACL) is a model that was first published in 1973 by leadership expert, John Adair.
It’s so-called because it highlights the key actions that leaders have to take when managing their teams. And it’s particularly helpful because it groups these responsibilities together under three key areas:
- Task: Achieving the team’s goal.
- Team: Developing and building your team, so that it’s ever more effective.
- Individual: Helping individuals develop their full potential in the workplace.
These areas are represented by the three interlocking circles, as shown in Figure 1 below.
The model states that leaders must balance the actions they take across all three key areas if they want their group to succeed. The areas are interdependent; if a leader focuses too much on one area and neglects the other two, then the group will experience problems.
Although Figure 1 shows all the circles being the same size, this doesn’t mean that leaders should always divide up their effort across these areas equally. Rather, the most appropriate balance varies according to the situation, and over time.
The shaded areas in Figure 1 show where one element relies on one or both of the others for success.
Here is an example that illustrates this interdependency:
Imagine your team is working well together, and everyone has the skills to accomplish the final goal. However, there’s one team member who isn’t carrying his share of the load. He’s lacking motivation, and missing deadlines. The entire group’s morale starts to suffer because this one member is dragging down their productivity, and the team misses its deadline because he hasn’t finished his work.
Here, issues with the individual are negatively affecting the task as well as the team.
Alternatively, imagine what would happen if you didn’t articulate your team’s goal properly. Everyone may have great individual skills, and people may work really well together, but because no one is sure what they should be trying to achieve, progress isn’t being made towards your goal.
In this example, both the individual and the team needs are being met, but task needs are being ignored. Because the group isn’t sure how to accomplish their task, they’re headed towards failure.
How to Use the Tool:
Review the activities you’re carrying out for each of the three key leadership areas, and make sure that you’re dividing your time amongst all three appropriately.
Here’s a list of common tasks for each of the three management responsibilities. You can use these as a guideline; and tasks can be added or eliminated based on your specific situation.
Task
- Identify the purpose of the group, and communicate that purpose to all team members.
- Clearly state the final goal of the group.
- Make sure everyone understands the resources, people, and processes that they should be using.
- Establish deadlines for project tasks, and explain the quality standards you’re expecting.
- Create a detailed plan for how the group is going to reach their final goal.
Group
- Identify the style the group will be working in (very formal, relaxed, etc.)
- Make sure that everyone in the group has the skills and training to accomplish the final goal.
- If your team will be working in smaller groups, appoint a leader for each group, and make sure that he or she is effective and properly trained.
- Monitor group relationships, and resolve conflicts where necessary.
- Work on keeping the group motivated, and morale high.
- Give regular feedback on the group’s performance.
Individual
- Make sure that you spend some one on one time with each member of your group for assessment: identify their strengths and weaknesses, their needs, and any special skills they can bring to the group.
- Make sure each group member has the skills to perform his or her role successfully.
- Appropriately praise and reward individual team members for their contribution to the group.
- Help define each individual’s role within the group, and agree the tasks they’re responsible for.
- If any team members seem to be lagging behind, coach them until they’re back on track.
If you’d like to learn more about your leadership style and how you can apply it to the Action Centered Leadership model, you can purchase ACL tests from John Adair’s website.
Key Points
Leaders have many responsibilities when it comes to managing their teams. And, it’s easy to get so focused on one area that the others slip by the wayside, leading to an unbalanced, poorly-functioning group.
Using a tool like Action Centered Leadership can help any leader stay on top of the most important responsibilities, and keep the group working efficiently, happily, and productively.
Output of my meeting with my mentor
Here’s what we agree on:
1. Problem of interrupting people.
I explained to my mentor that sometimes people are too engaged in irrelevant discussions in our meeting, but I feel forced when I try to stop them. We agree that there are the following solutions.
- Do stop them. But show honestly that you feel bad about it, but’s it for the better.
- Agree on signs that you want people to pay attention to you. For example, if you think people are going so off-topics and talk in such a loud voice that it’s hard for you to get attention, you can clap your hand or do something at a sign to stop them. This must be agreed before to make it recognizable. It might require a few takes of practice.
- You might use some personal touch in case an argument breaks out and people lose control, for example touching them on their back or shoulder.
2. Leadership Philosophy.
- Practice Metaphor Exercise with “My leadership is like…”
- Think about why leadership is separate to who I am OR maybe it’s not separate at all.
Use the form of short stories and pictures, mind-maps or anything possible.
What I can do everyday
1. Listen to TED talks.
2. Reading books.
3. Practice public speaking & pronunciation.
4. Practice Adobe After Effects.
5. Brainstorming
6. Write short stories.
7. Write short articles on marketing and management.
8. Practice Photoshop.
9. Read Finance books.
[To be continued]
How to influence people as a leader (cont.)
6. Praise every single improvement
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
One of our deepest desires is to live up to expectations. If you have a reputation of being the best seller in the whole sales team, or a project manager with great leadership, you won’t be happy when you lose it. Thus, we strive every day to live up to it, by working and learning harder.
By giving your team members a fine reputation, you can encourage them to be better everyday and aim higher in what they are doing.
8. Make the fault seems easy to correct.
9. Make people glad to do what we want.
- Be sincere. Try to be honest with them, and do not promise anything that you cannot deliver.
- Know what you want the other person to do.
- Be empathetic. You should know it is what the other person really wants.
- Match the benefits to the other person’s wants.
- Try to deliver the benefits when you mention the work.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
