Looking to create teams online? This site may provide some useful tips.
Virtual Organization: "This site is concerned with various aspects of virtual organization such as leadership, structure, collaboration, teams, technology, methods, and learning."
In this excerpt from Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits, Jim Collins lists some lessons in leadership he's learned from climbing mountains. "Rock climbing, for me, has been the ultimate classroom, with lessons applicable to all aspects of life, including business, management, leadership, and scientific study. It is a sport from which you do not always get a second chance to learn from your mistakes--death tends to stop the learning process. But I've been fortunate to survive my own blunders and to learn some important lessons that apply to life and work outside of climbing."
Leadership Lessons of a Rock Climber
"Some traits, of course, are obvious: vision, passion, discipline, and persistence. But I have been both amused and distressed over the past two years observing and advising managers who exhibit these bravado traits, because they don't always work in hard times." Some musings on what traits work better in hard times from James Champy in FastCompany: The Hidden Qualities Of Great Leaders
Peter Steinke's book, Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach (1996), looks at how congregation leaders act in healthy systems.
He identifies behaviors of emotionally and spiritually healthy leaders, including:
Management and leadership guru, Tom Peters, weighs in with "50 ways of being a leader in freaked-out times." Yes, he's talking directly about business management, but any lay or professional leader will find excellent ideas for moving beyond stereotypes and outdated assumptions.
Excerpt:
Think of pre-1990 as the Age of Sucking Up to the Hierarchy. The Age of the Promise 'Em Everything Pitch lasted from 1995 to 2000. The next five years will be the Age of No-Bull Performance. Which means that we're going to see leadership emerge as the most important element of business -- the attribute that is highest in demand and shortest in supply. And that means that over the next five years, we're going to have to reckon with a new, unorthodox, untested, maybe just plain freaked-out list of leadership qualities: 50 ways of being a leader in freaked-out times.
Source: Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell
Why is it that, at the end of so many books and seminars, leaders report being enlightened and wiser, but not much happens in their organizations?"
Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business offers "16 rules to help you make things happen in your organization."
Excerpts:
The reason that we've fallen into this knowing-doing gap is this: Doing something actually requires doing something! It means tackling the hard work of making something happen. It's much easier and much safer to sit around and have intellectual conversations, to gather large databases, to invest in technical infrastructure -- and never actually implement anything....No matter how smart you are, you can't preplan everything and then roll out your program. What you want to do is to try some stuff and see what happens. And by the way, "enlightened trial and error" is the perfect antidote to the cynicism that exists in many organizations whose people have seen programs come and go....
People don't want to make mistakes, and the best way to avoid making a mistake is to continue doing things exactly as they've always been done. Companies get trapped in a kind of circular logic: "We do what we do because it's the best thing to do. And it's the best thing to do because it's what we've always done."
Source: Why Can't We Get Anything Done?
From the article: "Ethical Leadership" by Larry Lashway:
Applying ethical leadership principles to education and schools -- but the principles are useful in other settings, too.
"How Can Leaders Resolve Ethical Dilemmas?"
"First, leaders should have -- and be willing to act on -- a definite sense of ethical standards."
"Second, leaders can examine dilemmas from different perspectives."
"Third, leaders can often reframe ethical issues. "
Read more:
ERIC Digest 107 - Ethical Leadership
Consultant Debra Meyerson weighs in on the value to an organization of "men and women who want to succeed in their organizations, yet want to live by their values, ideals, and identities, even if they are somehow at odds with the dominant culture of their organizations."
Excerpt:
When tempered radicals act on their differences, they challenge assumptions about what is normal and introduce practices that meet unaddressed needs. In this process, they push organizations and their members to question conventions and confront impending adaptive challenges. Scholars of leadership, such as Peter Senge from M.I.T. and others, have argued that the most essential element of leadership is the capacity to push groups and systems to confront their adaptive challenges. Whether these pushes come in the form of gentle prods or forceful shoves, they challenge existing cultural practices and create openings for alternatives.
Everyday Leaders: The Power of Difference -- Debra Meyerson full-text article
An interesting theory of leadership which gained a lot of interest in the 1990s was Robert Greenleaf's idea of Servant-Leadership. Here's the website of Greenleaf's own Center for Servant-Leadership, to learn more about the concept directly from its initiator.
Excerpt:
Servant-Leadership is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions. Servant-leaders may or may not hold formal leadership positions. Servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment.
Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership
A theory of leadership which assumes that anyone in a group may exercise leadership roles, and that the functions of leadership vary according to the "maturity" of the group (how well it's developed its norms, process, mutual understanding, etc.), Situational Leadership has practical applications in any organization or work team.
From the Center for Leadership Studies, home of Situational Leadership: Center for Leadership Studies - Related Articles
Leadership Without Easy Answers
by Ronald A. Heifetz
If you read just one book on Leadership, this is it. As the title indicates, you won't find quick fixes or easy answers here, just a way of framing the concept and practice of leadership in a way that's ethical and consistent with the worth and dignity of every member of an organization.
His ideas are practical, nevertheless, just not simplistic -- which means that they're far more likely to be effective.
A Harvard professor (John F. Kennedy School of Government), Heifeitz looks at issues of authority, values and change, using leaders like Martin Luther King, jr., and Mahatma Gandhi to illustrate his points.
Heifetz is also a musician, and his metaphors and analogies from that field enrich the presentation.
Amazon.com: buying info: Leadership Without Easy Answers
William Bridges - author of Managing Transitions (one of my favorite books on organizational and personal change) - and consultant Susan Mitchell explain a model of change that addresses why organizations don't "Just Do It."
Excerpt:
In years past, perhaps, leaders could simply order changes. Even today, many view it as a straightforward process: establish a task force to lay out what needs to be done, when, and by whom. Then all that seems left for the organization is (what an innocent sounding euphemism!) to implement the plan. Many leaders imagine that to make a change work, people needed only to follow the plan's implicit map, which shows how to get from here (where things stand now) to there (where they'll stand after the plan is implemented). "There" is also where the organization needs to be if it is to survive, so anyone who has looked at the situation with a reasonably open mind can see that the change isn't optional. It is essential.Fine. But then, why don't people "Just Do It"? And what is the leader supposed to do when they Just Don't Do It -- when people do not make the changes that need to be made, when deadlines are missed, costs run over budget, and valuable workers get so frustrated that when a headhunter calls, they jump ship.
Leaders who try to analyze this question after the fact are likely to review the change effort and how it was implemented. But the details of the intended change are often not the issue. The planned outcome may have been the restructuring of a group around products instead of geography, or speeding up product time-to-market by 50 percent. Whatever it was, the change that seemed so obviously necessary has languished like last week's flowers.
An interview with Ron Heifetz, author of Leadership Without Easy Answers. His focus here is more on business leadership in turbulent times, but much will be useful within the congregational setting, too.
Excerpt:
The real heroism of leadership involves having the courage to face reality -- and helping the people around you to face reality. It's no accident that the word "vision" refers to our capacity to see. Of course, in business, vision has come to mean something abstract or even inspirational. But the quality of any vision depends on its accuracy, not just on its appeal or on how imaginative it is.Mustering the courage to interrogate reality is a central function of a leader. And that requires the courage to face three realities at once. First, what values do we stand for -- and are there gaps between those values and how we actually behave? Second, what are the skills and talents of our company -- and are there gaps between those resources and what the market demands? Third, what opportunities does the future hold -- and are there gaps between those opportunities and our ability to capitalize on them?
Now, don't get the wrong idea. Leaders don't answer those questions themselves. That's the old definition of leadership: The leader has the answers -- the vision -- and everything else is a sales job to persuade people to sign up for it. Leaders certainly provide direction. But that often means posing well-structured questions, rather than offering definitive answers. Imagine the differences in behavior between leaders who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to follow the leader's vision" and those who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and to live into its opportunities." That second idea -- mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges -- is what defines the new job of the leader.
Source: The Leader of the Future
Making better decisions about work and life requires a sense of purpose. Richard Leider suggests some "laws" for finding personal purpose.
Excerpt: "We all want both success and fulfillment. Success is often measured in external ways, but there's an internal measure of success, and it's called fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from realizing your talents-adding value and living by your values. Fulfillment comes from integrity, from being who you are and expressing who you are as fully as possible. It doesn't have to do with your job description or the specifics of your work. It has to do with how you bring your self to your work, regardless of what that work is."
Are You Deciding On Purpose (extended interview)
A September, 2001, report from Alban Institute, based on a study of issues in professional religious leadership in many denominations. Indicators include shortage of clergy, quality of pastoral leadership and retention of women in ministry.
Excerpt: "In light of the seemingly paradoxical realities of sea change and crisis, of ferment and turmoil, those who lead congregations—as well as those who support congregations in judicatory, denominational, seminary, and independent roles—face an important set of challenges. The recruiting, training, and support of new leaders require major changes in our assumptions, behaviors, and the systems in which we live."
The Leadership Situation Facing American Congregations
An Alban Institute Special Report
The Leadership Situation