Chapter 1 of the Obolensky text begins with a
reflective exercise. Create a reflection blog that responds to the questions
asked in this exercise.
Additionally, while we live in a world with more information about
leadership and leadership practices why is it that we have an apparent gap in
the quality of our leaders and how do you think we can close this gap?
As a child growing up and well into my college years, I have
always had this impression that leaders and/or bosses knew everything and were
the most knowledgeable members of any organization. With this belief, I often felt inadequate to
be in a leadership position because of a multitude of reasons. I felt I learned and comprehended ideas
slower than others, I felt that I didn’t have the outgoing personality, and
most of all; I felt that I just simply did not know enough. In return, I was often very timid and nervous
to go into situations where I was supposedly in a position of more authority. About halfway through college, I began to
realize that no one really knows everything there is to know and the leaders in
charge are not necessarily the more experienced or knowledgeable. I used to think that I could never be a
leader, so I ignored any passions or dreams I had that required me to take
charge. As I have gotten older and have
had more experience and exposure to leadership, I realize that leadership is
not always about what I believed it to be about. While I am still working on accepting that I
am capable of leading in situations, I realize that leadership is about way
more than I thought it was.
This is a notion that Oblensky mentions as a changing
perception of leadership. While I may
have been a bit slow to the pick up of this changing trend amongst my
generation, Oblensky notes that the older generations followed the same belief
I took toward leadership – that the leader was the most knowledgeable,
therefore I will follow them happily. A
lot of these changes can be pinpointed not necessarily to a generation gap, but
more so a change in context which inherently changes with generations. Oblensky also discusses another change in
our society, and that is between yin and yang.
He notes that our society has been mostly yang based, however, we are
starting to see a shift in that approach and belief, which in turn, causes more
of a shake up in the way we perceive our leaders to be.
I feel that we are still going through a transition. As a society, we are always changing and fluctuating,
but with the recent growth in technology and changes in our social system, the transition
is more severe than normal. The Taoist
state of ‘wu-wei’ is a perfect description of this. Meaning ‘inaction’, wu-wei’ is essentially
acting without effort, or waiting to act when the time is right or when needed.
While our society is changing, it is important to not force that change and to
instead, just go with the flow.
Obolensky,
N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership embracing paradox and
uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.
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