Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Module 1: LEADERSHIP DEFINED

Table of Contents
Module 1: LEADERSHIP DEFINED ......................................................................................... 1
Introduction of Module 1 .................................................................................................... 2
Introduction of Module 1 .................................................................................................................................... 2
Lesson 1 : Leadership Defined ............................................................................................. 6
Leadership Defined .............................................................................................................................................. 6

Lesson 2 : Brief History of Leadership Research ................................................................. 12

Lesson 3 : Leadership Competencies.................................................................................. 19
Lesson 4 : Leadership Roles ............................................................................................... 25
Lesson 5 : Defining Leadership for Yourself........................................................................ 31

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Introduction of Module 1

Introduction of Module 1

All right, so this is the beginning of the book, we are talking about leadership in this book, we're
talking about leading teams developing as a leader. And so I wanted to start by asking you both a
question, which is what does the concept of leadership mean to you? What stands out to you?
What's important to you about leadership?
Play video starting at ::30 and follow transcript0:30
>> I think of a couple of words or ideas right off the bat, I think about the idea of influence,
which is so broad and open to everyone. And I think about it as a personal process, leadership is
personal, it's an ongoing process, it's inherently developmental. So that's like the first things that
come to my mind. >> I like that, what about you? So, even though I try to resist it on some level,
it's amazing that when they think about the concept of leadership, people come to mind that hold
positions of authority or positions of power. Even though I recognize that, merely holding that
position does not guarantee that they are actually doing what I consider leading. >> Yeah. And
not having a position like that, does not mean that you can't lead, in fact it's not at all the case, we
can all lead. So it's funny that I still feel and see that tendency for that image, right? To kind of
pop into my mind about certain people, for certain roles, when leadership is so much bigger than
that. >> We've been acculturated that way, right, to to believe that it's about power and authority.
So it's natural even for those of us who study it, we still have that reaction to the term. >> Yeah,
even though when talking to people. There's also some clarity that having that position, doesn't
always lead to people recognizing and enacting the power and the influence that they have and
hold and truly leading. So it's really funny that we're sort of acculturated to this. But then when
we ourselves might be in this formal position, we don't always feel like the leader, right? Or
were, not recognizing the power and the position that we have and really utilizing that in an
effective way. >> So, it's interesting because I think this sort of, brings to mind the idea that

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

leadership is very individual, it's very subjective, experience of leadership and developing as a
leader is highly individual process. There is no one magic pill, as I like to say, that makes you a
great leader.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

And so, it requires some time to really think through the concept and to identify our assumptions
and biases about it and what it means for ourselves. Because it also changes over time, it is
different from, when you're in your twenties, when your 40s. >> What's really exciting to me is
[LAUGH] that we all have the potential. So it's, there's this myth of, leaders are born, great
leaders, or you've got it or you don't, no, right? It's actually amazing that we all, have the
potential to grow, to learn, to lead. And have in my mind really a responsibility, to recognize,
when we're in a position to make things better for others. And that's the other thing that comes to
mind for me, it's who are you leading? So it's really the others, as such an important element, it's
not the me, right, it's really about the other people. That are both hopefully engaged in this
process of making change and the people who are on the receiving end of whatever it is, right?
The outcomes of what we're doing that really matter. >> Yeah, that's so well, don't you wish that
everyone in a leadership role or position appreciate that. That it's not about me in this role, it's
about all of you. [LAUGH] And how can I be effective in this role, in making change for you to
make you better to make things better. >> Right. >> Yeah, I love that. >> Empower you to take
action, create a space for you to have a voice. >> It's also hard to do, what you're describing is
not easy, it's very difficult. So, I think I love this conversation. I think this is a really helpful way
to sort of kick off this learning journey for anybody that's joining us and for us as well. I mean,
we are going on this learning journey as much as anybody else because it constantly changes. I
think that's a theme here that that we'll see. So, to wrap up sort of leading us into this module.
What's well, we talked about in class, this is a professor Kerry invention that the one big nugget,
right? You're one big takeaway. So, what are your one big nugget say you would like to have
learners think about and that you think about in the context of defining leadership as a concept.
Play video starting at :5:19 and follow transcript5:19
>> That leadership is a personal, it sounds cheesy, but it's a personal journey.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

And it is absolutely an ongoing journey and not a place that you get not a destination or a place
that you get all up, position that you arrive at is ongoing and it's personal. >> Yeah, I think I
would say, it's an opportunity and a responsibility and that we need to recognize and
acknowledge, when we have that space to lead and then, bravely step into that.
Play video starting at :6:2 and follow transcript6:02
>> I love it, all right, thank you both, I think that's great, let's get to work

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 1 : Leadership Defined

Leadership Defined

I'd like to start by giving you a definition of leadership. Now, there are many definitions of
leadership and different ways to conceptualize leadership. But by giving you this specific
definition, this is going to help set you up for your own leadership development. Defining
leadership helps us to determine where we are as leaders, how we are as leaders, and why we are
as leaders. It helps us craft our leadership. Here's a definition that we will use throughout this
course. Leadership is a socially-constructed process in which an individual is either given or
takes increased responsibility or accountability in empowering others to collectively solve
problems in alignment with an organization's or team's purpose. Now, that's a lot. We're going to
deconstruct this a little bit and talk a bit about each part of this definition. First, leadership is a
socially-constructed process. We've talked about how leadership is essentially a relationship
between two people. A leader has other people involved, and so leadership emerges from those
relationships and situations, it emerges out of the meaning that we make in those situations. How
we take roles, the behaviors we engage in. That means it's socially constructed. Every time we
lead, it's going to feel and be different based on the people and the context involved. Social
constructionism as it pertains to leadership, basically means that how we evaluate and understand
leadership is context and relationship dependent. How we conceptualize leadership relies on the
role we are in and the culture we are in at the moment. You can imagine that taking on the
responsibilities of a team lead in a group without defined leadership roles is very different from
stepping into the role of, say, a VP at a large organization. These are both leadership, but the
effectiveness and the evaluation of the people in these positions is going to vary drastically based
on the context, the people involved, and the basic elements of the culture. No, absolutely.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Leadership is a really interesting field because, on the one hand, it is so incredibly important. On
the other hand, there are a lot of different ways that one can go about being an effective leader,
and what's effective in this context may not be effective in that context

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

It's the age-old thing about does history make the person, does the person make history? It's both,
and these things are interacting constantly. Having said that, there are principles whether those
principles come from psychology, or sociology, or just things about human behavior, experience
we've learned about what makes organizations healthy versus unhealthy that are really valuable
to know about being exposed to. But unfortunately, it's not a simple recipe. I've worked in
consulting, I've worked in tech, and now I'm an academic, so context matters in a few ways. The
task matters the task at hand, the people you're working with matter also. Your leadership style
cannot be the same with an intern or a fresh trainee, and sometimes you're in a situation where
the people who are working with you are just as skilled, just as knowledgeable, just as qualified
as you. You happen to be in this position where you are taking the leadership for a project, I
think the styles have to be very different in both this context. The second element of this
definition is given or takes increased responsibility and accountability. We think about
leadership often in terms of power. Someone who takes a formal role has leadership, but you
don't have to have formal power. You do have to have responsibility and accountability. It's
worth noting that leadership can be given to you in some role, but you can also take advantage of
an opportunity to be a leader. You can step up and be a leader in any situation, and people will
follow those whom they admire and respect, regardless of whether or not they are in formal
leadership roles. You don't necessarily have to be in a status of leadership to be a leader. You
could be a leader at any level with your peers, with new hires that are coming in, with people that
you might be on a project on, and it doesn't necessarily relate to what it is that you do in your day
to day. I think it's how it goes beyond what your job title is or what your job role is. I agree on
the control being a tough thing to wrap around. I think being a leader is more about being an
influencer than having control, or control is more of an org chart notion than truly inspiring
people and making change. If we step back again and we think about, who are we influenced by?
Who can influence people when they don't have any positional or legitimate power? It gets back
to issues of power. When there's no clear hierarchy, people will follow people who they like and
respect or generally find that they have some expertise. The next element in this definition is

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

empowering others. Leadership is not about command and control. It is not about telling others
what to do. Rather it's about giving others the space to grow to be the best version of themselves,
and to help them solve the problems they have been hired to solve. I think the other thing I've
probably really learned over time is how to really empower others that I work with. Again, I'm
Type A personality, I tend to believe that I can do it all and I can do it all myself and I really
learn that's not the best approach.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Yes, I could do it all and I can probably do it all myself but it doesn't make me an effective
leader at all, it probably makes me a very ineffective leader. Because if you empower people that
report to you, if you empower those that you work with, and you empower your staff, you can do
amazing things together, and it's much more fun than trying to do something on your own. The
next element is collectively solve problems. Working in businesses, working in teams is really
about solving problems. You're solving problems all day. Leaders need to think about their work
in terms of helping people solve problems and creating cultures of problem-solving. People who
are ready to engage in problem-solving at any moment. At one point particularly when I was into
the role of being a leader, and I had these lean principles and concepts in mind. My thought of
leadership was to say I have to impose these lean concepts on the organization. It changed
because I realized now that it's really about leaders building a framework for problem-solving
and engaging a social change process so that people can feel the energy in the success of some of
these principles by testing them and trying them. Most leaders believe that their job is to tell
people what to do and that's not what this is about. This is leaders they have to embrace the
opportunity to develop a culture that allows people to think and act from within to solve
problems. Instead of telling people what to do, you deploy problem responsibility in this very
trusting environment and allow them to practice and make mistakes and share their thoughts
without fear. The last element of this definition is in alignment with an organization or team's
purpose. Leaders help people know what direction they're going. Leaders have to have vision.
They can be the inspiration, they have the bigger picture. At any level, leaders need to help
people get together on the same page so they know the purpose, they know why, they know
where they're headed with their overall goals. For me, I think a lot about how a leader engages
other people to work together towards collective goals.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

That's how I think about it. What does it mean to engage other people? What motivates them,
what informs them, what encourages them to want to act, what does it mean to work together as
opposed to not together or not together? Lots of different ways of not being effective
collectively. Then what does it mean to have shared goals? Who sets those goals, how do we
understand them, buy into them, and then what happens with the bumps along the way. Do we
adjust, pivot and so forth. To me, engaging others to work together toward collective goals is
mostly what we tried to do as a leader. Leadership is a socially constructed process in which an
individual is either given or takes increased responsibility or accountability in empowering
others to collectively solve problems in alignment with an organizations or teams purpose. This
definition of leadership reminds us that leadership is socially constructed, so context and
relationships matter for how we evaluate effectiveness. It highlights that we do not have to have
formal authority to lead that our job is to empower others to solve problems and to see the goals
that guide the group or organization toward its purpose. There is space for each of us in any
capacity to learn about leadership and grow as leaders ourselves. This definition encourages us to
pay attention to the factors that we know are important to effective leadership, like relationships,
context, and purpose.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 2 : Brief History of Leadership Research

Brief History of Leadership Research

The concept of leadership is as old as the human race. For the majority of history, leadership has
been evaluated through the lens of powerful people. Who comes to mind when you think of
powerful leaders, George Washington, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa? We could list thousands
of powerful historical figures that come to mind when we think of leaders, both those who left a
positive legacy as well as those who did great harm. But leadership as a part of business
education and a formal part of being an academic discipline, has really been around for about a
century. What I'd like to do in this video is take us back a bit and look at the evolution of
business leadership research to help us understand a bit more about how we think about
leadership, why it matters, and how leadership as a concept has changed and evolved over time.
To do this, let's explore a timeline of dominant leadership theories. Note that while certain
models may have been more dominant, I'm going to present them in this linear way. That doesn't
necessarily mean that any one went fully away and disappeared, but rather, these were theories
that became more dominant based on the research that was being done at the time. Early
leadership research in the field of organizational studies, which began around the 1920s
generally took a trait approach. The trait approach suggest that leaders have a set of
characteristics that make them effective visionaries, that make them effective leaders. You can
think about this as something you're born with. You're born with the traits of leadership. But
there were some problems with the trait approach. One being, that we aren't necessarily simply
born with the traits of leadership. We have lots of evidence to suggest that great leaders can be
made, that great leaders develop over time. Another problem is that the research shows that
leadership traits don't always predict successful leadership outcomes. It's really difficult to isolate

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

and identify particular traits or determine how a particular set of traits works together to
influence leadership. The trait approach was a bit problematic. However, it was helpful at the
time for giving us a way to understand effective leaders. From this trait approach, we moved to
the behaviorist approach. There are some researchers who said, it's not really about what the
leader has in terms of traits. It's actually about how they act or how they behave, which can
change. It's more in the person's control. The behaviorist approach suggested that leadership
should be evaluated not by the internal traits of the leader, but by the activities and behavior of
the leader that they demonstrated in practice.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

The shift to the behavioral research meant that these behaviors could be modeled. I could learn
leadership from somebody else who was behaving in a way that seemed to make them a good
leader. Let's consider a couple of examples of frameworks that came from this behaviorist
perspective. One of the frameworks was the Ohio State Leadership Studies, which essentially
found that there are two primary and distinct factors that leaders can use. These two factors were
called initiating structure and consideration. Initiating structure refers to the extent to which the
leader clarifies roles and responsibilities, assigns tasks, manages work, and organizes the group.
These are more task-focused. Consideration refers to the extent to which the leader demonstrates
care or concern for the individual members of the group. These behaviors are more people
focused.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Similarly, the Michigan Leadership Studies also conducted around this time, identified two types
of leader behaviors. Those that are more job-oriented as compared to those that were more
employee-oriented. Another distinction you may have heard that's related to these findings is
transformational versus transactional leadership behaviors. At the heart of all of these ideas is
that leadership effectiveness is evaluated in terms of the behaviors of the leader, and those
behaviors can either be more task or work focused or they can be more people focused. After the
behaviorist approach, there was an understanding that behaviors matter. But the context can
influence whether those behaviors are effective and this leads us to the contingency approaches.
You can imagine that this same behavior in any given environment can have a different impact
depending on the context and that's where these contingency theories come into play. With the
contingency theories, here's where we start to see even more complexity in the evaluation of
leader outcomes. A leader who behaves the same way in two vastly different contexts, is still
going to have different experiences and different outcomes. There are well known theories based
on the contingency approach and let's consider just one of those here. That's the Hersey and
Blanchard situational leadership theory, which suggests that the effectiveness of leadership
behaviors is contingent on different situational factors, more specifically, the characteristics of
the followers. In this framework, Hersey and Blanchard suggested that the level of follower
development, specifically their task abilities and psychological readiness determined the style of
leadership that the leader needed to adopt. For example, a follower who is on the low end of task
and psychological development needs a leader who uses more directive behaviors. While a
follower who is on the higher end of task and psychological development needs a leader who
uses more delegating behaviors. Other contingency theories from this time that you may have
heard of include the Fiedler Contingency Model, the Vroom-Yetton Contingency Model , and
Path-Goal Theory. Each of these is rooted in the assumption that effective leadership requires
paying attention to the different situational factors that can influence leader effectiveness. With
these contingency theories, we can already see that followers are becoming an important part of

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

effective leadership. The next dominant theories of leadership were based on Vertical Dyad
Linkage Theory, or the leader member exchange approach

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

From here, research explored the relationships between leaders and followers as foundational to
effective leadership. Vertical Dyad Linkage Theory influenced what is known as LMX or leader
member exchange. LMX suggests that leader effectiveness is a function of the dyadic or
interpersonal relationship between two people. A dyad simply refers to a relationship between
two people. There are differences in these dyadic relationships which give rise to an in-group set
of behaviors and an out-group set of behaviors. The in-group relationships are defined more by
trust and opportunities that the out-group doesn't share. At the core of LMX is the concept of
trust and that is foundational to the way we think about leadership today. Perhaps you've heard of
some of the following leadership models, each of which is based on the idea that leaders have to
cultivate trusting relationships through some particular behaviors or relationship building
activities. Charismatic leadership refers to a style of leadership in which the leader uses charm
and inspiration to influence others to follow. Servant leadership is a model in which leaders earn
trust through their focus on supporting and developing their followers. Authentic leadership is a
model in which the leader focuses on being genuine and real, honest and transparent, so that trust
is built through authenticity. These are just a few examples of contemporary models of
leadership. These theories attempt to mix the fundamental ideas of traits, behaviors, situations,
and relationships. This leads us to where we are today in terms of defining leadership in a way
that helps us learn and grow. Leadership is not about power and control, it's about relationships.
Leadership is context and person dependent, so there are no magical solutions, no magical set of
behaviors that make a great leader. There's no one framework, there's not even really one style of
leadership that's going to work 100 percent of the time. Leadership is about recognizing the
humanity in all of us, building those trusting relationships.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

When we can build trusting relationships, we can engage in all leadership behaviors that are
effective and ethical to embrace leadership and learning to be a better leader and to develop
future leaders. We have to take that personal journey of self-discovery. We have to build
relationships with others and we have to practice. When we consider this history of leadership
research, it gives us context for our own leadership development. As leaders in today's world, we
can be cognizant of practicing elements of all of these theories recognizing that relationships,
context, and our actions all affect our leadership effectiveness

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 3 : Leadership Competencies

Leadership Competencies

Effective leaders don't have just one way of doing things. Rather they build trusting relationships
with others, they pay attention to their behaviors and actions based on the context of the
situation. Given the complexity of leadership then, where do we start? What competencies
should we as leaders be focused on developing? The society of human resource management
notes that there are three broad categories of leadership competencies, leading the self, leading
others and leading the organization. Leading the self includes developing a sense of ethics and
integrity, enhancing self awareness. Leading others includes communicating effectively and
developing others. Leading the organization includes navigating complex organizational change,
having a strategic vision and managing politics. Similarly, the Center for Creative Leadership
outlines the same three categories. Under leading the self, they reference self-awareness and
taking initiative. Under leading others, they identify building collaborative relationships and
putting people at ease. And for leading the organization, they cite strategic perspective and
change management. Regardless of your leadership level, whether you are fresh out of undergrad
and looking to launch your career or you lead a 50,000 person organization. Leaders need to
develop competencies related to leading themselves and leading others first and foremost. These
competencies are at the heart of the relational definition of leadership. As leaders become more
senior inside organizations, as they take responsibility for larger groups of people and bigger
organizational units. The need to develop competencies of leading the organization like
understanding or design, developing an understanding of business strategy. And articulating
large scale vision becomes increasingly important.
Play video starting at :1:54 and follow transcript1:54

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

One of my favorite studies of leadership competencies that gives us yet another way to think
about the skills today's leaders need to focus on developing is a study reported in HBR by Dr.
Sunny Giles. An organizational scientist and executive coach. She surveyed 195 leaders in 15
countries across 30 global organizations to gain consensus on what leaders working around the
world believed to be the most important leadership competencies. She took the ranked responses
and synthesized the answers into five categories of competencies. The number one category
based on percentage of respondents was strong ethics and safety. This category included two of
the most highly rated attributes, high ethical and moral standards and communicating clear
expectations. Take just a moment and think about that

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

It suggests that as we think about developing as leaders, we should be starting with our own
moral standards, our character, our integrity. As well as figuring out how to communicate
effectively, specifically our expectations with others, leading the self and leading others. We've
come a long way from leadership models that emphasize making all of the important decisions
and telling other people what to do. >> The purpose of leaders is to create other leaders, right?
The purpose of leadership is to put your team first.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

It's to develop your team so they can lead one day and that's all it is. I think when I was in
corporate, I did a lot of manager training and it did not feel like that. It was just very much very
tactical. And so that's why I think leadership is a topic that is often misunderstood where the
leader has to steer the ship. They have to be dominant. They have to be bureaucratic, but that's
not what you're doing. You're more of a facilitative role. >> When we come to work and we feel
safe, we trust those around us. We can be more open and curious. We are more likely to be
innovative and bring problems to the surface instead of sweeping them under the rug. So we
should be thinking about developing competencies that allow us to create that safe space for
others. >> I actually think that we have a concept of managing a company that has a lot of
flawed assumptions. And that there really is a different paradigm that has to be formed in your
mind as a leader to actually lead your company through this paradigm shift. Yet some leaders
don't know how to do this very well unfortunately, and that is make sure that you have a good
problem defined. One that is meaningful not just to you and your business but can be made
meaningful to the team. They have to feel a sense of that being a real problem. It can't be a phony
problem. But the other thing is asking good open ended questions and humble inquiry and giving
and modeling the sense that these people have brains and values and different points of view and
they're all good. And no one in the room should be excluded. They should all be included in
trying to solve the problem. And over time what happens is that level of trust and camaraderie
just grows and it becomes part of the culture of the problem solving team.
Play video starting at :5:18 and follow transcript5:18
>> The other categories of competencies that rose to the top in Dr. Giles' study are empower
others to self organize, foster a sense of connection and belonging. Foster openness to new ideas
and learning and nurture growth and others. Let's hear from some of our faculty here at Gies
about how they practice these skills defined in Dr. Giles study. >> So any time I've taken a new
role and I mean I just had all these conversations in the last weeks because I have new reports.
And the first thing I said to them is I'm a very transparent leader. I have no intention of
micromanaging you. I have full confidence in your abilities and the way that you manage your

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

teams and I want you to continue to do that. So and I think what lies behind that is just instilling
confidence in those that report to you. And from the very beginning, being explicit that I have
confidence in your ability to perform your job well. So I think that's one. Two, you actually have
to live that out. And that's probably harder. It's easy for me to say I have confidence in how you
run your units, I'm not going to micromanage. But again, they're all going to do things in a way
that may not be consistent with the way that I would operate, right, and it could be a big decision.
And they're going to share that with me and I have to be okay, like really with them making a
decision that I would not have made and being supportive. And so I think it's can you really live
that out and can you do it in a really genuine way? I can't just say it and then I roll in my eyes at
them, right? I have to believe it. And I think as it takes some time. The team I have now, they
know that I have confidence in them and they have seen again and again that I've empowered
them to make decisions. And sometimes it is a great decision and I've celebrated their success.
Sometimes it hasn't been the best decision, but they know my response has not been to come in
and take their power away. I think that probably tends to be what some leaders do. They attempt
to instill confidence. They allow their next kind of layer of management to make decisions, but
as soon as something goes wrong, they either swoop in and try to reverse it or they take those
decision rights away. And if you take these decision right away, as soon as there's a failure, then
you've lost what you started with which was instilling confidence in those individuals. >> So we
talk about trust, right? And we talk about empowerment, right? We talk about respect and
consideration. So for me, that's where all of this plays out. What does it mean if I hoard and I use
that word intentionally here, these decision rights, these responsibilities, these behaviors. It
means I am not interested in deeming you worthy of participating. I don't think you're worthy of
contributing, right, and so forth. And am I doing that because I don't feel good enough about
myself and confident enough and I'm afraid you'll do it better than me and therefore I'm an
imposter, I don't belong in this role etcetera. So I'm insecure, right? Or is it I actually think I'm
fabulous and I don't need all you other people and I'm going to show the world that I can do this
myself, right? Both of those are problematic, right? But rather if we have some confidence that
the main job of a leader is organizing, right? It isn't to have the thought. It isn't to, right? It's
about enabling us to accomplish it, which doesn't mean I have to be the one making every
decision, accomplishing everything. So it's that insight that if I enable you to do something and
us to do something and we succeed, that I have succeeded.
Play video starting at :9:15 and follow transcript9:15
>> I think we should be teaching people the value of curiosity. It's better to be a learner than
always being the knower. And we work with a lot of young adults in our profession and it's very
natural and tempting for young people to sort of show off what they know in front of their peers.
And even in adults in our contexts at work to be the one who's got the right answer.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

The leader isn't always the one with the right answer, but the one who knows how to pull
information and ideas and perspectives from the people around to help build the right answer. So
I think curiosity, if we can call that a skill, maybe it's a mindset. But I think in today's world that
requires us to move and shift quickly, to be agile, to be innovative, that we have to do that from a
sense of curiosity, of maybe not knowing. And being willing to admit that you don't know, and
then being ready to pull people around and create the answer together. >> As you continue to
think about what leadership means to you, keep these ideas in mind. First that we need to focus
both on developing ourselves to become better leaders as much as we need to develop better
connections with others. And second that we should focus on creating a safe space open to new
voices and learning where people understand their purpose and everyone feels like they have a
chance to grow in their work.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 4 : Leadership Roles

Leadership Roles

Another aspect of the complexity of effective leadership is that a leader can and should play
different roles to different people at different times. I'm going to share three roles that leaders can
play in the process of developing their employees or team members and those roles are coach,
mentor and sponsor. A leader as a coach is a support system or guide. When we put on our
coaching head as leaders we are simply there to support the other person on their journey. In the
field of leadership coaching in particular we say that people are creative, resourceful and whole.
Coaches are there to help give structure to an individual who is trying to become the best version
of themselves. As a coach, a leader doesn't have to have any particular expertise, a coach does
not tell someone what to do but ask questions to allow that person to reflect on their choices and
offer support for the choices that the other person makes. A leader as a mentor is sharing advice
learned through experience.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

The concept of a mentor assumes that a leader has some specific experience in an area that they
can pass onto another person. Maybe the mentor has gone through the exact same career path
with the company as the person they are mentoring. Maybe the leader mentor has technical
expertise that they can share to help another person grow into a particular role. My mentor who
has been my mentor and my coach and she's not my coach anymore, she's like we're too close, I
can't be your coach anymore. I'm like, oh. She's like, "I want to be your friend", so I'm like, okay,
so we'll be friends. But she was always like you need to be a coach, like you would be a great
coach. I was like, I'm already a coach and I thought I was. But through leading leadership
development teams but what I learned is I was an advisor. I was the person that you say, hey, let
me coach you. You're like telling someone not to do something and that's not coaching them.
Coach training opened my eyes and after I went to coach training I started doing some traditional
coaching and then I was like, gosh, this is really special. Coaching is a very powerful tool and so
I started using it for organizational change.
Play video starting at :2:13 and follow transcript2:13
It's been an amazing experience to be able to make real change in organizations. The distinction
between a coach and a mentor is that a coach does not offer advice but instead acts as a support
as the individual makes choices that align with their goals. As a mentor, a leader has specific
advice and guidance based on his or her own expertise. A leader as a sponsor is someone who
tells others of the individual's achievements. Maybe this looks like recommending your
employee for a promotion, or sharing an innovation of their senior leaders. As a sponsor you are
helping others to see the potential in this individual especially those that may not work with them
regularly. Sponsorship is important to employee development because that's how others learn of
an employee's capabilities. Here's an analogy that may help solidify these different roles. Think
about the sport of bowling. In bowling a person stands at the end of a long lane where 10 pins are
set up in a triangle at the other end and the person then throws a heavy ball toward the pins to
knock them down. The trick is that the line is long so it takes some strategy and skill to throw the

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

ball correctly and along each side of the lane are gutters and if the ball rolls into the gutter of
course no pins will be knocked down at all. When little kids bowl there are often rails along the
sides of the gutters. It prevents the ball from rolling into the gutters as the kids learn how to
throw with strength and precision. These gutter rails are like a coach, they simply keep you in
your lane. There's no expertise required to be a rail, it simply exists, but it's there to prevent the
ball from falling off the lane and therefore keeps it on its journey toward the pins.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Because the ball is heavy and it must be thrown in a particular way, the throw needs strength and
precision. There's an art to this. A mentor might be another bowler who has bowled for a long
time. That mentor could show the new bowler how to stand, how to throw it in the straight line
or throw with the right curve and even how to increase the speed of the throw. In this case the
mentor is giving specific advice on the skill of the game based on experience. When you're
bowling you're usually only paying attention to your lane and maybe the immediate group of
people you're playing with. A sponsor might go to another lane and tell one of the pros to come
take a look at how much you've learned over the course of one lesson. A sponsor might go to
someone in charge and recommend you as a member of a league.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

As you can see, coach, mentor and sponsor roles are all important to the development of the
bowler and that's the same as developing future leaders. La Tonya Wilkins has a metaphor that
she uses that's also helpful in articulating the distinctions among these roles that leaders can play.
It's a huge importance and so one of the metaphors I often use, I do coach, sponsor and mentor.
Imagine you're going to run a marathon. If you're running a marathon you need all three. First of
all, your mentor is going to be the person that says, "Oh, I've done this before. Hey, here's my
advice. Let me give you some advice about how to run this race, what to eat, how to prepare".
Your coach is going to be with you every step of the way. They're not going to tell you what to
do but they're going to be with you, they're going to facilitate the questions, they're going to
provoke thought around what you should do, they're going to motivate you, they're going to hold
you accountable so that's the coach. The sponsor, what they do is they're finding the best races
for you and you don't even know they're like, "Hey, I got you in the Boston Marathon", like your
sponsor might do that or "Hey, I talked to my friend, they're going to get you in the Boston
Marathon or whatever or the Chicago marathon".

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Those are the three distinct roles. Any given leader is going to play all of these roles to differing
degrees with their employees. The question to ask yourself is, when does this person need you to
be a coach? When do they need you to be a mentor? The leader follower or leader employee
relationship is in and of itself complex. At any given point the role of the leader should consider
what employees need the most to effectively solve the problems they were hired to solve.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Lesson 5 : Defining Leadership for Yourself
Defining Leadership for Yourself

What does leadership mean to you? Why are you taking this course? What is it you need most in
the moment to grow and develop as a leader? It can be helpful to define leadership for yourself.
Give yourself a way to conceptualize leadership to help you determine why it matters to you and
how you can define for yourself the path you want to take. Let's do an exercise. I invite you to
follow along with me in this video and pause when you write and reflect. Get out a sheet of paper
or a device and draw a line straight down the middle. On the left-hand side of the page, list three
people you think of as great leaders. What are the key attributes of these leaders that you want to
emulate? Where do you rank on those attributes now? Be honest, what is the gap between where
you are and where you want to be? On the right-hand side of the page, list two people you think
of as poor leaders.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

What are the key attributes of these leaders that you do not want to emulate? Where do you rank
on these attributes? Given these two list, write out 3-5 things that you value in a leader. Now,
think about your leadership development. What do you want your leadership journey to look
like? Now I invite you to reflect on the following questions. Why am I interested in being a
leader? Why do I care about leadership? Why is this important to me? How does this connect to
who I am as a person? What leadership opportunities will I seek? Where do I want to emerge as
a leader? Do I want to take on formal leadership roles? Do I want to show up as a leader in my
teams? What are my leadership values? How will my actions align with my values? How will I
react when something or someone challenges those values? Take time to really think through
these questions, write down or draw out your answers. Talk about these topics with trusted
friends or colleagues who are also interested in developing as leaders. This is just the beginning.
You are thinking about why leadership is important to you and that is the core of a leadership
definition. You'll continue to revisit this definition as you develop as a leader. To wrap, I want to
make a point about these reflective exercises. There's a tendency to think that we can read a book
and learn about leadership, but that's just a start and a good start, there's no such thing as too
much reading. Leadership is a personal endeavor which means that to develop as a leader, you
have to do the work starting with yourself. This means personal reflections. It means running
experiments in communication and building relationships with others. Practice is where growth
happens and that is the foundation of this course.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

I normally want to be the first one to speak, just did that, but I wanted to see what would happen
if I do sit back and let somebody else take the reins, let somebody else give that first idea, that
first icebreaker and I've gotten better but it's still a work in progress. I don't want to be the first
one to speak. I'm a little bit paranoid of what I might have a different opinion from everybody
else. Being able to force myself to be one of the first, maybe not be first still, I'll work on that,
but yeah, being more of a vocal contributor rather than somebody who takes it all in, absorbs it
processes everyone else's and then tries to find that happy medium on the back-end of it. One
thing I like to do, especially now after having the opportunity to be part of this program in
putting this into practice is when I'm at my job. At the end of every meeting I reflect on my
performance in those meetings and thinking about what could have I done differently? Taking
the thoughts I had about what I can do next time and then challenging myself, ensuring that I try
those different methods in the next meeting and I found that to be very helpful in stretching
myself. Yeah, going back to what leadership means to me, I think for me a lot of it is showing
people the way there and seeing if they follow. If you are a good and effective leader they will
follow you. If you are supposedly leading a team and they're not following, you might be doing
something wrong.

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 Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader

Professor Elizabeth A. Luckman, Kari Keating & Denise Lewin Lloyd

Using maybe the Agile method of project management, if you get feedback and it's not working
you got to change course and so one of the things I do is I try to get as much feedback as I can
and see if it's working before plowing ahead with the same trajectory that I had in the beginning.
I think it's a lot of trial and error and showing the way for people. Not everybody wants to be the
first one on the dance floor and if you have the courage to do it, more people are willing to
follow you. Learning leadership is not simply memorizing facts. Learning leadership is taking
ideas and wrestling with them to stretch and develop your leadership muscles.

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