Written by: Julie Dodge on November 8, 2013

I have been involved in leadership throughout much of my life, both formally and informally. I have been a volunteer leader and a professional leader, an executive and a senior manager. I have trained leaders, and I have coached leaders. I have enjoyed significant success, and fallen flat. As I read through this week’s *light* text, the “Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice”[1], I found myself more reflective than critical. I would say, “Yes!” in my head (ok, sometimes out loud), and would recall varying situations demonstrating key points. So today I am choosing to stay reflective and discuss experiences that highlight several leadership themes.

Leading Teams: I enjoyed the most success and opportunity as a senior manager of a large non-profit organization in the Portland area. I was responsible for our Prevention and Youth Addiction Service Division, a division which grew from ten prevention employees, to sixty prevention and youth treatment team members. A key factor in our success was building strong teams. I hold a value that a leader is only as successful as their teams, so I worked to developed a management team that had a balance of strengths and skills. I wanted my team leaders to be just as skilled if not moreso than I. My teams were culturally and gender diverse, represented various management skills and practice skills. From a service perspective, our programs were steeped in Strengths theory. The best strengths -based literature suggests that you can’t do strengths-based services if you don’t operate as an organization from a strengths-based perspective. Peter Drucker once wrote that, “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make weaknesses irrelevant.” I could write my whole essay on this topic, but suffice it to say that we had the lowest turnover, highest productivity and highest job satisfaction of any service division in the agency.

Leading across Culture: Because of my success, I was asked to take leadership of a culturally specific drug treatment program for African American boys. The program had come into our agency via merger with a culturally specific agency that was floundering to stay afloat. I was given a long list of tasks and corrections, and cut loose to “fix” the program. There was no consideration given to the fact that I am a white woman and all of the staff were African American. I would sit down with my new direct report, the manager of the program, and we would go over the list. He would say, “Yes, yes, we’ll do that.” And nothing would happen. I began hunting down mentors who could teach me and coach me in this environment. I learned about the great difference between the organization’s majority culture-task orientation and the program’s (staff) relationship based culture. I adapted my style to focus on relationship and trust building, and to address one issue at a time as the team recognized its value. At the same time, I felt the pressure from our President/CEO to get things done. It was quite the challenge. While I have the highest regard for my former boss, her understanding of what it really means to lead across cultures was more of a one-size fits all approach. Was I successful? From a performance perspective, no. From a relationship perspective, yes. I retain deep friendships with my former team members with whom I continue to collaborate.

Leading as Women: Learning to lead as women is challenging. In social services, there are many more women than men, and more women leaders as well. As I read the chapter on Women and Leadership, I couldn’t help but recall a young clinician who was promoted to be a clinical supervisor. She was quite talented, but she struggled to find balance with her newly ascribed power. It was unfamiliar to her, and she used it forcefully. It was not her personality to be dominating, but as a supervisor she was. She now had to hold her former colleagues accountable, and the transition was rough. She immediately distanced herself (how could she remain friends with those beneath her?) and micro-managed her team. In supervision we discussed her struggle. She was comfortable nurturing others, but as a supervisor she felt like she couldn’t be nurturing; she had to be demanding (what she thought was mean).  She had rarely seen women in leadership, and her primary role model was her father, who was a very successful yet demanding business owner. We worked together to re-define her role, but ultimately she could not reconcile what she thought a leader or manager was supposed to be, with who she was. She resigned.

Leadership as a Developmental Process: Bruce Avolio’s chapter on “Pursuing Authentic Leadership Development” resonated most with me.  The text addressed a great many leadership themes, but one of the great questions falls to whether leadership can be taught. Avolio argues yes, absolutely. Building on personality and moral development theory, Avolio has spent his lifetime demonstrating that as people mature and grow, they can learn to lead. He notes, “I have learned to appreciate the random events and the contribution that serendipity plays in one’s life-stream development.”[2] Not only did I find his ideas about leadership to be well supported, but I was able to again reflect on how I have changed as a leader throughout my lifetime. As my values have clarified, my focus in leadership has changed. I need less recognition as I gain more reward through meaningful work. I have always been involved in meaningful work, but as I said to a friend while sitting on my porch this summer, I don’t really care how much money I make or what title I have, so long as what I do makes a difference in the lives of people. I want to do what I love and focus on what brings both myself and others joy. And I seem to be doing just that.

Leading Change: Perhaps most challenging for me was the chapter by Marshall Ganz which focused on leadership, organization and social movements[3]. Of note is the focus on social movements, which I also teach about but feel as though there may be more for me personally in this arena. Ganz highlights four leadership practices: building relationships, telling the story, devising strategy, and catalyzing action. I kept thinking about how I teach these very concepts, based on my own leadership development and change. And I kept thinking that I feel drawn in this direction. But it is a vague draw, lacking clarity. Perhaps it is somewhere ahead in my life-stream.

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These brief paragraphs and reflections do not do justice to the text. I know that it will live with me in my office at the University where I will draw upon it frequently. Perhaps in another week or two I will be able to articulate myself more clearly, but for now I will continue to reflect and wonder, what next?

About the Author

Julie Dodge

Julie loves coffee and warm summer days. She is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Concordia University, Portland, a consultant for non-profit organizations, and a leader at The Trinity Project.