Regis Cebu Leadership – Leader Oliver Solijon – Final Integrative Paper

Regis Cebu Leadership – Leader Oliver Solijon – Final Integrative Paper

It can be said that leadership is the skill set for an individual to have an influence on a group of people, making this group work with enthusiasm in achieving common goals. It is defined as the ability to, manage, promote, take initiative, hold, motivate, encourage, and evaluate a group or team. In business management leadership is the exercise of executive activity in a project effectively and efficiently, whether personal or institutional management (within the organization's administrative process).

For the last eight weeks of the course, a lot of self-awareness was made. During the first session we were asked to define what leadership is. I volunteered and define it as a person who has strong willed to influence other people. For the record I was the first student who participated in the leadership class. Apart from that professor solicited ideas from other students in defining leadership.

The question on whether leaders are born, made or situational has been the topic of the debate during the first session. The group that defended the view that leaders are made, won the debate. I am so glad that I was part of that group. Although we won, in my own opinion leaders are a combination of the three- born, made and situational. The percentage for each may vary in every individual. Some may have strong innate leadership qualities and little amount of experience while others may have little inborn qualities while others are made because of their significant experiences.

According to Chris Lowney, author of the book Heroic Leadership, John Kotter has given the most concise definition of leadership.  Thus, he defines Leadership as establishing direction by developing a vision and strategies that will bring about changes needed to achieve that vision. It also means aligning people by imparting direction in words and deeds to all whose cooperation may be needed so as to influence the creation of teams and coalitions that will support the vision and strategies that will have to be carried out.

St. Ignatius style of teaching about leadership is that it is different from contemporary as well as the conventional style of leadership. St. Ignatius teaching about leadership differs in four ways; a) everbody is a leader and we are leading all the time, well or poor, b) leadership is from within and it is all about who I am as much as what I do, c) leadership is not an act, it is a way of living and d) leadership is an ongoing and continuous process.

The first group work of which the class was divided into four was about being a bad boss. The group has to plan a crime reflecting a bad leader. In our group we presented the corrupt practices in the government wherein red tape is rampantly done. The group work presentation that we had is slowly showing the kind of leadership we have.

The learning agreement which was one of the first assignments provides an introduction of myself and analysis of my strength and weaknesses. It also lay out my five year plan, objectives in taking the course and my desired grade for the course. Basically the learning agreement was the start of my self-awareness wherein we were encouraged to disclose some things in my life.

In the book Heroic Leadership, C. Lowney also cited the Jesuits' enduring leadership secrets which are the four core pillars or principles namely: self awareness- understanding one's strengths, weaknesses, values and worldview; ingenuity- the ability to adapt and innovate amidst a changing world; love- engaging others with a positive and loving attitude, unleashing their full potential; and lastly heroism- energizing oneself and others with heroic ambition and a passion for excellence.

The four core pillars of the Jesuits, I believe are the reasons behind their enduring success and longevity as an organization. These same principles are still applicable in the modern times.

In my defining moments, two major events have change the way I see things and have brought the realization of being responsible. As a leader in our organization, it was my responsibility to lead my fraternal brothers and sisters not to astray but to the right path were the tenets and codes of conduct of the organization embodies. As a leader, I should have showed then that I am a role model in promoting harmony to other organization that equality exist and respect could never be demanded.

As a father, having a son defines my character as a responsible person not only to provide but also how well do I raised him to become a better person. Leadership provides an insight that each one of us is capable of leading not only our families and organization, but leadership will provide us clear path on what we want and how we want attain and influence others. As I quoted, leadership can be making good men better.

J.Campbell's Hero with a thousand face is a concept of monomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation.

The tasked of choosing a movie and compare with the J. Campbell's book shows 12 stages of the hero's journey.

1. The hero is introduced in his ordinary world
2. The call to adventure
3. The hero is reluctant at first
4. The hero is encouraged by the wise old man or woman
5. The hero passes the first threshold
6. The hero encounters test and helpers
7. The hero reaches the inner most cave
8. The hero endures the supreme ordeal
9. The hero seizes the world
10. The road back
11. The resurrection
12. Return with the elixir

As I way see it, J.Campbell's book tells that life is a journey for us to lead and endure. Certain things in the past will provide us learning that will mold us to whoever we are today. As a leader of our own journey, the things that we decide now will determine the outcome of our future. There might be instances that what we wish for might not come now but someday it will.

For us to succeed in becoming leaders of our own, we have to know our weaknesses. Our weaknesses will help us determine our strategy to take. As a leader we should be open for help from other people to whom we think knows best. I always believe that great leaders accept the imperfection inside of them and that to make them perfect they need someone to fill in the gap.

What is important is that for every down fall we experience, it provides us a clear view that the road ahead of us is rough to travel. As we continue to determine the ways for a smooth sailing, we learn something out of it that for every situation there is always a correct solution.

The Enneagram of Personality or simply the Enneagram is a model of human personality which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. Although the origins and history of many of the ideas and theories associated with the Enneagram of Personality are a matter of dispute, contemporary Enneagram understandings are principally derived from the teachings of Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo's theories were partly influenced by some earlier teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff. As a typology the Enneagram defines nine personality types (sometimes referred to as "enneatypes"), which are represented by the points of a geometric figure called an enneagram,^[2] which, it is believed, also indicate some of the connections between the types. There are different schools of thought among Enneagram teachers, therefore their ideas on some theoretical aspects are not always in agreement.

1 Reformer	I do everything the right way.
2 Helper	I must help others.
3 Achiever	I need to succeed.
4 Romantic	I am unique.
5 Thinker	I need to understand the world.
6 Skeptic	I am affectionate and skeptical.
7 Enthusiast	I am happy and open to new things.
8 Leader	I must be strong.
9 Peacemaker	I am at peace.

The result of my Enneagram is type 3 which means that I am an Achiever. The results provided and interpreted somehow surprises me. It was only then I realized that indeed I am an achiever as I reflect back on the things that happen that molds me today. Type 3 personalities as interpreted are hardworking, competitive and highly focus in pursuit of goals. The description made totally fits my personality and I just recently realized it with the help of this kind of test. Unconsciously the questionnaire provided in the examination opens up my mind and provides me a realization that even before I am already an achiever.

In HBR's 10 must reads on leadership, leaders and managers were defined.

Management is coping with complexity. Managers promote stability. Without good management, organisations can become chaotic in ways that threaten their existence. Managers 'organise' to create human systems that can implement plans as precisely and efficiently as possible.

Action: Planning and budgeting By: Setting targets or goals for the future, typically for the next month or year. Establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets. Allocating resources to accomplish those plans.

Action: Organising and staffing Creating an organisational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements Staffing the jobs with qualified individuals Communicating the plan to those people Delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan Devising systems to monitor implementation By: Establishing the structure of jobs and reporting relationships. Staffing it with individuals suited to the jobs. Providing training for those who need it. Communicating plans to the workforce. Deciding how much authority to delegate and to whom. Constructing economic incentives to accomplish the plan.

Action: Controlling and problem solving Monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings and other tools Identifying deviations Planning and organising to solve the problems By: Devising systems and structures help normal people who behave in normal ways to complete routine jobs day after day. Developing and using control mechanisms that compare systems behaviour with the plan and taking action when a deviation is detected. Ensuring the managerial processes are as close as possible to fail-safe and risk free.

Leadership is coping with change. Leaders press for change. What leaders really do is prepare organisations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it. In any complex business, this demands initiatives from a multitude of people. Nothing less will work.

Action: Setting a direction Developing a vision of the future (often the distant future). Developing strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision. By: Gathering and analysing a broad range of data and look for patterns, relationships and linkages that help explain things. Creating vision and strategies that describe a business, technology, or corporate culture in terms of what it should become over the long term. Effective business visions regularly have an almost mundane quality, usually consisting of ideas that are already well known. What is crucial about a vision is how well it serves the interests of important constituencies – customers, shareholders, employees – and how easily it can be translated into a realistic competitive strategy. A competent direction-setting process provides a focus in which planning can then be realistically carried out. Planning works best as a compliment to direction setting, not as a substitute for direction setting. Long term planning is not a panacea for lack of direction. Articulating a feasible way of achieving this goal.

Action: Aligning people Communicating the new direction to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement. By: Communicating with anyone who can help implement the vision and strategies or who can block implementation. Getting people to comprehend a vision of an alternative future. Having the credibility to get people to believe the message. Depends upon: Track record of the messenger Content of the message Communicators reputation for integrity and trustworthiness Consistency between words and deeds Aligning leads to empowerment  and empowerment works because: When a clear sense of direction has been communicated throughout an organisation, lower level employees can initiate actions without the same degree of vulnerability. Everyone is aiming at the same target.

Action: Motivating and inspiring Keeping people moving in the right direction despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions. By: Generating highly energised behaviour to cope with the inevitable barriers to change because achieving grand visions always requires a burst of energy. Works by satisfying basic human needs for: Achievement A sense of belonging Recognition Self esteem A feeling of control over one's life Ability to live up to ones ideals Making the work important to individuals by articulating the vision in a manner that stresses the values of the audience. Regularly involving people in deciding how to achieve the vision. Supporting employee efforts to realise the vision by providing coaching, feedback, and role modelling, thereby helping people grow professionally and enhancing their self esteem. Recognising and rewarding success.

Only organisations that embrace both Leadership and Management can thrive in turbulent times.

Organisations can develop outstanding leader-managers by recruiting people with leadership potential (or spotting them early in their career) and managing their career patterns. Effective leader-managers typically share the following career experiences, usually in decentralised organisations that have more challenging jobs at lower levels:

1. A significant challenge early in a career – opportunities during their twenties and thirties to actually try to lead, to take a risk, to learn from both triumphs and failures.

2. The chance to grow beyond the narrow base that characterises most managerial careers; often as the result of lateral career moves or early promotions to broad job assignments.

3. A strong network of relationships, both inside and outside the organisation, that help create the strong informal networks needed to support multiple leadership initiatives.

4. Recognition and rewards for executives (with promotion) that spend time successfully planning and actioning the development of their people with potential into leaders.

The calls to arm activity was opportunity for me delivery a speech in the class. The speech I made was leadership and survival of my fraternity wherein I highlighted five crucial components of effective, dynamic and enthusiastic leadership. These components were challenging, inspiring, enabling, modelling and encouraging.

The activity was part of our team building the objectives of the exercise is to boost morale and motivation, build trust, stir up  better communication and understanding, improve productivity and give way to self-awareness. The team building exercise is one of the leader's resources to get his team move towards his vision and goals

I strongly recommend team building in every organization or company. But just like retreats for students and teachers, it should be done every year to maintain and keep the fire (passion/motivation) burning. Team building is a nice venue for employees to open discussions among themselves, and between employees and management thereby improving relationships. It also breaks the barrier between leaders and employees, and develops problem-solving skills.

The external and internal factors that shape me was my reflection pertaining to the result of my enneagram. It describes the relationship between my family, how I adapt to my environment, how was I doing in my school days and how I am now with my work. The assignment also provides my insights about values, strength and weaknesses. The reflection enables me to prepare future challenges in my life.

What shapes a leader is also essential in the self-awareness exercise of a leader. It is very vital for a leader to know the factors that have molded him which may come from internal such as his strengths, weaknesses and values;  or external  that which comes from external sources -  his environment, the opportunities and situation, his mentor, role model and family members.  All of these affect his decisions and prepare him for the challenges that he will be dealing with in the future.

A genogram (also known as a McGoldrick-Gerson study, a Lapidus Schematic or a Family Diagram) is a pictorial display of a person's family relationships and medical history. It goes beyond a traditional family tree by allowing the user to visualize hereditary patterns and psychological factors that punctuate relationships. It can be used to identify repetitive patterns of behavior and to recognize hereditary tendencies.

My genogram is very useful in helping me trace the origin or source of my leadership skills, I find the activity very exciting as it led me to a beautiful realization –to appreciate my roots especially the hardships that my parents went through just to be able to send myself and my siblings to college. Despite their lack of financial resources, they patiently and diligently fulfilled their obligations regardless of extreme sacrifice and difficulties. For me, what they did was an example of heroic leadership.

I believe that passion and leadership are two words that go hand in hand. This is the reason why leaders have to examine themselves to be aware of their passion or the things they love doing. Passion communicates as it emanates from it our desires to achieve something which makes leaders succeed in their undertakings.

The reflection paper about my passion came to be very enlightening and challenging. Normally, we take for granted or put aside the things that we want to do. Little did I know that these passions are what keep us going when we feel burn out. They restore our energy when we get weak. Thus it is important for us leaders to be always passionate to be successful.

The audio visual presentation was something worth taking my time. It was quite hard to compose a thought translated in a video presentation with an artistic point of view. The video presentation provided me a realization on where I am now and the awareness that a lot of people including my loves are with me in good and bad times.

Decision Making, Critical Thinking and Conflict Resolution were also discussed in the last session.

Decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. Every decision-making process produces a final choice that may or may not prompt action. Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker.

Decision making is a crucial responsibility for leaders. The decisions of a leader can make or break his organization by making things succeed or fail completely especially if there are many people involved. In situations where the leader has many followers, it is helpful to get their feedback and decide with them by knowing the consensus. For big companies especially, decisions are not supposed to be a one-man action.

Critical thinking, also called critical analysis, is clear, rational thinking involving critique. Its details vary amongst those who define it. According to Barry K. Beyer (1995) critical thinking means making clear, reasoned judgments. During the process of critical thinking, ideas should be reasoned and well thought out/judged.^[1] The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking^[2] defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.'^[3]

Critical Analytical Thinking or CAT is definitely an edge for a leader in decision making.  Hence, leaders must be able to master CAT which involves: challenging the question and assumption; asking all possible questions and not to accept hearsays; being able to know what data is relevant or irrelevant; being able to assess the magnitude and  direction of the data; and being able to come up with logical conclusions

Being able to resolve conflict is absolutely necessary to be an effective leader. Conflicts are sometimes necessary to produce good results. Besides we should not expect everyone to agree with everything we say or do. The presence of conflicts at times is healthy so as to regulate or control probable abuse of those who are in authority, and also to bring out the truth. Pointers on how to resolve conflict were discussed on the blog to wit: to avoid (avoid unpleasant people who may give problems later), to pray (pray for adversary, for strength and understanding), to strategize (learn to neutralize the moves of the opponent), and  to go to war (seek arbitration, go to court or give up).

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those.

Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting or planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available. Mind maps are considered to be a type of spider diagram.^[1] A similar concept in the 1970s was "idea sun bursting".

Mind mapping was one of the lessons that I found interesting. Although, this subject was only discussed briefly, I took initiative to make a little research. I happened to come across mind mapping few years back, but this time out of curiosity, I wanted to learn more about it.

According to the business dictionary, mind mapping is a graphical technique for visualizing connections between several ideas or pieces of information. Each idea or fact is written down and then linked by lines or curves to its major or minor (or following or previous) idea or fact, thus creating a web of relationships. Developed by the UK researcher Tony Buzan in his 1972 book 'Use Your Head,' mind mapping is used in note taking, brainstorming, problem solving, and project planning. Like other mapping techniques, its purpose is to focus attention, and to capture and frame knowledge to facilitate sharing of ideas and concepts.

What have I done, am doing and will be doing?  

The Leadership course is the kind of subject wherein my experience is way beyond my expectation. Defining and being leader doesn't come from a very technical perspective but comes on the moral and characteristic of the person. Leadership as always mention is putting an influence to other person's lives with an everlasting impact.

The richness of the course with life-changing lessons has put myself into another level of spirituality of not merely being a leader in words but in deeds, not only for myself but more so for others. The realization and recognition of my duties of being a leader have given me a deeper meaning of my temporary existence here on earth in order to prepare for the salvation of my soul which is also my mission for others.

Although I have still a long way to go but the leadership course provides me the necessary lesson of what a true leader is the Ignatian way. I am thankful that I took this subject as early as now as it helps me understand the true meaning of being a leader in words and in action.

Being a leader is not a simple task as it comes with a lot of responsibility but the Ignatian style of leadership defines me that I am a leader from the very beginning regardless if I made it well or poorly. As long as my leadership skill is from within and understand that it is an ongoing and continuous process, it will bring me to where I want to be regardless if it's in career or in business.