Thursday, May 3, 2012
Dr. Barbara Kellerman
Dr. Barbara Kellerman, expert on leadership and followership and author of numerous books including, "Bad Leadership: What it is, How it happens, Why it matters", spent her day at SNC lecturing involved faculty and students on her developed perspective and experiences of leadership.
Dr. Kellerman is very educated on the subject of 'Leadership' and has traveled around not only the United States but also around the world teaching the world about the knowledge she has on two very important subjects: Leadership and Followership. She has studied leadership for several years and received her PhD from Yale University in Political Science.
Although Dr. Kellerman has a broad understanding of Leadership she chose to focus on the negative aspects of Leadership in her half hour lecture she presented at SNC. She began her presentation by introducing herself and informing us that "the leadership that we know and love is changing". Is this a statement that you would agree with? I personally agree with it because just like everything else, things change with time. Everything changes with time and there is no way of stopping it. However, I believe that the leadership changes are headed in a positive direction because the study of Leadership is a more recent study that is only going become more developed over time as our knowledge on this subject expands.
Dr. Kellerman started a new blog called "Lame Leaders / Fed Up Followers", in her blog she likes to highlight a leader for each blog and criticize their failures. Through her examples of "Lame Leaders" I thought about times where maybe I didn't reach up to my full potential as a leader. Through these experiences, I was able to learn and grow from them which I think has given me a better perspective of Leadership. Do you think that a leader can fail in certain ways and learn from the experiences and grow into an even stronger leader? Can you think of a time where you failed at being a leader and turned your weaknesses into strengths?
In her lecture she stated that, "we cant have good leaders with out good followership and we can't have a bad leader without bad followership". What do you think she meant by this statement? I think that I am just going to have to partially agree with this statement. I think that you can have a good leader and good followers but I don't agree with when she says that you can't have a bad leader without bad followership. In a group I am involved with at SNC, I have noticed throughout the three years I have been involved that the leadership is not as strong as it used to be, but because it is not as strong as it was I don't think that it is because of bad followership. I think that a good leader promotes good followership and it is easier to be strong with a strong leader, but if there is a bad leader in place, I don't think that it necessarily means that there is bad followership. I think that it puts the followers in a bind where it is not as easy to succeed but I don't think it automatically leads to bad followership. Can you share any experiences of good or bad leadership/followership that you have had throughout your life?
Although I didn't agree with the negative style she used while talking about leadership, and I personally prefer focusing on good leaders to highlight good leadership I still think that it was important that we did focus on a lot of bad things within the leadership content. We can focus on good leaders and learn from many of their experiences and strategies but it is also important to study the negative parts of leadership for educational purposes as well.
P.S. I dont know why it didn't space out my paragraphs, I cant figure it out so I'm sticking to one big paragraph!
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I agree with what Dr. K said in terms of the leadership roles and abilities are changing. She seems to be talking about it so that we all hear what she is saying and so that we can change it for the better. But there is not doubt that leadership has becoming more prevelantly studied and looked at and our class is an example of that. A number of years ago our class would probably not have existed and an opportunity to get a Leadership minor was not an option.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that Dr. K talked about the idea of bad leadership because I think that should be a part of all leadership studies areas of studies. It is important to not replicate what bad leaders are doing and to take a look at those types of leadership styles. I have had bad leadership styles in my life and always tell myself to learn from not only my mistakes as a leader but watch others mistakes as well.
I agree with Ness and Dr. K, the world is changing and leadership is no exception to this. I also agree that these changes will most likely be positive changes to the leadership world. With more research being done on leadership like the research that Dr. K does it will improve the leadership that we study now. As Chris stated years ago this class would not even be in existent along with a the leadership minor. From the changes that have happened in the past years have been positive and all we can do is hope that these positive changes continue.
DeleteI was at Dr. K's lecture and I could not agree more that bad leaders is a key part of leadership. Dr. K discussed many different leaders that have done an awful job but what she did not talk about was good leaders doing bad things. As we talked about in class earlier in the semester a leader can still be good while doing evil things (Hitler). I am not sure if this is someone Dr. K would add to her blog of bad leaders.
I agree with Dr. Kellerman that leadership is changing. I believe it is changing because of social networking and the power of being able to make change as an individual. Since one person can change anything with the help of social media, leadership is not as much needed as followership is. I agree with Vanessa, however, that leadership might be changing for the positive and people are becoming more knowledgeable about the topic.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a leader can easily learn from failures, it is just like learning from your mistakes. Becoming a stronger leader might be a challenge but it only makes sense that you learn from your mistakes. During the St. Norbert Times I volunteered in the business department as the Director of Business Development. I sometimes expected too much of my team and might have pushed them and asked too much from them. Eventually they all quit. Looking back at it I probably could have been a better leader by mentoring and coaching them, because I had to remember they were volunteers as well.
I agree with Vanessa about bad leaders and bad followership. Sometimes the leader is horrible and the followers are just trying to get something out of them. Again when I was on the SNC Times I had an incredible leader as a freshman & sophomore. I was motivated to do the work and I was dedicated. As a senior, I didn't have the drive & passion for it like I used to, and it was definitely because of my relationship with the leaders.
I agree that leadership is changing. Throughout the years there have been so many different leadership theories that have been developed. I believe there will be several more leadership theory because our world is changing so much with advanced education and technology. All leaders will need to adjust to these new things and create new leadership theories to best fit their audience.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think leaders can fail at times but learn from their mistakes to make them a stronger leader. I think a great example of this is the five bright traits which we learned about in class. There are both positive and negative sides to each trait. A leader just needs to learn how to use their traits the correct way, which depends on their followers. For example, I used to be too agreeable with the people I worked with and did not want to go against anything they said even if I wasn't 100% certain I liked their ideas. Now, I understand the importance of stating my opinion because it could help the organization come up with the best conclusion. It is important to hear everyone's opinions.
I believe that statement means that it is important for everyone to work together in order to accomplish their goal to the best of their ability. I had a bad leader once who refused to do any extra work that was needed and blamed all the mistakes on us. She would sit around in her office all day and hardly do anything. Her main duty was to order us to do everything. If she helped us, the organization would have gotten things done a lot faster and possibly a lot better with her ideas. I found this leader extremely difficult to respect and agree with.
I agree that leadership is changing because new research is constantly being done, and new information is discovered. I also believe that a leader can fail, because even though they're a leader, they're still human. They can learn from their experiences and grow into a stronger leader by not making the same mistakes.
ReplyDeleteAn example of bad leadership was when I was elected to be Public Relations Chair for a club on campus. The e-board before mine was very unorganized, and they lost a lot of involvement in the club due to bad leadership. They had people randomly filling in e-board positions because people kept quitting or going abroad, and did not hold official elections to replace those people. They were also behind on doing tasks required for campus clubs. By time I was elected, it was my sophomore year. It was an entirely new e-board (which was a good thing). Although we were all first year members of the club and did not know everything we were supposed to do, we stayed organized, talked to other clubs on campus, and were successful. More students joined the club, I think mostly because there was a dramatic turnaround in leadership.
Can you share any experiences of good or bad leadership/followership that you have had throughout your life?