Rowitz On Leadership

February is a month for reflection. It is the time of year when we begin to look forward to Spring. It is the month when we celebrate love at Valentine’s Day and joy through the Mardi Gras season. It can also be a time for us to celebrate our leadership and reflect upon what makes us whole. Leadership is not only about the work that we do. It is about the things that humanize and provide the framework for our lives. It is about the things and ideas that make us grow. This posting will explore some of the things that enrich our lives and make who we are as leaders more meaningful (Also see my June 2010 blog posting). In my book PUBLIC HEALTH LEADERSHIP:PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE, I discussed the five levels of leadership—personal, team, agency, community, and professional. In this blog posting, I want to explore further the personal development level.

There are at least eight learning strategies that will enhance your leadership development activities:

1. Lifelong Multidisciplinary Learning
2. Systems thinking and Complexity
3. Reading
4. Exploring the Arts
5. Creativity
6. Family-Work Balance
7. Retreats and Reflection
8. Experiential Learning

To be a successful lifelong learner, learning should not be limited only to leadership. Leaders need to be well-rounded. We need to go beyond the academic specialty in which we were originally trained. If you are a leader originally trained as a physician, now you need to learn about management and leadership, behavioral sciences such as economics and psychology and sociology, political science, biostatistics, epidemiology, community engagement and so on. It is the multidisciplinary perspective that broaadens our view of the contexts in which we work.

Most of our education involved the development of a linear thinking approach to problem solving. The real world of the leader requires more. We need to see the big picture with the role of our agency or organization within it. We need to develop tools that help us to organize our systems thinking perspective. In THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE, Senge gives us a number of systems tools called archetypes to help us in this endeavor. With mastery at this level, we are able to see the chaos that must be addressed in our community work. It becomes imperative that leaders develop a complexity perspective that helps us use tools to bring order out of the chaos that we see.

Leaders love to read and read widely. They read books in many fields and even learn to use fiction to help them understand the world better. I personally give you two books a month to add to your leadership learning in my blog book club as well as a basic leadership bookshelf(February 2010 blog posting). Just visit a local bookstore or explore new books and literature on online book sites. Many books have become available on e-book readers as well. Of course, there is also the excitement of visiting a good library. There are also many internet sites that give you many interesting articles to read.

Exploring the arts also enrich us at many levels. Everything from movies, concerts, museums, opera, symphonies, theater, art exhibits, travel and restaurants teach us much about what makes our culture and other cultures tick. Not only do these experiences give us much to talk about, they also help us view the world from many perspectives. Personally, I find that I begin to understand our country better after a trip to another country. Travel gives me the chance to see us from a number of different perspectives.

It is important for leaders to explore their creativity by doing different things as well as stepping back from a conflictual situation to explore innovative and non-traditional new approaches to addressing the challenges presented. Using new group process strategies like six thinking hats(Edward de Bono) open space technology(Harrison Owen) and world café(Juanita Brown) employ creative approaches to solving challenges of many kinds. Another interesting approach is to use theater games to explore creativity.

Leaders know that it is important to maintain a balance between their personal lives and their work lives. Leaders sometimes let their work overpower their personal lives. Because leaders are embedded in their communities, it is important that they work to strengthen their personal connections. Many of the above listed learning strategies will also support the life balance concerns raised here. It is also possible that the personal leadership tools that I discussed in my blog posting from June 2010 will help leaders better understand how they function in the work and in the family sectors.

In his book SELF-RENEWAL, the late John Gardner discussed the importance for leaders to set time apart for personal reflection. He and others have argued that leaders need to set time apart on a regular basis for self-renewal( For example, see my January 2010 blog posting). Others have pointed out that retreats at a remote site are another mechanism for leaders to collaborate with their work or external partners to review and evaluate their activities. Retreats can utilize creativity exercises and strategies to develop new programmatic directions or to explore and develop their personal leadership knowledge and skills.

Leaders often learn from their action-based activities. If a leader goes out into the community to be actively involved , they and their partners should learn from the activity. Experiential learning will also enhance leadership and give leaders the opportunity to apply leadership knowledge skills, and tools in real time.

Leaders become expert in applying all of these learning strategies synergistically. Personal leadership development is an important precursor to effectiveness at the other four levels of leadership.