Rowitz On Leadership

    This new page will  add a series of tools in the form of exercises, drills, and other resources for leaders.  All the new tools will be related and additions to chapters in my two leadership books, Rowitz, 2006, 2009.  If you use any of these new tools, pleases comment below on your experience with  the tool.   These new tools will undergo change as I work with them and you work with them.

          TOOL 1- OWNERS AND VICTIMS(PERSONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT)

                In his book, REINVENTING YOURSELF, Steve Chandler differentiates leaders who take responsibility for their actions and decisions in a creative manner in contrast to leaders who are more reactive and who constantly blame others when their decisions go awry. In Chapter 8 of Rowitz, 2006 and Chapter 6 of Rowitz, 2009, I discuss the importance of leaders developing their skills at the personal level.  Chandler argues that people can change and move from a victim stance to an ownership one.

     Purpose: To explore how owners and victims solve problems

     Concepts: Personal leadership development, Owners, Victims

     Procedure: Put together a group of five to ten people.  Discuss how owners and leaders would problem solve each of the following scenarios.

          (1)  The budget manager of your agency has ended the year with a budget deficit

          (2)  Your local Board of Health has decided to outsource the maternal and child health program to a local hospital under a contractual arrangement

          (3) There is a flood in your community.  The Incident Commander under the local ICS has left your public health agency out of the response activities

         TOOL2-HEALTH EQUITY AND THE LEADERSHIP CHANGE CYCLE

           In the article on the Leadership Change Cycle, the Daschle book , and Chapter 3 of Rowitz(2009), the importance of the looming debates on health reform and its concomitant issue on health disparities and health inequities, the different skills related to the various dimensions of leadership in organizations, communities, and policy levels will need to be addressed.  Tool 2 explores some of these relationships.

     Purpose:  To examine how we use our  leadership skills to address the issues related to a shift  in pardigm from health dispaities(the numbers) to health inequities to  a vision of health equity for all in a geatly enhanced transformation of the American health care system

     Concepts: Leadership Change Triangle, Management, Managerial Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Strategic Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Health Disparities, Health Inequities, Health Equity

      Procedure:  This exercise will take at least two hours to complete.  Divide the large group into smaller teams of 8-10.    The exercise involves a paradigm shift from health disparities to health inequities to a vision for health equity for all by 2015.     For this exercise, limit your deliberations to reform of the public health system.  Write down your decisions and plans at each step. Your discussion steps are as follows:

          (1) Transformational Leadership- Clarify the paradigm. 

          (2) Strategic Leadership- What are the strategic steps that you will follow to put your new paradigm into action

          (3) Transactional Leadership-  Designate the relationships you need to build to make the new plan work

          (4) Managerial Leadership-  What are the Human Resource Issues that you need to work out with your organizational managers to make your new plan work 

          (5)  Management-  How do you change your organization to put the new paradigm into action.     

Report back on the experience to the group as a whole.

          TOOL3- TO GET(LEADERSHIP THEATER GAME 1)

          Over the past few years, I have had discussions with Carole Kleinberg, Artisatic Director of the Banyan Theater Company in Sarasota, Florida and Toni Rowitz, Professor of English at Oakton Community College in DesPlaines, Illinois.   These discussions have involved ways to incorporate theater games and improvisations into leadership and management development programs.   The logic behind theses discussions have involved the performance aspect of leadership and management.   I have named this approach POWER PLAY 2020.   Tool 3 incorporates a theater game into discussions on communication, conflict management, and negotiation. Also see Rowitz(2009), Chapets 11 and 14.

         Purpose:  To explore the leadership and management of conflict and negotiation utilizing a theater game model.

         Concepts: Listening, Communication, Conflict Management, Negotiation

         Procedure:  Select two volunteers from the group.   One person will ask the other to close the window.  The second individual will initially deny the request.    Person one will need to convince Person 2  to carry out the task.    After 15 minutes or so, the group will discuss the game and how it played concentrating on leadership and managment concerns, conflict management, negotiation and other scenarios for how the game could have been played.

         TOOL4-THE INFRASTRUCTURE GAME

           Team-Building is often a difficult process and is affected by the leadership style of the team leader.   This exercise is not only an excellent ice-breaker exercise, it is useful in leadership development programs.   I have introduced this exercise to public health leadership institutes, and several now include the exercise as part of their curriculum. Also see Rowitz(2009), chapters 2 and 6.

           Purpose: To introduce public health professionals and other leaders to building teams, leadership styles, and creativity in viewing public health as a system.

           Concepts: Authoritarian Leadership, Democratic Leadership, Team-Building, Leadership Style, Public Health Infrastructure, Creativity

            Materials: Multi-Colored Small Blocks

             Procedures:  Divide a larger group into small groups of 8-10 people.   Their assignment is to build the infrastructure of public health using the multi-colored blocks.   Have each group pick a team leader.    Give envelopes to all the leaders.   Half have the instructiuon to be authoritarian with their groups and the other half are told to be democratic.  Give the groups 20-30 minutes to develop their project.   At the conclusion of the exercise, have each group describe their project and its meaning.   With the group as a whole, describe the experience and discuss the differences in leadership and how it affected the design of the infrastructure project.

          TOOL 5-THE PUBLIC HEALTH MACHINE( THEATER GAME 2)

          This tool is a variation of Tool 4 and is also an excellent team-building exercise.

          Purpose:  To build the infrastructure of public health with the creation of a human public health machine under the leadership of individuals with different leadership styles

         Concepts: Team-Building, Creativity, Infrastructure, Story-Telling, Improvisation, leadership styles

        Procedures:   Divide the group up into smaller groups of 10.  Have each team pick a team leader to guide the building process.  Give envelopes to all the leaders.  Half of the leaders  have the instruction to be authoritarian with their groups and the other half are told to be democratic. Person 1 in each group starts the construction of the team by improvising a machine part with a moving mechanism.  Each other team member adds to the machine.  After the completion of the exercise, each team will describe their public health machine and why it works the way it does.    The group will also discuss the impact of their leader on the process.The exercise is repeated for each group present.

          TOOL 6- RURAL PUBLIC HEALTH LEADERSHIP I

           My June 2009 Blog Article begins to address some of the critical public health issues in rural and small communities.   This exercise starts a discussion on some of these issues.

            Purpose: To explore some of the challenges faced by rural public health departments

            Concepts: Rural Public Health, Synergistic Leadership

            Procedures: Divide up into small groups of 5-8 people.  Develop a list of 3-5 major challenges to rural health departments in your state.  For each of the challenges, come up with three strategies for addressing the challenge.    What are the leadership requirements necessary to carry out one of your strategies.   Does meta-leadership or synergistic leadership approaches apply to the strategy?    Present your results to the group as a whole.

              TOOL7-WORKSHOP ON ECOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP

              My September 2009 Blog posting on ecological leadership has a table which lists a number of leaderhip  skill sets that a leader may employ during his/her professional career.   Leaders need flexibility to use the tools that bext work with a specific public health leadership challenge.   This interactive workshop can take a few hours to complete.   its purpose is to explore as a group the relevance of each of the skill sets listed in the table to address a specific public health issue.

            Purpose: To explore different leadership skill sets for a specific public health challenge such as health reform, pandemic influnza planning and response, childhood obesity, diabetes prevention, and so on

             Concepts: Ecological Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Systems Leadership, Crisis Leadership, Meta-Leadership, Synergistic Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Global Health Leadership

              Procedure:  Divide a large group into smaller groups of 8-10 people.  Choose a public health challenge.  Spend 30 minutes exploring the challenge from  eight leadership skill sets.   Debrief the process with the whole group.   This workshop may take a day to complete.

             TOOL8-THE HEALTH REFORM DEBATE

             In the latter half of 2009, the health reform debate has been heating up.  The discussions have involved reform of the insurance business, rationing of health care, preservation of the Medicare program for seniors, and numerous other issues.  There has been some discussion of increasing prevention activities but a lack of clarity on how to do this.   this exercise will exolore two different models for health reform partially different from the present debate.   Also see Rowitz(2009), Chapter 11.

            Purpose: To explore the public health model in a comprehensive approach to health care reform

            Concepts: health reform, debate

            Procedures:   Select two groups of five volunteers from the larger training group to serve as the debate teams.  One group will outline and argue for a public health focused health reform program and the second group will argue for a medical focus for health reform.  The audience represents the insurance industry and they will question the two teams after the debate. 

            TOOL9-THE EMPTY CHAIR

             Many years ago, i worked in the mental health field.   As a researcher, I felt I lacked the understanding of how a therapist and a client might relate to each other in a therapy session.   I entered a Gestalt Therapy Training Program and learned a technique for working with people in conflict.   The technique of the Empty Chair can also be a useful tool for managers and leaders struggling with professional conflict situations.

             Purpose:  To understand the dimensions of a conflict or problem situationand identify possible solutions

             Concepts: Empty Chair, Gestalt Therapy, Conflict, Conflict Management, Self-Awareness, Coaching

             Procedure:  A facilitator will be needed for this exercise.Place two chairs in the front of the training group facing each other.   Ask for a volunteer who has a work proble or conflict situation.   The person sits in one of the chairs and describes his/her problem or conflict.  The, the individual moves to the other chair and is a leadership coach and asks the now first empty chair questions that will lead to an eventual solution.   The individual will move back and forth between the two chairs until the problem or conflict has a portential solution.   The facilitator guides the process.   debrief the total group.   and repeat as many times as training session time permits. 

             TOOL 10-THE FAN(SYSTEMS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT 1)

             There has been increasing awareness of the importance of utilizing quality improvement tools and methodology for public health agencies.    These techniques have been recognized for their value in performance measurement and also as critical to accreditation of public health agencies.   The December 2009 book selection reviews and recommends an excellent book on quality improvement in public health.   However, most of the tools of quality improvement including the fishbone diagram are limited in their application to community-wide quality improvement activities.   This exercise will allow agencies and public health coalitions experiment with a variation of the fishbone which I call the fan.   The advantage of the fan is that it will allow us to reccognize the potential of multiple factors or causes for quality change  within a community or systems context.   You can add multiple ribs to the fan depending on the number of causes or factors which you find critical.   Increase the number of ribs of the fan to allow for this.  the ribs are connected by the material of the fan which demonstrates the interconnectedness of all the factors or ribs necessary to improve quality.  A simple matrix will also help in this process.

          Purpose: To determine the causes or factors affecting quality improvement at the community level(systems level).   This exercise does not specifically address quality improvement strategies as much as the underlying issues related to community patterns and systems issues that will eventually lead to the quality improvement strategies.

          Concepts: quality improvement. commumity, systems level thinking, fan, matrix

          Procedure: Divide the training group into groups of 5-8 people.   Each group draws a wedge shaped fan with five ribs to start with on a piece of newsprint.    Your community is struggling with a influenza pandemic like H1N1.   Review the causes or factors necessary for determining whether  your community is addressing the critical areas necessary for addressing the problem.  Add fan ribs  if more factors are involved.   Determine how the fan helps measure performance, determines major factors or causes of a challenge, clarifies the interrelationships of causes relative to a specific community context,  and begins a process of quality improvement.   Draw a matrix with  the causes or factors along both axes.   Check the boxes which clearly demonstrate a relationship between factors. Discuss the importance of the fan material between the ribs that demonstrate how the rib factors are interconnected.   Discuss how this data increases the understanding of how the community context affects the interrelationships. Debrief the exercise with the entire training group.   Discuss the different fans and matrices developed by different groups.

            TOOL 11-PERSONAL QUALITY  IMPROVEMENT I

              There has been much discussion in recent years about performance measurement at the organization and community level  generally and quality improvement specifically. At a personal level, leaders have become concerned about personal responsibility and personal performance at a quality level. This exercise begins an approach to the application of performance measurement methodologies to personal leadership development.

                  Purpose: To use the pie chart as a performance measurement tool at the personal level

                  Concepts:  pie chart, life dimensions, management and leadership, time measurement

                  Supplies: several work sheets with a large circle on it, felt pens or crayons

                  Procedure: In a training group, each individual will be given three circle sheets and a felt pen or crayon.   The trainee will be asked to divide the circle into segment.   The first circle refers to work and community.   How much of the average day do you spend on work activities, family time, community service, and sleep?   Discuss your pie with a parrtner.   How would you change the diagram  for the future?    The second pie relates to managment and leadership.   How much time do you spend managing your agency or program and how much of your time on leadership activities?   With your partner, discuss your pie chart and ways to change your activities to a more leadership focused chart?  The third pie relates to your work activities.  What specific activities occur on a given day  and how much time is expended?   With your partner, discuss your chart and ways to change your activity profile.  Finally, loos at your three pie charts and determine inconsistencies and what you can do about them.

        TOOL 12-PERSONAL QUALITY IMPROVEMENT 2(MY LEGACY)

         Most leaders address the issue of legacy at the end of their careers rather than throughout their careers.  A personal legacy needs to be a living document.   This exercise addresses the changing aspects of a personal legacy which is closely tied to a leader’s concern with personal quality improvement.

         Purpose:  To utilize legacy thinking(See Mid-March 2010 Book Club Selection) as a tool for personal quality improvement.

         Concepts:  legacy, legacy thinking, personal quality improvement

          Procedures:  As a home work assignment , look back at your professional career and write down 1-10 things for which you want to be remembered.    On a second sheet of paper,  write down a list of 1-10 goals that you wish to accomphlish over the next five years.   Are these ten goals  tied to your past legacy accomplishments.   On a third sheet of paper, write down 1-10 things you would like to be remembered for at the end of your professional career.    Have your legacy  priorities changed?   In a training group, share your thinking about legacy with another trainee .   How would you change your personal legacy staatement as a result of the discussion with another person?   Listen to your partner’s view of legacy and repeat the process for him or her.

        TOOL 13-TEAM-BUILDING 1(STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES)

         We have all experienced teams, committees, coalitions, alliances, and partnerships that do not seem to work for some reason or other.  This exercise  is an adaptation of a number of exercises used by consultants and various groups to try to address teams that do not work.

         Purpose:  To explore personal characteristics of team members that seem to wok against effective teamwork.

         Concept: Team-Building

         Procedure:   Use one flip chart page for each team member.   For each team member, ask every other member to name one strength and weakness  noticed by these team members that work against or block successful teamwork.   Do not discuss the results until the process is completed for for all team members. Then begin an open discussion of the results and determine if  these results can be addressed in such a way as to improve the work of the team.  Since this exercise can address strong emotional reactions, it may be useful to set some ground rules up before the process begins.

        TOOL 14-WHAT KIND OF LEADER AM I?

         Self reflection is an important tool for leaders.    Keeping a journal is also a way for leaders to reflect on their leadership activities.  This exercise in addition to reading  the new book by Kouzes and Posner,  THE TRUTH ABOUT LEADERSHIP will give individuals some insights into the way they lead.

         Purpose: To explore the type of leader you are

        Concepts:leadership, self-reflection, ladership truthsKouzes and Posner)

        Procedures: Divide the large groups into smaller groups of five or six.    In rotation, each group member will answer the following three questions and discuss the answers with your other group members:

             (1) What kind of leader am I?

            (2)What keeps me going in the present environment of a bad economy and a decline in revenues in my agency?

            (3)How do I demonstrate the Kouzes and Posner leadership truths of making a difference, credibility, commitment to values, vision, not doing things alone, building trust, confronting challenges, leading by example, being a lifelong learner, and showing passion for what I do?