THANK YOU VERY MUCH, KEN !!! :)

 The whole term has just passed so quickly and I've just finished my last RW class, Lessons in Leadership and the Dynamic You, taught by Ken today. I learned so much from this class, honestly. Since I had many experience that I played a role as a leader in many groups, I was able to reflect on what I had done and my failure at that time, and think about what I need to improve or what I need to acquire to be a better leader from next time.

 What is a better leader for me? And now, I remember I wrote a statement in the beginning of this term.

"I, Shiori Asakura, living at my highest and best, am cooperative (understanding others), responsible, and the most hard-working in the team so that I can motivate teammates and provide them a comfortable environment to achieve the common goal."

 Learning from Shackleton, some guest lecturers and Ken, what I wrote above was not wrong, I believe. Many of so-called "qualities of leaders" are based on this kind of idea and leaders are able to get trust from their teammates. In addition to what I wrote in my statement, I learned there are something special that leaders need to acquire, rather than qualities based on emotional matters such as trust and respect. Those are optimistic ways of thinking, quick decision-making skills and courages to take risks based on their judgement, for example,  if the risk people were about to take is necessary or not. To gain these qualities, however, people need time and training. I think I now need to start training to acquire them in ICU and also in an organization I belong because I have never trained myself to be a skillful leader.

 What I really liked about this class was that every class was very entertaining and so interesting to me! In every class, I get new and useful information about some steps to be an ideal leader, and have some time to discuss with my friends, which worked very well on me because I was able to organize my thought by talking to them, and also gain others' perspectives towards leadership. Presentations by guest lecturers were so impressive, and I've got so many "impressive quotes" from their speech. Even though I feel regrettable that I was not able to attend the whole class because of my chronic disease, I really think I was fortunate to be in this class this term and had an opportunity to learn from Ken. Your class left me a big goal towards mu future, with specific steps I need to achieve one by one. The figure of my ideal leader has definitely changed since I took your class, and now I hope to acquire more skillful and effective leadership for my own future.

Thank you very much, Ken!

With my best regards,

Shiori Asakura

LE Part 10: Tenacious Creativity and "Japanese Business"

 The last chapter (in an assigned part of reading) is about "Tenacious Creativity," and it illustrates the importance of finding solutions with tenacious creativity. The most impressive quotation for me is "think the unthinkable," which means we should not dismiss "any ideas, no matter how farfetched, without throughly considering it."By reading this chapter, my honest impression towards tenacious creativity is that it's not so easy to do this: I need stamina, tolerance, optimism and many other qualities i learned from previous chapter to find a solution with tenacious creativity. It's not so easy.

 Another quote which got my attention is "rather than expecting things to go right, successful leaders under these conditions should be prepared for things to go wrong." My essay topic for this term is Japanese negotiation. My essay illustrates what Japanese distinct negotiation style is and finds out problems in it by looking through the skills of ideal international negotiators, and analyzes how Japanese people can fix these problems. The main reason why I decided to write about Japanese negotiation is based on my regrettable feeling towards Japanese business which I've begun to have since I went out of Japan and recognized Japanese business situation in an international scale for the first time when I was sixteen. (I decided to stay abroad and began going to a high school in Switzerland at the age of 16. ) In my diary, I wrote, “it is regrettable that Japanese corporations frequently lose international competitions and cannot expand their business even though Japanese people have brilliant ideas and advanced technology.” A few years later, in 2012, Yomiuri Shimbun issued an article which states, “despite its technological prowess, Japan has sometimes failed to make its technologies the global standard--typical examples being its analog high-definition broadcasting system and mobile phone technology.” It was issued in the middle of struggle when Japanese automakers had been trying to make their own EV (electronic vehicle) charging connectors a global standard. Until then, I believe Japanese automakers were being ahead in developing the charging system, but American and some European automakers began concerning about the fact Japanese automakers would monopolize the EV market in the future, they decided to invent their own charging connector, which was different from Japanese one in advance at that time. And then, the struggle of which charger should be the global standard started. What I really think Japanese business people should have done is to talk to Americans and Europeans beforehand. They could have expected that kind of things happened since Japanese corporations had been the only one being ahead in developing chargers in competitive automobile industry. If Japanese business people in automobile firms had known the idea of "rather than expecting things to go right, successful leaders under these conditions should be prepared for things to go wrong," they could have dealt with the problem beforehand and that's the thing I really feel it's regrettable. Japanese creative ideas and minute technologies are brilliant, and Japanese people should be more proud of them and make a best effort to promote them internationally, by acquiring leadership skills.
 I think I've written too much here, but since I left Japan and stated my high school life in Switzerland at the age of sixteen, I began to think about who I am, my identity, and one day realized I'd been thinking about any things or problems from "Japanese" perspective. Then I think my love towards Japan, my home-county, got deepened, and began to be more proud of being Japanese. From my, one Japanese girl's perspective, it is so regrettable that Japanese business does not expand because of the lack of their leadership skills, and what is worse is that Japanese business people don't really see that right now. They tend to focus on acquiring English as a language, but they should take one or more further steps to be international business men / women so that Japanese business with its brilliant idea and technology will spread abroad and can be global standards in this globalized business world.

Bye!

LE Part 9: Risk

 Taking risks, which is the main topic of Chapter 9 in Leading at the Edge, is sometimes important although we need to avoid taking unnecessary risks which can endanger organizational stabilities as stated in this chapter. I usually do not want to take risks because I'm afraid of the fact I might regret my decision later on. This chapter, however, taught me a new perspective towards taking risks. By looking through many examples, I stated to realize drastic actions involving risks can result in a huge success, and to be successful, leaders' agile decision-making abilities are essential. H-LAB, an organization where I belong, is now four years old, and for the past three years, founders of the program have mainly built up the summer school, and there were some kind of traditions, which include what kind of framework the annual summer school for high school students would be like. High school students attend two classes held by Harvard students in the morning, they eat lunch, listen to presentations given by adult people who play active roles in their society and have reflection times in the evening and go to bed at 11 o'clock. This whole framework has never changed in those three years. This year, however, almost all of the founders graduated from this program, and now there are many new executive committee members to build a summer school this year. We are now about to make some change in the fixed framework. What I think, however, is that we can take risks and try something new from this year, to make this program keep improving and better, but those risks should not affect high school students who pay so much money for this nine-day summer school and are passionately ready for absorbing many things from this program. As I belong to this team, and am responsible for offering a program, I hope to keep challenging to make this program better without giving a bad affect on people who receive our service. I hope to think about the balance between them when in an attempt to take risks.

Bye!

LE Part8: Lighten Up!

 The seventh part of Leading at the Edge is "Lighten Up!" and I thought what Dennis Perkins says in this chapter is connected to many of the previous chapters. Building a good teamwork require personal relationships in a team, which means they need lightening-up moments in a time they spend. In an organization I belong now, H-LAB, holds many events in a year. They hold events like Nomikai (飲み会) at least once a month. Events can be someone's birthday party, a small trip and just for eating something them want (i.e. all the members really like to eat ra-men, so we have ラーメン同好会 in a team and go to some ra-men restaurant al least once in two months). Through these events, we get to know each others and get friendly, so that we build friendship and begin to talk about anything, which means we can overcome some problems we have, and we can try to deal with conflicts popped up in a team as a whole. Reading the section called "Find Something to Celebrate" reminded me of not only teams I have belonged but also a relationship with a boyfriend. Although boys tend to forget and feel troublesome towards anniversary events (such as the day of one year after the day the couple get dated), girls like to hold them and do special things on those special dates. I really understand many boys don't really like to plan those things and feel troublesome towards them, but I really think making those days kind of special has a good effect on their relationship. After having special date, we both always have close feeling for each other, and try to be more understandable and considerate to the other. I believe sharing an enjoyable moment with teammates or lovers definitely has good effects on their relationships.

Bye!

LE Part 7: Conflict

 Once you belong to any organizations or groups, there will be conflicts in some ways. Some conflicts or argument can be opportunities to make a change of their teams, but others can be pointless to discuss. The most interesting section in Chapter 7, "Conflict" was "Avoid Needless Power Struggle." Dennis Perkins illustrates a conflict on Shackleton's journey as an example and advise you to "choose to leave your "McNeish" standing in the snow until you can assess the situation." The reason why this section got my attention is because I thought I sometimes can be "McNeish" and tend to argue pointless things when irritated or frustrated. As I think you know by reading this blog, I have played a role as a leader many times in my life, but I have never been conscious of the psychological qualities of leaders and never tried to be "Shackleton," who tries to solve the problems calmly. I, indeed, tried not to be emotional in front of my teammates, but talked to my friends out of the team or mothers who always taught me new perspectives towards the problem. But in my personal life, I tend to be emotional when things are not going well. Therefore, reading this article made me realize, in my case, I need to try not to be "McNeish"or make decisions for teams emotionally at first. And then, I need to face teammates who can be McNeish. Since I understand how they feel when frustrated, I think I can deal with them softly after giving them time to calm down.

Bye!

Leadership and Followership

 In this term, we mainly focused on leadership. We learned so much about what qualities leaders need, from Ken, guest lecturers, and also Shackleton. I, however, think leadership is not all about teams. Not only leaders require special skills or abilities and not only leaders would determine what kind of teams they will have, but followers are also important. Leaders tend to be praised in the team, but active followers are the one who enables the leader to start movements, which are going to praised in the future. This idea of mine came from one TED video, and this is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy!

- "How to Start a Movement" by Derek Sivers

It demonstrates how the first follower is important. Since I had never been thinking about the influence of the first follower until I watched this video, I was very convinced by what he says. Leaders, indeed, need followers to be leaders, and the first follower is the one who gives opportunities for them to be leaders. In many cases in Japan and also all the other countries, it is almost impossible to be a leader of an organization from the beginning. I mean, many people starts from new employees, or lower positions and as they get promoted, they will be able to be leaders at last. That also means, everyone starts from followers, and what they need at the time, may be what is implied in this video, qualities of followership.

Bye!

LE Part 6: Core Team Values

 The context of the sixth chapter of Leading at the Edge, "Core Team Values" sounded very connected to other chapters, especially chapter 5, as written in the beginning of "Core Team Values." I was very impressed by many of Shackleton's actions towards his crews and saw the reasons why his crews put so much faith on him. I believe that his self-sacrifice required so much stamina and optimistic perspectives towards the tough situations, the qualities of which are mentioned in previous chapters. If I were his crew, I would feel like I would like to do anything for him even though his request was quite tough. The most interesting quote from this chapter is "what is important to realize that Shackleton's behavior as a leader had ripple effects beyond his individual concerns," which made me realize how much importance a leader's every action has, and how much the leader concerns about his / her teammates influence what kind of team he / she will have. As I've written many many times in this blog, I've been in an organization called H-LAB for two years in low. Last year, unfortunately, I did not have a good health condition. I had acute stress gastritis and my doctor strongly suggested staying at home in Hiroshima with my parents so that I was able to get balanced diet made by my mother. I, therefore, wasn't able to attend so many meetings held in Tokyo, and I was not able to do my work sufficiently. But I was not able to reveal I was in a bad health, because I did not want them to recognize me as a person who have a low tolerance for stress. I was so ashamed. The leader of the group one day asked me a reason why my work was beyond the schedule. Since I was very sorry about my late work, I confessed that I had acute stress gastritis. I was thinking he would have scolded me for not telling this earlier. He, however, did not get mad, but instead, he said, "Sorry that I did not see how tough situation you were in, and now I know I there is a lack in my leadership ... I know it required a great courage, for you, to confess this, but the problem is me. I wasn't able to notice your situation." Then I felt sooooo guilty, and sorry for not telling the truth earlier. I thought, if I had told them about this earlier, he would not be feeling like that and he would have dealt with this, which would have given both of us, happy and trustful feelings. What I learned from this experience is that it is very important for leaders to provide comfortable and open environments for their teammates, which means they really need time for personal relationship like Nomikai (飲み会), and leaders need to be a keen observer so that leaders would not miss opportunities to act like Shackleton, self-sacrifice actions for their teammates.

Bye!

LE Part 5: The Team Message and "Tons of E-mails I Receive"

 Reading "Keep Everyone Informed, Involved, and Thinking About Solutions" answered a question I had. Dennis Parkins, the author of Leading at the Edge, writes "I have never seen a cohesive team when vital information is hoarded or restricted to a few key decision makers." As I've written before, now I belong to an organization called "H-LAB" and I play a role as a liaison officer, who tries to contact people who play active roles in various areas in society regularly, and ask them to give a presentation for high school students in the summer school we provide. Each other member has each assigned position. However, in our mailing list, there are tons of information and mails which ask members opinions about each decision they make. I receive at least twenty mails a day, and almost all of them are about the decision which has no relation in public relation. I did not quite understand why we had such a confusing and troublesome system, but Dennis Perkins and his story made me realize making every member involved and thinking about situations is very important for the entire team to go to the right direction as a whole. This system also plays a role as keeping transparency in our organization. Even though it is sometimes confusing, I understood it's essential for us to adapt this system as one team.

LE Part 5: The Team Message

Teamwork is, as Dennis perkins writes in his book, a very important element to succeed their common goal in their team and there are some specofoc ways to enhance teamwork and make it effective in a team. he states, "open sharing of information, opinions, and potential consequences of choice" is essential for team members' active engagement. In my personal experience, it was quite difficult for Japanese people. When in junior high school, I was in a boarding school filled with Japanese girls in Hiroshima. I was a leader of an exective committee of a school festival. Since the committee consisted of the 7th, 8th and 9th grader, people ¥, especially 7th graders did not respond when I asked them to give me opinions about what I was trying to do. It is based on "senpai-kohai" realationship, which means Japanese particular hierarchial relationship. Older people have an absolute authories, and younger people should show repect towards them by not showing their oppositions. As compared to Japanese people, American people tend to think an equality is important. When I was in a high school and represented the school team of THIMUN, team members actively discussed what I brought to the team and everyone gave me some opinions no matter how old they were. Therefore, Japanese organizations, in particular, might need to break this barrier, the hierarchial system, although it's hard to break them, at first so that they will be able to enhance their teamwork effectively.

LE Part 4: Stamina and "Motivations and Changing in Me"

 In the previous post, I've talked about the saying which convinced me a lot in "Find Outlets for Your Own Feelings." Actually, I have another quote which is very moving to me, and convinced me a lot in "Let go of Guilt," the final section of this chapter, "Stamina."

 "Hopelessness had been my worst enermy. Now I had a plan. tha change in my was astonishing. I felt inviugorated, full of energy and optimism. I could see posssible dangers, very real risks that could destroy my hopes, but somehow I knew I could overcome them." This is quoted from the story about Simpson and I kind of understood what he felt at that time. Of course, I have never experienced such an agony journy, but once I am stimulated by something, which can be an experience during some summer schools, movies I've watched, or stories heard from someone, I really feel like I can do anything for what I am aiming, full of energy and high motivation. This is one of the reasons why I now belong to an organization called "H-LAB," (HCJI Liberal Arts beyond Borders) which offers high school students a nine-day summer school to experience liberal arts by attending various classes held by Harvard students and listening to presentations given by many famous people who play active roles in various areas. It's been three years since I participated in this program as a high school student and was very motivated and stimulated by other high school studnets having their own, certain visions, and adults who taught me a lot about how our future would be like and what we should gain to prepare for that future. I, personally, truely think, putting yourself in an environment where you can gain sustainable morivations is very important because I feel motivated to study or whatever I want to do with my best by belonging to H-LAB and get stimulated constantly.

LE Part 4: Stamina

Hello, everyone!
It's been a while since I posted the last blog, but now I'm trying to catch up.


In this post, I hope to write about the 4th chapter of this book, Leading at the Edge. One of the sections which are convincing to me is "Find Outlets for Your Own Feelings." This section talked about how Shackeleton deals with his feeling, scare in particular in his agony journey with his men. There are four spectific ways to deal with our own feelings, which are talking to friends, keeping a journal, writing letters and seeing a coach or counselor. In my case, I often talk to my mother, and talking to my mother often makes me realize the points I am missing, or makes my thoughts or doubt neat and tidy. I mean, my thoughts are organized after talking to her. When I was a 12th grader in my high school, I played a role as a leader of school team of The Hague International Model United Nations (THIMUN) as I've written in the previous post. Working on tasks of THIMUN consumes so much time that many members of the team were actually concerned about their grades for class. I was not an exception. I was so worried about it and talked to my mum on the phone. And she was the one who made me realize I was not the only one who was worried about grades but so were the other members, and in addition, she told me if I was afraid to committing myself in THIMUN, they would see that and the team members woulod not concentrate on their tasks. Since I know talking to someone makes me realize something I'm missing and organize my thoughts, I was very convinced by what the author writes here, in "Find Outlets for Your Own Feelings."

LE Part 3: "Optimism" and Genius

Hello everyone!

 This time, it can be kind of off-topic, but let me talk about the qualities great leaders have, related to optimism. Just after I started reading Chapter 3, I got one sentence which came in my attention. I empathized with the sentence on page 41, "Shackleton and other great leaders often seem to have been born with a special belief in their own ability." Personally, I was planning to write an essay about Steve Jobs for this RW class. After I kept doing research on him, however, I realized I could never follow him. I realized he was so-called "genius."

In any sources, there are sections talking about "intuition" he had: for example, "intuition" made him invent products, or his "intuition" was a key to decide the direction of the company. I simply thought it was almost impossible to follow his example because I highly doubt my own intuition would lead me to the right direction or if I had "right" intuition like he had. Those kinds of qualities are sometimes found when researching great leaders. In Shackleton's case, it's optimism. It does not ensure that people can surely cultivate optimism by learning what to do and putting their learning into actions, because there is no certain way to cultivate those qualities. It is not such a simple thing. However, last night, I've got an interesting idea about "genius" from one of my senpais. He has actually written about Steve Jobs and he has felt in the same way as I did in the midest of writing the essay. Reading lots of sources he found about great leaders, finally made him realize "a genius is a person who don't fit in a definition of genius" and by breaking common understanding or rules of what they should do, and making a huge success as a result, that person is recognized as a leader. People who follow the common (already known) ideas of what they should do (for example, in business) are so-called "successor," not a "genius." I was somewhat convinced by his words and thought it was interesting. Seeking for things or ways nobody has done is such a difficult and tough thing to do, but it is the only way to be a "genius." Thinking of this, I realized how great Shackleton was, once again.

LE Part3: "Optimism" and Procrastination

Hello, everyone.
How are you doing with the blogging?
Now I'm trying to catch up with you guys by writing as many posts as I can write.

 "Optimism" is a big theme of Chapter 3 in the book, Leading at the Edge. At first, I was surprised to know that optimism can be cultivated by learning. I don't really think I am optimistic, but I don't know I'm pessimistic either. By looking through "ABCDE" model introduced by Martin Seligman, I felt familiar with those steps because I often do the same process as written. This chapter talks mainly about a good effect of being optimistic, but I don't think it just has a positive effect. In my case, even though I often go through those five steps, I feel relieved and postpone working on it. I think I myself know what it is perfectly: procrastination. I'm not trying to insist being optimistic is a certainly bad thing or all the people being optimistic can procrastinate. However, I know many people who try to run away from the problems they have to face, just after convincing themselves, "it's gonna be okay." For example, It can often be seen before the exams. Those people who tend to procrastinate their work extend the days to study for the exams and one day before their exams, they get panicked and try to study without sleeping. As a leader, procrastinating is a fatal thing to do. Being optimistic and showing that to the teammates are, of course, important, but leaders should be optimistic based on an absolute reality and should have time-limit, or deadline for what they are working on, and also should be aware of the fact that some of their teammates can feel much more relieved than leaders expect so that keeping alerting is sometimes important for those teammates.

Bye!

LE2: Be Visible.

 Hello, everyone!

 In this post, I hope to write about letting people see you leading. In this section, the author, Dennis Perkins, gave me many examples of CEOs taking actions to make their employees see them leading. What I learnt from this section is that in difficult situations, leaders should not be blaming someone or ordering their teammates to deal with the problems, but should be calm, and think of proper steps to meet the situations and work out the problems together, with their teammates. This whole example reminded me of my experience when I was a leader of the school team in The Hague International Model United Nations (Details are in the last blog post!).

 As I've talked about the MUN activity in my school in the last blog, we had a five-hour lecture every week after class, which was held by a supervisor called Mr. Watson. In the lecture class, we had a time to do the demonstrations of MUN, which means we had to do the discussions about some international issues. However, the members often get confused, because of tons of information given in the lecture, and they rarely spoke up. I knew it was very important to raise my hand and get an opportunity to speak up from last year so that I was the only one who spoke up. I often talked to the members about how rarely we can get a chance to speak in front people in the actual conference, and the fact it is very important to speak up, but it seemed very difficult to take actions for them. Mr. Watson, who seemed unknown about the fact I was trying to encourage them to speak up, finally got mad, and sent all of us an e-mail which said we were so foolish that we didn't have courage to raise our hands and didn't make efforts to state our opinions. He used quite harsh words this time. Members in the team were all panicking. That e-mail made me feel very sorry and at the same time, scared, too, because  Mr. Watson was known as a quite strict teacher in the school and when he got mad, he usually made a seriously scary face and gave students detentions. (Now I'm talking about him being angry this time, but he is usually very nice and very helpful to the students. He is one of my favorite teachers!!) Although I was scared, I thought I had to fix this situation. I wasn't thinking I had to be calm, but somehow I was very calm after deciding taking actions as a leader. I called all the team members and told them we were going to talk to him directly. We arranged an impromptu meeting and discuss what was wrong with us and how we could fix our problems. After that, we directly went to the faculty room and met him. And talked about how sorry we were and reported what we decided to solve the problems after the meeting. Then he stopped making angry face and said the reason why he sent that e-mail was that he knew we all were capable of overcoming the problem. He was smiling. From the next lecture, members were quite faltering in the beginning, but discussion finally became active. Some of the members talked to me later and said they got courage from my action, and they were able to face the problem since they saw me talking to the teacher, being angry at first, bravely.

 This chapter, "Symbolism and Personal Examples" gave some ideas to be leading a team such as giving speech when in necessary or working together with teammates to solve the problems after the leader himself / herself make a decision, how to approach the problems they had. For the leaders, before taking any of those actions, what leaders really need are trust from team members and leaders' respect towards the members. Otherwise, teammates won't listen to the leader if he / she makes a speech or suggests what to do to solve problems. Establishing close relationship based trust and respect for each other makes it possible for leaders to take actions for the team. That's what I learnt from this chapter.

Bye!

LE Part 2: the Right Speech. "We Need Courage."

 Hello, everyone. It's a friday night! Have some plan for this weekend? I have a plan to hung out with my best friend from my high school. So excited!

 Anyway, this time, let me write about the second part of Leading at the Edge, and I want to focus on "right speech" in this chapter. Dennis Parkin, the author, writes a wonderful story about the speech Shackleton made in the tough situation of the journey. Its description made me feel like I wished I could have been on the ship and listen to his speech directly.

 I have a similar experience with Shackleton's. While I was in a high school in Switzerland, I've represented my school twice in The Hague International Model United Nations (in Japanese, 模擬国連). In the case if any of you don't know the Model United Nations (MUN), there is an explanation about MUN cited from Wikipedia: MUN is "a conference similar to the United Nations in which students participate as delegates to various UN Committees. Participants research and formulate political positions based on the actual policies of the countries they represent.",

(This is where the conference, general assembly, is taken place, and ...)

(this is how the discussion goes on. Even though the guy in pic is smiling, the discussion itself moves on very seriously and actively.)

Doing this twice means I spent two out of three years working on the tasks required in the discussion in the MUN. Actually, it was quite hard because I needed lots of knowledge about any political movements in the world and also a function of any organizations under the UN. In the second year, I played a role as a leader of the school team since I had experienced Model United Nations once. I usually tried to be cheerful and active, make some jokes and have some fun conversations with teammates because I hoped them to be in a comfortable atmosphere or environment. However, in the middle way, members' morales were getting lower and lower since we had a five-hour lecture every week after class, which was held by a supervisor. In that case, I thought I needed to do something as a leader of this team, and what I did was the same, a small speech. I used quite harsh words, unlike I always talked to them, to express how it was going to be if we'd continue to work on the tasks as we did with the low motivations. But I never wanted to make it scolding and that's one of the things I was careful. I talked about what made me regret in the actual conference one year before: specifically speaking, I got an inferiority complex caused by the lack of information and lack of efforts I had made, which means my preparation for the conference was not enough. And I said I hoped they all wouldn't be feeling the same as I had felt and I knew we all could go through that tough situation as a team. After that, actually, I was worried about their reaction because I had been trying to make a cheerful atmosphere in the team, and then I kind of broke that by making a speech. However, my speech seemed to be working well. On the next day, many members talked to me and said they were motivated by the speech and realized they couldn't keep going like before.

 The page 32 of the book is about Franco Bernade, CEO of Eni, and he stated in his speech, "I had to learn as CEO how to communicate. I was used to writing articles and preparing reports, but those are not really very effective communication tools." I know many people want to express their opinions or their feelings on paper such as reports, or on e-mails especially in this modern world where technology has been rapidly developing and having their mobile phones all the time with them and communicate with others through texting. I really understand texting or writing is comfortable for us because we don't need courage! We don't see the reaction that listeners make like we see in conversations or speech. And I think this is the reason why I was kind of afraid to make the speech in front of the team members. I was scared to see bad reactions teammates would have make. However, as Bernade states, we really need to speak to people directly when we have something to tell and hope that message to reach that person's heart. We need courage, of course, but I think this is the only way to send a message you really want to convey if you hope the other to receive it or understand you.

Bye!

LE Part1: Looking Beyond Your Own Needs for Action

 Hi, everyone! How is your weekend going? Mine is pretty good :)

 Last time, I wrote "what I consider from the article from Harvard Business Review and my experience is that the balance is always important" and in the section called "Looking Beyond Your Own Need for Action" and its "Lessons for Leaders" talked about keeping the balance between leaders' needs and the ones of the team as a whole.

 The author, Dennis Perkins, gives an example of the leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson. He seems he did not prepare for the voyage enough and he did not consider the options prudently. For my personal impression towards him, I didn't really understand the reason why he couldn't foresee the fact that his crews left on the ship would have died in the ice. Even though he became inpatient and felt anxious about the future voyage, I think he should not have make a decision by himself and make the other crews to follow what the decided. What I think about how the leaders should be is that leaders cannot act like a dictator, for example, not listening to others' opinions. Stefansson refused Captain Bartlett's advice when the ship was not able to move forward. I understand their conversations are omitted in the book, but they should have discussed what they should do as a whole in a team so that Steansson should have been aware of the risk that crews left on the ship could not reach safety.

 Since now, I've stated some critical points about Stefansson's actions, but I do really understand his feelings. When I feel stressed, I often close the door, try to run away from the facing problems and then I tend to make a temporary decision, which doesn't really results in a good way. I realized if I, as a leader, was in panic, so would be the teammates so that at first, I would need to calm down and be open to any opinions teammates have, consider options we have carefully, and I should make a final decision as a leader. By explaining reasons with the final decision, the teammates would understand and I could make them focus on the common goal together.

I think it was good to read this book because I was able to find one of my weak points as a leader. And reading what I wrote in this post now and I found it shows how much I prefer to be a collaborative person, which is the same as the result of negotiation preference paper.

Bye!

Shiori

LE Part1: "Two-in-a-box" Leadership

Hello, everyone.
I apologize I haven't released my blog for two days as my condition wasn't good until yesterday and I prioritized sleeping early in the evening. So sorry about that. I'll catch up and match the numbers by releasing blogs two or three times in one day.

After reading the first part of Leading at the Edge, I learned how important keeping the team members' attentions toward the common goal is, by defusing destructive mood. In the book, the author raised some examples of companies in the 1900s. One of the strategies stated in the book is called "Go-Forward Plan," and it reminded me of the "two-in-a-box" leadership.

The article called "Leadership Teams: Why Two Are Better Than One," by Harvard Business Review shows an example of a company called "Fishbowl." This company provides "inventory management solution among QuickBooks users." The strategy of this company is quite unique. The presidents made pairs of employees for all management jobs.  They say there is a very good point about adopting this "two-in-a-box" leadership: "More creative outcomes. We’ve chosen our pairs carefully – we align paired leaders for maximum contrast in thinking and analytical styles. For example, our product management leads include one partner who is “left brained” and one who is “right brain” dominant. One is linear in his style; the other creative. The result is a manifestation of true synergy" (Williams, Scott).

The reason why "Go-Forward Plan" reminded me of this leadership is based on my experience in an organization I belong. Now I am an executive committee member of an organization called H-LAB, which stands for HCJI (Harvard College Japan Initiative) - Liberal Arts beyond Borders. This organization provides a nine-day summer school to the high school students and they can experience some seminars held by Harvard students in a small group of people and listen to people who play active roles in various fields like politicians, CEOs, entrepreneurs, directors of movies and so on. The organization two years ago was represented by two leaders. One of them often said harsh things to everyone. He always demonstrated critical points in discussion. The other leader, on contrast, always talked to individuals and tried to cheer them up. He observed team members closely every single day, and whenever he noticed someone was acting weird because of the stress during the hard summer school, he talked to the person and motivated him/her. By having both of them, the management of the summer school in that year did go well and summer school itself became a huge success. I think they both were definitely necessary in a team. Having only a strict leader could make a great decision on the management but might cause a disquieting mood and a trouble among members. Having only "go-forward" leader could make members feel comfortable in a team but might make them lazy.

What I consider from the article from Harvard Business Review and my experience is that the balance is always important, and two-in-a-box" leadership is an easy way to balance each of good aspects of two kinds of leadership.

Work Cited

     Williams, David K., and Mary M. Scott. "Leadership Teams: Why Two Are Better Than One." Harvard Business Review 23 Apr. 2012: n. pag. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.

Shiori Asakura

Shackleton's Saga

Hello, everyone.
It's been a long time since I posted my blog last time, and I feel very sorry about how long I haven't been writing my blog posts. I do really regret my procrastination ... so, in order to get over my bad habit, procrastinating, I decided to release my blog as much as I can, more than four posts in a week!!!

I know everyone did this a long ago, but let me begin with Shackleton's Saga. Among "Acknowledgement," "Preface" and "The Shackleton Saga," what put the most impact on me was "The Shackleton Saga." After reading the whole story (even though it was a shorten version) of long journey, I felt the same way as the author, Dennis Perkins did as he states, "Every time I relieve this story, I want to give these explorers a round of applause. I want to applaud them, not just because they made it safety, but because of the extraordinary leadership and teamwork they exhibited."

At the first time I read the fact that Shackleton himself wanted to do the journey and many people volunteered to do this with him, I was feeling like, "are you guys crazy?" but as I read through the story, I was able to imagine the great feeling that I would get after accomplishing the goal in the journey.

The most impressive part for me in this section, "The Shackleton Saga," was on the page 9, when Shackleton decided to break up with five crews and let them sail for help. Just before that, the author asks a question, "whether to stay and wait for rescue, or to sail for help. If you sail, where do you go?" Actually, my answer right after reading this question was "I have no idea," and then I realized if I were the leader of this journey, I would make all the crews die, and I would need a quick decision-making ability to be a leader in any fields.

The whole story reminded me of my one-week volunteer trip to Nepal at the time when I was a 10th grader. We raised money by ourselves and spent those money to buy things Nepalese people needed for everyday life. They definitely needed food, clothes, shoes and some stuff like toothbrushes.

After we arrived in a town and were preparing for distributing those items, I saw a very long line, full of people looking at us in front of me. They really needed those stuff.

We, as a team, had to work together for the whole time: carrying and sorting the huge amount of items and food, distributing them, visiting orphanages and playing with kids, going back to the shelter and get food for ourselves. We weren't able to take a bath, and we weren't able to eat food everyday because Nepalese people who were really in trouble of getting food, clothes and other necessities lived mainly in town or country sides so that we didn't stay in a hotel in a city. The condition in Nepal was not good. During the trip, some members get irritated and had some fight with team members. Some people got diarrhea and weren't able to work for a few days. Sometimes we had to make a tough decision. It was almost impossible to give items to all the people in line and we knew we had to visit other towns where people were waiting for the items we had. In that case, we had to leave the rest of people in line even though they'd been waiting for getting the items for a long time in line. They were crying and many of them were begging us not to leave. All I was able to do was to say sorry. In this extreme situation, team members were getting more and more degenerate day by day and so was I.

As compared to Shackleton's Saga, my volunteer trip is such a tiny agony experience, but this book lets me think what kind of leadership we needed at that time and how our teamwork would have been if Shackleton had been with us. What would he do?

In the beginning of this blog post, I wrote I wasn't able to understand Shackleton and those other people who volunteered to do such a painful journey, but I think I knew why they wanted to do the journey. I wanted to know what was there, in Nepal. I wanted to see the truth by myself, how Nepalese people were in trouble of living their lives. I wanted to accomplish my goal, to be a small help to those people even though it was devastatingly tiny. Although the specific motivations are different from Shackleton's and his crews', I think we both wanted to achieve something we'd never done and get something we'd never felt or thought by putting ourselves into tough situations.

Bye!

Shiori Asakura