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