A633.6.4 Circle of Leadership

The vicious circle for leaders as described by Obolensky describes my military career, my ups and downs and my cycle of willpower.  The cycle is a harsh dose of reality for many senior leaders as well as any level of follower. It is a cycle that haunts the rooms of the Pentagon and sours productivity in local business.  The cyclical process is repeated over and over again, the follower produces, seeks advice, the leader gets “concerned” and gets more involved and the followers confidence is lowered and repeats.  This is because the follower is not empowered and entrusted with return and the leader decides to get more involved.  This is negative leadership and followership is stuck (Obolensky, 2016).

            This has happened to me to a point where my morale, my love for what I was doing and my expectation in myself was affected. The cycle is permeant until either the follower or the leader breaks the momentum.  This is especially true in the hierarchal system of the United States Military, it is relentless, impacting morale welfare and lives.  This played true in my life and career over and over again. In my current organization, this cycle continues, and followers are held captive by this cycle.  Division chiefs are continuously getting involved and the followers are asking for direction instead of the follower presenting new ideas and routinely updating the senior staff.  This authoritative leadership approach is micromanagement at its finest, it is intervention instead of positive reinforcement.    

       Another model to observe the relationship between the leader and the follower could be allowing the leader to give constructive feedback to the task at hand.  A different approach could be leadership models that allow for adaption from the leader to the follower like those described my Northouse (2016).  Path-goal theory (PGT) is a leadership approach that adapts to the changing needs of the follower.  PGT gives the leader and the follower directive, supportive, participative or achievement orientation through follow-up/feedback (2016).  The leader needs to be adaptive, flexible and give trusted followers feedback in this adaption.  Given this a new example of a cycle orientation/feedback and adaptive followership is listed below:

     This diagram has both the leader and follower empowered to make independent decisions.  It presumes that the leader and the follower are organized, trained and equipped to accomplish the task/mission/work without directly intervening.  This cycle enables both the leader and the follower to “follow-up” and provide feedback across the complex.  It provides a way to achieve Level V followership through routine feedback from the leader and the follower.  It is not micromanagement and neither is it laissez-faire, instead it is involvement with empowerment.  This cycle could be formed in any leadership and follower work center and across all work centers, it is agnostic to the division of labor or the amount of people involved. It is hard to accomplish this cycle but I have seen this in action.  I have witnessed this guidance-to-assessment work and easies the burden of leadership while empowering the follower.     

References

Northhouse, P. (2016) Leadership; Theory and Practice 7^thEdition. SAGE Publications. 

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership. New York: Taylor & Francis.