A Different Kind of Leader
In today's military, it is obvious to see the changes that have taken place in leaders over the last 70 years. In the past, communication typically was conducted from the bottom up. Whereas, in contrast, it now flows more equally top down as it does bottom up, ensuring a more well-informed community across the board. As a Chief Petty Officer, a senior enlisted rank in the United States Navy, I have been able to witness first hand the leadership amongst the officer ranks, as well as the leadership from the enlisted ranks. I have found many different leadership styles used throughout my community, to include Transactional, Transformational and Servant, as well as a combination of these (Cintron, n.d.).
Going into my 17th year, I have already begun incorporating a Transformational leadership style by taking our task oriented environment, and meeting twice a week with all staff in effort to make each other aware of one another's schedules, intentions, and ideas. From these meetings, I am able to coalesce everyone's schedules, discuss their individual, and or group intentions, and provide a collaborative atmosphere for new ideas to flourish.
Personally, I have been engaging with my leadership, peers and subordinates on a level playing field. Meaning, I have been approaching each staff member with equal respect, an open mind, and an energetic disposition. I feel having a positive energetic feeling about yourself is a contagious feeling. This does not mean that we push our energies, or agendas on other, but merely present it. It has served me well. Creative Commons (as cited by Burns, 1978) "defined transformational leadership as a person’s ability to engage others for the purpose of building motivation" (pg. 2).
Going forward into the last five years of my military career, I intend to take the transformational aspect of my leadership style it into high gear by creating a culture of transformational leaders. ""It is not about sustaining the status quo, but aims at constant improvement at both the personal and organizational levels (Steinwart and Ziegler, 2014, pg. 54). It is my plan to keep in the practice of ensuring leadership is not dependent on rank, that our leadership works with the greater community at large, and not ignore it, and is in keeping with personal integrity and authenticity (Denning, 2011) practices so as to set the example of what behaviors are expected and work in synchronicity, rather than against.
By meeting with staff members individually, providing them with work ethic expectations in a motivational manner, each member could potentially grow using their own methods to engage and interact with each other in order to accomplish personal and professional objectives. Cintron (n.d.)states "The essence of transformational leadership is the capacity to adapt
means to ends to share and reshape institutions and structures to
achieve broad human purposes and moral inspirations."
If staff can learn to use their personality style with this effective leadership style, we can grow a community of transformative leaders from the mildly meek and quiet, to the boisterous and loud. It is merely a matter of integration of collaborative desires and understanding personalities, so as integrate one another's intentions and honoring them.
References:
Cintron, (n.d.). Leadership styles in the military. Retrieved from http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/leadership-styles-military-25296.html
Creative Commons, (n.d.). Transformational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.langston.edu/sites/default/files/basic-content-files/TransformationalLeadership.pdf
Denning, S. (2011). The leader’s
guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Steinwart, M. C. & Ziegler,
J. A. (2014). Remembering apple's ceo steve job as a
"transformational leader": Implications for pedagogy. Journal of
Leadership Education. p.54. DOI:10.12806/V13/I2/R3
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