LEADING FROM THE MIDDLEInfluencing Up, Down, and Sideways

MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP(from Meg Wheatley)Leaders have all the answers.

“As a leader you can’t possibly know enough, or be in enough places, to understand everything happening inside – and more importantly outside – your organization.

–Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Leader to Leader Institute

MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP(from Meg Wheatley)Speed = productivity

MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP(from Meg Wheatley)Action = progress

MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP(from Meg Wheatley)

Numbers describe reality evidence-based decision making?

OR

decision-based evidence making?

LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE A different way of thinking about collaborative

leadership Leading as a peer, not a superior Requires persuasion, technical competence,

relationship skills, and political smarts to get and keep a group together and produce the desired outcome

Influencing others to accomplish things that none of them could accomplish – at all or as well - individually.

THREE UNDERSTANDINGS THAT ARE INTEGRAL TO LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE

Leadership is relationship

Leadership is everyone’s business

Leadership development is self-development

 (Modified from Kouzes & Posner, 2003, p. 47)

UNDERSTANDING 1: LEADERSHIP IS RELATIONSHIP

It’s not about position or fame or fortune. It’s about working and learning with people whose experience, education, gender, and professional affiliation all differ.

In our work with young children and families, effective leaders can touch each and every life through relationships. By enhancing colleague-colleague, supervisor-practitioner relationships, practitioner-family relationships will be enhanced. These relationships, in turn, strengthen family-child relationships.

WHEN YOU LEAD FROM THE MIDDLE, YOU

Ask “what’s possible?” instead of “what’s wrong?”

Then ask“who cares?”

UNDERSTANDING 2: LEADERSHIP IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS

Leadership is collaborative.

You don’t have to be in a position of power or prestige to be an effective leader or change agent. Anyone can make a difference.

COLLABORATION

TOGETHER, WE REALLY ARE BETTER

Research underscores that “cooperative learning promotes higher individual achievement than do competitive approaches or individualistic ones.”

(Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998, p. 31)

WHEN YOU LEAD FROM THE MIDDLE, YOU

See diversity as an asset, not a problemNobody can see a problem from all perspectivesAsk: Who else’s perspective would help us to understand this issue?Remember: People support what they create, so engage others in the final result

UNDERSTANDING 3: LEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT IS SELF-DEVELOPMENT

A leader’s primary instrument is him or herself.

To develop others, we have to develop ourselves.

LEAD FROM THE MIDDLE BY HONINGTHE TOOLS OF INFLUENCE

•Demonstrate•Ask•Share•Clarify•Challenge

TO LEAD FROM THE MIDDLE, YOU NEED TO

Choose your attitude Be present Remember why we do our work