The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory

Choosing the Right Leadership Style for the Right People

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_44.htm

The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory was created by Dr Paul Hersey, a professor and author of “The Situational Leader,” and Ken Blanchard, author of the best selling “One-Minute Manager,” among others.

The theory states that instead of using just one style, successful leaders should change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they’re leading and the details of the task. Using this theory, leaders should be able to place more or less emphasis on the task, and more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they’re leading, depending on what’s needed to get the job done successfully.

“Leading from any Chair”

A leader who can step back and encourage team members to put forward ideas in their areas of expertise will generally have a much more engaged, productive team.   One of my favourite books calls this “Leading from any Chair”.  The book is “The Art of Possibility”  by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.  http://www.benjaminzander.com/book/   Benjamin describes how much better an orchestra could perform when the conductor allowed the orchestra members to suggest better ways to play the music and even to conduct sometimes.   Orchestras are traditionally very heirarchical and structured organizations.

In the now classic business fable, The Secret, Debbie, a struggling leader finds herself about to lose her job due to poor performance. In a desperate attempt to save her career, she enrolls in a new mentoring program offered by her company. Much to her surprise, Debbie finds her mentor is the president of the company (Jeff Brown). Debbie decides that all she needs is the answer to one question, ‘What is the secret of great leaders?’ Over the next 18 months Jeff explains to Debbie that the secret is rooted in an attitude. He tells her that she must be willing to become a serving leader rather than a self-serving leader. The secret is that all great leaders Serve. The story unfolds as Debbie learns and applies each of these imperatives with her team. As a result, Debbie’s team goes from worst to first. They become the highest performing team within the company. In the end, Debbie understood that all the changes and improvements were the result of the choices she made as a leader. She realized that to Serve is a choice. Debbie decided once and for all, she would no longer be a self-serving leader, she would be a serving leader!

Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

By Robert K. Greenleaf

Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and set of leadership practices. Traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid.” By comparison, the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

Beaumont, TX and Detroit, MI, were the locations of two “race riots” in a series of pogroms that swept the land from May 12 to August 29, 1943, at the height of U.S. involvement in WW II. Here’s a Langston Hughes poem from 1943. It’s a good example of Hughes’s ability to write to immediate social and political events. It holds special relevance for me because I grew up hearing about how my family had to directly respond to the “war at home” in my hometown of Beaumont. Never forget John Johnson (black) and Ellis Brown (white) who died from attacks during the “night of terror.” Here’s the poem:

Beaumont to Detroit: 1943

Looky here, America
What you done done–
Let things drift
Until the riots come.

Now your policemen
Let your mobs run free
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me.

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
from the ku klux klan.

You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart.
Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont
That he had his start–

Cause everything that hitler
And mussolini do,
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you.

You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power–
And you’re STILL jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour.

Yet you say we’re fighting
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me?

I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER–AND JIM CROW.

One might consider this poem alongside the Pisan Cantos, or the poems from Trilogy, or Moore’s “In Distrust of Merits,” How does it expand our idea of the range of poetic responses to WW II? Note Hughes’ novel orthographic interventions–Mussolini being uncapitalized, the lower-case “j” in Jim Crow as well as the “k” in ku klux klan. The African American English (e.g., “mus-a been”) in the poem is another area ripe for study.*

For further investigation

An indie film was made based on the 1943 events, The Example: Historical Fiction Film (2016).

About AAE, see Lisa J. Green’s book African American English: A Linguistic Introduction (2002).

Also, see this video for a brief introduction to AAE

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPACwRgw04&feature=player_detailpage#t=2426s[/youtube]

http://blackagendareport.com/content/glen-ford-corporate-assault-public-education

Recall the passage:

Shame. Shame and self-contempt. Nausea. When people like me, they tell me it is in spite of my color. When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my color. Either way, I am locked in the infernal circle. I turn away from these inspectors of the Ark before the Flood and I attach myself to my brothers, Negroes like myself. To my horror, they too reject me. – Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Ford’s “black Trojan Horses” draws us to Fanon’s “Fact of Blackness”

A Heritage Preservation Project completed for STPEC Senior Seminar, “Heritage of the Oppressed,” as taught by Dr. Amilcar Shabazz; https://websites.umass.edu/stpec491h-shabazz/about/

See Black History of Amherst web site at

http://amherstblackhistory.jimdo.com/

Other links to note:

http://www.pictonpress.com/store/show/2028

http://hopechurchamherst.org/history.html

http://gazettenet.com/2011/06/24/professor-spurs-effort-to-honor-black-soldiers-who-fought-slavery-0

http://www3.amherst.edu/~aardoc/