Seventh Update
"Developing from self as leader to self as a participant in a collective leadership community result[s] in a shift in developmental complexity of the leadership practice. The assumption here is that in order to effectively address the complex challenges, organizations need to develop and deploy more developmentally complex leadership practices. Teams that were capable of moving from "us" to "all of us" also generally [are] more successful in producing project outcomes of tangible benefit to the organization." (The Practice of Leadership, Conger and Riggio 2007)
For this update I would like to focus of practices of leadership as seen in the workplace. I know I covered that pretty extensively in my last post, so this time I will be doing a bit of a case study of the Head Director of Shutterbugs, Jane.
Jane and I met for coffee and for the first time, I learned about a position that I could really see myself filling one day, here or wherever I ended up. Jane's own career path seemed to reflect what I have recently been interested in, in that she has worked in the organizational departments of the education sector including museums and similar places. When she arrived at Shutterbugs, she helped to strengthen the then very new and not quite independent department of Pablove. She and Eva developed a whole new curriculum for the Shutterbugs camps, as well as a whole new system of storing past data and efficiently organizing registration. It was absolutely amazing to hear that the whole stream-lined system I was helping to keep updated was not more than two years old!
So from a leadership perspective, I'm really glad I got to get a glimpse of how Jane must have led that initial change. However, she was never, and still is not, alone. Like I mentioned before, the leadership I've seen is very team-based. I picked that quote from The Practice of Leadership because I think it encapsulates the mindset that the Shutterbug team, including Jane, has come to adopt. It's not about each regional manager working alone, nor Shutterbugs working as it's own program. The key to the success in this foundation as a whole is that each team member is not only connected to each other, but also plugged in to the organization and the big picture as a whole. Each person in this office have taken on the goals of the Pablove Foundation, and banding together for these goals is how they work as a team. So the most impressive form of leadership I have seen is to put aside any regalia that comes with fancy names like "director of such and such" and simply work as one body of dedicated human beings.
Also I would like to give an update on my research paper and intern presentation topic. Like the literature major I am, I will be looking in to the power of storytelling as applied to these pediatric cancer patients and more specifically in the frame of photography. The other team members seem really excited about this topic, and it actually served as a wonderful spring board for Jane and I to get into some really interesting conversations. I realize I can bring something to this organization, even if that only means offering my own observations and ideas; which so far have been very well appreciated.