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CHAPTER 11
FUTURE PULL Understanding the Culture in Culture Change by LaVrene Norton
SHARED LEADERSHIP
Beyond empowering other people throughout the organization to make decisions is shared leadership. Here leaders do not hold onto power but work hard to share it with others. Instead of saying, “Go ahead and make this decision,” shared leadership says, “Let’s sit down as equals and figure out how to do this better.” In fact, the term leader is applied differently, describing not only management but also anyone willing to step up to the plate for the organization.
Managing (detailed within one’s job description) is about coordinating tasks, scheduling, staffing, and evaluating and ensuring outcomes. Leading, in con- trast and complement, is about visioning, goal setting, motivating, collaborating, role modeling, coaching, guiding, and celebrating. Within this organizational approach, leadership is encouraged everywhere. As a result, leaders are found in all staff domains: manage- ment, professional, and frontline. In shared leadership models, decisions often are made with the help of tools and techniques such as team meeting practices and learning circles (Box 12.1). Simple meeting practices might include rotating the leadership, facilitation, and other meeting duties equally among members, wheth- er they are executives, middle managers, or frontline staff. Particularly suited to long-term care, learning circles offer a format of listening and sharing that truly equalizes all participants.
Box 12.1
Action Pact’s Rules of the Learning Circle
• One person is chosen to facilitate the circle.
• The facilitator poses a question or issue and asks for a volunteer.
• The volunteer shares his or her best answer or view, and then the personsitting to the right or left of that person goes next.
• The process continues around the circle until all have shared.
• There is no cross talk during this process.
• A person may choose to pass, but after everyone else has shared, the facilitator should offer that per son another opportunity to express his or her view.
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Once everyone has shared, the floor is open for general discussion.
The commitment is to broaden individuals’ per- spectives, grow listening skills, speak up and own one’s own opinions, and build consensus. Learning circles to create an open environment are used regularly by Action Pact’s organizational clients that have success- fully adopted the Household Model. Residents often are a vital part of the circle depending on the topic of discussion. Continuous learning by everyone in the organization becomes an accepted and anticipated part of the job.
In the shared leadership approach, decision mak- ers enter what Robert E. Quinn describes as “the fun- damental state of leadership.” Most people live in the normal life state of being, which is comfort centered, externally driven, self-focused and internally closed. In the fundamental state of leadership, “We become results centered, internally directed, other-focused and externally open” (Quinn, 2004, p. ix).
Shared leadership means not only accepting re- sponsibility for making decisions but also accepting accountability. There is no room for blame; together we enjoy the victories and confront the obstacles and setbacks. We transform from a “we–they” way of think- ing to a shared commitment to the vision.
SELF-LED TEAMS
Here, the shared leadership model goes a step fur- ther. The organization begins to be reshaped to accom- modate cross-functional, versatile teams empowered to take on clearly defined segments of work with full responsibility for implementing the decisions they make. They in turn collaborate and share leadership with other teams in exercising power.
POWER AS THE LIFE FORCE OF THE ORGANIZATION
As we consultants assess how decision making is distributed, we have our fingers on the pulse of the organization. The “deciders” typically hold the power, and power is the organization’s life force. Just as proper circulation of the blood through the body to cells in the brain and all extremities is necessary to a person’s
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