Question

In Jarrod Spencer's Five Hurdles video, Dr. Spencer talks about anxiety (fear of the unknown), trust, and loneliness. As a future leader and motivator, please describe the decision-making strategies you consider most important from your readings in this assignment that you will employ/modify to motivate people and why. Please cite your sources.

Also, briefly evaluate and prioritize who you trust and why. Dr. Spencer talked about building "your emotional board of directors to whom you can turn to in confidence and rely on in times of need." Who is on your "board" now? How do you intend to expand it and in what direction to help you in the future? How would you motivate your team members to facilitate the development of their board of directors?

Answer 1

As a future leader and a top management employee it is necessary to have the buy-in and engagement of both the Board of directors on the one hand and the employees on the other. It is always a difficult choice and finding the right balance is sometimes next to impossible. While the emotional skills may or may not always be as per expectations, what would be essential is for the leader to be a situational leader and shape his approach based on situations as the case may be. What happens is that everyone cannot be at the same page and same level of understanding and confidence and we have to allow scope for disappointments and build mental resilience towards such an acceptance. What happens in life is that the higher we go, the lonelier it gets and a human tendency is to keep trying to compete with ones ego on where we should be in terms of success as we imagine or perceive it in our minds. We need to be conscious or mindful of ourselves and must be know when and where to stop and take breaks. When it comes to managing Boards and having them on the side of the leader, it is necessary for the leader to always be transparent and continuously communicate to show where we stand. A leader must be willing to go the last mile and show integrity and sincerity in all their actions to have the connect and enjoy the goodwill and respect of the organization. What is valuable to learn is that a leader must be strong and courageous and willing to take the risk and responsibility for failure.

It is but wishful thinking to assume that we can have people who will be amenable and agreeable with us always and we must be willing to accept that all humans are different and there will be disappointments and failures and we will face hardships in reality no matter how hard we try to build a team or network of people in our daily lives.

It is also important to realize that all the people who are friendly and polite to our faces need not be our true friends and need not be there with us in times of need while all those people who are critical of us need not always be our enemies and we don't have to be afraid or resentful of them for being critical of us. Critiques need not always be enemies and appearances can be deceiving.

In the humanitarian sector and even in small-to-medium scale organizations it is easier to build an emotionally connected and amenable team of directors than large scale organizations where everything may not always be under our control.

People who are selected and appointed to a Board must have unquestionable integrity and have expertise in their respective fields to ensure that they are able to contribute and provide constructive feedback whenever called upon to do so and need to visible to the employees as team players and sensitive to their needs. It is not advisable to select a Board based on employee decisions but it is good to have a 360 degrees feedback review to ensure that management is also rated on employee satisfaction to a certain extent.