We learnt that Fullan’s framework for leadership which are included five components to effective leadership and the additional three elements to give people confidence to face their challenges. The followings are 5 components.
1) Moral Purpose which is the act with intention of making a positive difference in the organization. It is importance to both short-term and long-term success of all organizations. 2) Understanding Change which is that leaders have to understand the culture of change and the change process. 3) Relationship, Relationship, Relationship which is to build good relationship among diverse people and groups by effective leaders to achieve the successful change. 4) Knowledge Building which is to generate and increase knowledge inside and outside as well as being shared with others within the organization. 5) Coherence Making which is to concern the new patterns of relationship and actions during setting up the process.
Last but not least, leaders with effective leadership skills should have energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness, to influence and reinforce the others to make the positive change.
Indeed, Fullan’s framework can apply to the organization I worked before. As the traditional Chinese company, the change is frequently promoted from time to time by senior management. Our leaders have intention to make the positive change in the organization because they understand the change is necessary to make the organization to catch today’s business world. In order to build up the culture of change, they understand they have to get the support from top management as well as all related parties by building up the relationship among them.
However, it is hard to get the commitment from all related members in traditional Chinese company. Therefore, the leaders have to have the power and authority to enforce the change process by doing the necessary actions such as individual’s performance and knowledge building during the change process will be evaluated in his/her personal appraisal for their year-end bonus.
Of course, energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness are also essential to make the successful change in the organization. In my organization, the leaders will cohere between the performance of change process and the employee’s performance to ensure to have the successful change. In fact, it is a very effective way in my organization.
Fullan’s framework gives me some new idea about the organization change.
In reform process, the leaders never communicate with their subordinates. Generally speaking, a majority of companies always neglect their employees’ opinions and demands. In fact, this situation seems to be more common in governmental organizations, because the orders from leader must be implemented. The change in my organization, industrial association of Industrial and Commercial Bureau, is a good example to present this point.
At first, the organization never informed staffs that a new on-line system would be used. When the former system was suspended, the staffs just realized it. It is a coercive leadership style that “the leader demands compliance”. (Goleman, 2000) As a result, the personnel feel so resentful. According to Fullan(2001), “most people want to be part of their organization; they want to know the organization’s purpose”. Indeed, many organizations only want employees to obey their demands. Due to this discontentment and the inadaptability, it led to a worse effect in my organization at the initial phase. Meanwhile, the leaders pursued the new performance standard, which worsen the existing problems and conflicts. In fact, “many employees feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter’s demands for excellence, and their morale drops”. (Goleman, 2000)
As the lasted dissatisfied and inefficient, the leaders began to realize the seriousness of the issue. As the moral purpose, “people are both driven by egoistic (self-centered) or altruistic (unselfish) motives. The leaders first organized some training course which aimed to improve staffs’ IT skills to adapt the new on-line system. While, the staff was more willing to regard it as a self-improvement channel to some extend. It seemed that the organization discovered an emotional connection with their employees. In fact, the reason why people fear of change, is because they “lack of technical know how or skills to make the change work” (Fullan, 2001). After the staffs got the enough confidence and time to adapt, the situation was changed. As a consequence, the staff worked more actively.
Meanwhile, the leaders began to communicate with their subordinates. Actually, leaders began to listen and receive their staffs opinions and suggestions. As Fullan(2001) said, “the most effective leaders are not the smartest in an IQ sense but are those who combine intellectual brilliance with emotional intelligence”. After the leaders discarded their official airs, the staff always felt that he was respected. In fact, the communication channel is not only meeting, leaders tried to converse with every staff. Apparently, it is a huge change because leaders show their sincerity, and present their determination to improve relationships with staffs. However, there remained a question whether the leaders can receive those different opinions, or was this only a formism?
According to Fullan, in times of changes and complexity, there are five aspects that decide whether the leadership of an organization will be successful, including moral purpose, understanding change, coherence making, relationship building, knowledge creation and sharing. Then I will describe leading change in my working place from the five aspects. Moral purpose: As a profitable training company, as well as an educational organization, moral purpose is essential to the development of New Oriental School. 17 years ago, when Yu Minhong，the organizer and president of our company began his classes in Beijing. Yu who was humorous and inspiring achieved great success for the reason that he could not only give the knowledge and exam skills to English learners，but also pass the faith to students that “To hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope will finally make your life splendid” in a dramatic way，which act as the motto of the company. A great number of students enjoy the benefit of this school which focus on the ways and methods to help students improve their marks in different exams, such as Toefl, GRE and the spirit that they can achieve whatever they want in lives as long as they are willing to try their best. In conclusion, we can owe its former success to the strong will and faithful attitude to help students. However, nowadays as a profit-oriented quoted company, it pays more attention to the growth rate and the profit of investors, which is reasonable but the core competitive moral power is reduced. A great number of outstanding teachers are leaving while the teachers who still insist on working there claim that they admire the president’s(Yu Minhong) personality charm, which is the only reason for their choices. In my opinion, the lack of good teachers may become the greatest threaten to the company in the future if no effective action is taken to solve the problem. All in all, it seems that the short term profit has nothing to do with moral purpose, but moral purpose is significantly important for a company’s long-term profit, especially in an educational company.
Understanding change: As I mentioned before, after becoming a quoted company, new oriental school is under high pressure exerted by the investors, which demands it keep a high speed growth rate and offer satisfactory profit each year. Also, the demand of the market is changing. At the very beginning , there are hundreds of students in a class, which requires the teachers act as a leader giving the right method and direction both in English learning and the plan of life. However, students who do not care too much about the price but care about the quality of the course want to get more attention of the teachers. Also, 17 years ago, students who took our courses were easily motivated because they had their own dream and aim while nowadays students in mainland China belonging to singleton get too much care and love from their parents. The result is that egotism is obvious, which requires teachers care much more about their feeling and offer personal guidance and service. All the changes happened in the company requires the change of training model of teachers and a totally different management of the school. Both the teachers and the school should well prepare for the changes, otherwise they may easily fall behind in the competitive training field. The leaders have realized the changes and the process goes well although there exists much struggle, which is unavoidable. Relationship building: It is also a critical problem in our company. To be frank, several years ago, the most outstanding teachers in the school always had unique characters. Also，it was not necessary for the teachers to communicate with each other because their responsibility was taking good charge of his/her own class. That was enough. To save the cost, our school did not required teachers to come to their office unless they had classes. In addition， teachers would be marked by students according to their performance in class，which determined their income. Therefore, you can imagine that the relationship between colleagues here is quite strange, unlike most normal companies. But in the highly competitive market, the situation has to be changed. Nowadays, new teachers are required to work in office even if they have no classes from Monday to Friday, which enables them to work together and cooperate with each other. What we want to achieve nowadays is not the best individuals but the best group, which can help the company better adapt to the market.
Knowledge creation and sharing: In this part, our school did a fantastic job for a long period. Not only do we have text books edited or introduced by the department, we also have numerous resources online which are always used to improve the quality of our courses. On the other hand, there exist some problems too. Teachers may concern about the problem that their own materials and hard working will easily be copied and used by others without any limitation and protection, which is unfair to those who work hard. An even worse situation is that some teachers copies the excellent part of other teachers’ courses, which will improve his own mark but do harm to his colleagues. Therefore, while we encourage the knowledge creation and sharing, how to keep a fair environment is also an important problem well worth consideration.
Coherence making: The former aspects are actually conflicting in our company because to keep the traditional style of our school or to follow the trend of the changes is a difficult problem we face today. Of course, the ideal situation is that we can keep the advantages when we can also adapt to the changes. I never consider it a problem that cannot be solved although I admit it is really hard and challenging. Therefore, the most effort we should make is the coherence making, which means even in this situation today, we may also keep the humorous and inspiring style of teaching with fewer students and less income. It is not easy to accept but it is necessary for the future development of a company.
In my opinion, leading change means to leading sustainability in my organization, future development of my organization has to focus on lead sustainability leadership, which is the need to focus on systems thinking. In examining education institutional leadership, Fullan suggests that those who can see the long-term consequences of short-term decision-making are more likely to take more deliberative, sustainable actions. He also has identified other important dynamics such as under- standing change, a highly developed emotional intelligence, a commitment to new knowledge and to sharing knowledge, a sense of moral purpose, and the ability to create coherence around chaotic circumstances. In summation, sustainability leaders undertake the necessary work to bring sustainability into their organizations. They need to have similar capacities that other successful leaders have (charisma, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking), interest in learning new ideas, and in acting upon new information. Therefore, sustainable principles are grounded in changes in thinking, knowing, and doing. These fundamentals can be summed up as developing sustainable thinking, building a sustainable knowledge base, and learning the latest sustainable frameworks for use in organizations.
In the field of organizational development, leaders play important roles as knowledge purveyors. This knowledge ranges across many fields, including adult development, psychology, sociology, management, and leadership. Increasingly, leaders are being asked to develop skills and expertise on topics such as diversity, finance, gender studies, and corporate social responsibility. Sustainability is another area of knowledge, which is of increasing importance to organizational leaders. Like the environment which supports all life, sustainability is the foundation upon which organizations can support a new global economy and society and thrive in this new understanding of nature’s constraints on humankind.
We learnt that Fullan’s framework for leadership which are included five components to effective leadership and the additional three elements to give people confidence to face their challenges. The followings are 5 components.
ReplyDelete1) Moral Purpose which is the act with intention of making a positive difference in the organization. It is importance to both short-term and long-term success of all organizations.
2) Understanding Change which is that leaders have to understand the culture of change and the change process.
3) Relationship, Relationship, Relationship which is to build good relationship among diverse people and groups by effective leaders to achieve the successful change.
4) Knowledge Building which is to generate and increase knowledge inside and outside as well as being shared with others within the organization.
5) Coherence Making which is to concern the new patterns of relationship and actions during setting up the process.
Last but not least, leaders with effective leadership skills should have energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness, to influence and reinforce the others to make the positive change.
Indeed, Fullan’s framework can apply to the organization I worked before. As the traditional Chinese company, the change is frequently promoted from time to time by senior management. Our leaders have intention to make the positive change in the organization because they understand the change is necessary to make the organization to catch today’s business world. In order to build up the culture of change, they understand they have to get the support from top management as well as all related parties by building up the relationship among them.
However, it is hard to get the commitment from all related members in traditional Chinese company. Therefore, the leaders have to have the power and authority to enforce the change process by doing the necessary actions such as individual’s performance and knowledge building during the change process will be evaluated in his/her personal appraisal for their year-end bonus.
Of course, energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness are also essential to make the successful change in the organization. In my organization, the leaders will cohere between the performance of change process and the employee’s performance to ensure to have the successful change. In fact, it is a very effective way in my organization.
------(Azalea Yan)
Fullan’s framework gives me some new idea about the organization change.
ReplyDeleteIn reform process, the leaders never communicate with their subordinates. Generally speaking, a majority of companies always neglect their employees’ opinions and demands. In fact, this situation seems to be more common in governmental organizations, because the orders from leader must be implemented. The change in my organization, industrial association of Industrial and Commercial Bureau, is a good example to present this point.
At first, the organization never informed staffs that a new on-line system would be used. When the former system was suspended, the staffs just realized it. It is a coercive leadership style that “the leader demands compliance”. (Goleman, 2000) As a result, the personnel feel so resentful. According to Fullan(2001), “most people want to be part of their organization; they want to know the organization’s purpose”. Indeed, many organizations only want employees to obey their demands. Due to this discontentment and the inadaptability, it led to a worse effect in my organization at the initial phase. Meanwhile, the leaders pursued the new performance standard, which worsen the existing problems and conflicts. In fact, “many employees feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter’s demands for excellence, and their morale drops”. (Goleman, 2000)
As the lasted dissatisfied and inefficient, the leaders began to realize the seriousness of the issue. As the moral purpose, “people are both driven by egoistic (self-centered) or altruistic (unselfish) motives. The leaders first organized some training course which aimed to improve staffs’ IT skills to adapt the new on-line system. While, the staff was more willing to regard it as a self-improvement channel to some extend. It seemed that the organization discovered an emotional connection with their employees. In fact, the reason why people fear of change, is because they “lack of technical know how or skills to make the change work” (Fullan, 2001). After the staffs got the enough confidence and time to adapt, the situation was changed. As a consequence, the staff worked more actively.
Meanwhile, the leaders began to communicate with their subordinates. Actually, leaders began to listen and receive their staffs opinions and suggestions. As Fullan(2001) said, “the most effective leaders are not the smartest in an IQ sense but are those who combine intellectual brilliance with emotional intelligence”. After the leaders discarded their official airs, the staff always felt that he was respected. In fact, the communication channel is not only meeting, leaders tried to converse with every staff. Apparently, it is a huge change because leaders show their sincerity, and present their determination to improve relationships with staffs. However, there remained a question whether the leaders can receive those different opinions, or was this only a formism?
According to Fullan, in times of changes and complexity, there are five aspects that decide whether the leadership of an organization will be successful, including moral purpose, understanding change, coherence making, relationship building, knowledge creation and sharing. Then I will describe leading change in my working place from the five aspects.
ReplyDeleteMoral purpose:
As a profitable training company, as well as an educational organization, moral purpose is essential to the development of New Oriental School. 17 years ago, when Yu Minhong，the organizer and president of our company began his classes in Beijing. Yu who was humorous and inspiring achieved great success for the reason that he could not only give the knowledge and exam skills to English learners，but also pass the faith to students that “To hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope will finally make your life splendid” in a dramatic way，which act as the motto of the company. A great number of students enjoy the benefit of this school which focus on the ways and methods to help students improve their marks in different exams, such as Toefl, GRE and the spirit that they can achieve whatever they want in lives as long as they are willing to try their best.
In conclusion, we can owe its former success to the strong will and faithful attitude to help students. However, nowadays as a profit-oriented quoted company, it pays more attention to the growth rate and the profit of investors, which is reasonable but the core competitive moral power is reduced. A great number of outstanding teachers are leaving while the teachers who still insist on working there claim that they admire the president’s(Yu Minhong) personality charm, which is the only reason for their choices. In my opinion, the lack of good teachers may become the greatest threaten to the company in the future if no effective action is taken to solve the problem.
All in all, it seems that the short term profit has nothing to do with moral purpose, but moral purpose is significantly important for a company’s long-term profit, especially in an educational company.
Understanding change:
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned before, after becoming a quoted company, new oriental school is under high pressure exerted by the investors, which demands it keep a high speed growth rate and offer satisfactory profit each year. Also, the demand of the market is changing. At the very beginning , there are hundreds of students in a class, which requires the teachers act as a leader giving the right method and direction both in English learning and the plan of life. However, students who do not care too much about the price but care about the quality of the course want to get more attention of the teachers. Also, 17 years ago, students who took our courses were easily motivated because they had their own dream and aim while nowadays students in mainland China belonging to singleton get too much care and love from their parents. The result is that egotism is obvious, which requires teachers care much more about their feeling and offer personal guidance and service. All the changes happened in the company requires the change of training model of teachers and a totally different management of the school. Both the teachers and the school should well prepare for the changes, otherwise they may easily fall behind in the competitive training field. The leaders have realized the changes and the process goes well although there exists much struggle, which is unavoidable.
Relationship building:
It is also a critical problem in our company. To be frank, several years ago, the most outstanding teachers in the school always had unique characters. Also，it was not necessary for the teachers to communicate with each other because their responsibility was taking good charge of his/her own class. That was enough. To save the cost, our school did not required teachers to come to their office unless they had classes. In addition， teachers would be marked by students according to their performance in class，which determined their income. Therefore, you can imagine that the relationship between colleagues here is quite strange, unlike most normal companies. But in the highly competitive market, the situation has to be changed. Nowadays, new teachers are required to work in office even if they have no classes from Monday to Friday, which enables them to work together and cooperate with each other. What we want to achieve nowadays is not the best individuals but the best group, which can help the company better adapt to the market.
Knowledge creation and sharing:
ReplyDeleteIn this part, our school did a fantastic job for a long period. Not only do we have text books edited or introduced by the department, we also have numerous resources online which are always used to improve the quality of our courses. On the other hand, there exist some problems too. Teachers may concern about the problem that their own materials and hard working will easily be copied and used by others without any limitation and protection, which is unfair to those who work hard. An even worse situation is that some teachers copies the excellent part of other teachers’ courses, which will improve his own mark but do harm to his colleagues. Therefore, while we encourage the knowledge creation and sharing, how to keep a fair environment is also an important problem well worth consideration.
Coherence making:
The former aspects are actually conflicting in our company because to keep the traditional style of our school or to follow the trend of the changes is a difficult problem we face today. Of course, the ideal situation is that we can keep the advantages when we can also adapt to the changes. I never consider it a problem that cannot be solved although I admit it is really hard and challenging. Therefore, the most effort we should make is the coherence making, which means even in this situation today, we may also keep the humorous and inspiring style of teaching with fewer students and less income. It is not easy to accept but it is necessary for the future development of a company.
In my opinion, leading change means to leading sustainability in my organization, future development of my organization has to focus on lead sustainability leadership, which is the need to focus on systems thinking. In examining education institutional leadership, Fullan suggests that those who can see the long-term consequences of short-term decision-making are more likely to take more deliberative, sustainable actions. He also has identified other important dynamics such as under- standing change, a highly developed emotional intelligence, a commitment to new knowledge and to sharing knowledge, a sense of moral purpose, and the ability to create coherence around chaotic circumstances. In summation, sustainability leaders undertake the necessary work to bring sustainability into their organizations. They need to have similar capacities that other successful leaders have (charisma, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking), interest in learning new ideas, and in acting upon new information. Therefore, sustainable principles are grounded in changes in thinking, knowing, and doing. These fundamentals can be summed up as developing sustainable thinking, building a sustainable knowledge base, and learning the latest sustainable frameworks for use in organizations.
ReplyDeleteIn the field of organizational development, leaders play important roles as knowledge purveyors. This knowledge ranges across many fields, including adult development, psychology, sociology, management, and leadership. Increasingly, leaders are being asked to develop skills and expertise on topics such as diversity, finance, gender studies, and corporate social responsibility. Sustainability is another area of knowledge, which is of increasing importance to organizational leaders. Like the environment which supports all life, sustainability is the foundation upon which organizations can support a new global economy and society and thrive in this new understanding of nature’s constraints on humankind.