Leadership Competency Wk 3 Discussion 1

Shared Practice: Leadership Competencies

In the Week 3 Learning Resources, Sue Langley (2013) recounts a parable of a fish, a frog, an eagle, and a rabbit that attend their first week of animal school. On each day of the first week, the teacher assesses the animals on a different skill. One day they all practice swimming; on another, they practice flying. Obviously, the eagle has a great time flying and the fish loves the swimming, while the rabbit is miserable at both. Unfortunately, the teacher tries to encourage the animals to improve in areas where they are weak, deaf to the notion that the fish will never be proficient at flying and the eagle will never be very adept at swimming.

Much like animals have natural abilities to swim, jump, or fly, you likely have stronger competencies in some areas of leadership than others. Fortunately, unlike the fish that will never learn how to fly, you can devise strategies that improve on a leadership competency that is challenging for you. For this week assignment, you will assess your personal leadership competencies and examine how you can learn to be an effective leader.

To prepare for this week’s assignment, read the assigned Learning Resources and complete the leadership competency assessment found on pages 21–22 of “Defining Leadership Code” by Ulrich, Smallwood, and Sweetman (2008).

With these thoughts in mind: See attachment

In the essay address and answer the following:

· According to the leadership competency assessment, share your strongest competency and your weakest competency, and comment on your general reaction to the findings of the assessment. Do not share your actual score, only which competencies were identified as strongest and weakest.

·

Based on the results of your leadership competency assessment, explain two ideas that were of particular interest to you or that you found most compelling (e.g., “a-ha!” moments) from the results. Provide a rationale to support your conclusion.

· Identify someone from professional experiences who have strength in the same leadership competency and share how you think this strength could have potential drawbacks, trade-offs, or negative consequences for leaders.

· Identify someone from professional experiences who weaknesses in the same leadership competency as you. Provide examples of how both of you might build your competency in this area, how both of you might overcome this weakness, and what effect the choice to address or not address this weakness may have on your goals.

· Can someone really transform a weakness into strength? In what situations might it be more important to focus on one’s strengths? Is it always important to try to address one’s weaknesses? Why or why not? What suggestions would you have if a person has not been able to overcome a particular weakness?