A521.9.4_SeabournBeau

I found this book in general to be very helpful. Chapter 12 is no different. I found the information to be very helpful. The first topic I'm selecting is a leader who participates. I've recently come across a lot of visual references to this particular point. The pictures show a man watching a yelling at people as one form of leadership and the second picture shows the man pulling the rope with the employees. I think that's a great way to describe what is going on. Moving forward, I want to be the leader that is pulling the rope with the employees. It's easy and lax to just watch people do work. It's easy to do nothing and yell. It's harder to be in charge and do work!

Next is the leader who is like a conversation. I've seen it time and time again, a leader who is never wrong and who never can take responsibility for anything. I think the open door policy combined with the equal playing field approach allows leaders to be most effective. I would implement this by basically telling the people under me that I'm always open to suggestion and review as long as it is not malicious or ill intended. Allowing your employees to come to you with issues and to cut back on gossip could be the difference of you being an effective leader or not. After all, you're only as good as your weakest link right?

Lastly, I would like to discuss the leadership set that fits the modern need. I don't think there is anything worse sounding then the Apollonian approach to business. I think that that comes out of the size of a company, at least that's what the reading mentioned. I think that there has to be a way around that situation. A manger or someone in upper leadership should be able to dictate how things are done. I think the last thing people want is to feel unimportant and useless. If a company does not address the need of one individual, how can it be successful or important. I think the last 10 years have shown how the gap between management and generalized workforces have moved apart. While struggling to make ends meet, the employees are not getting any attention while the company leaders were getting huge bonuses. That has to end and in order to grow, you must identify with people at every level.

A521.8.4_SeabournBeau

So this is an interesting question that could be answered different ways based on what type of situation I am put in. Generally though, I do not have a problem making conversation with strangers.  With that said, I am also not the guy that will randomly talk to someone a lot in a short encounter. Here is an example; last week I was waiting for an elevator. While I was waiting a man just starting talking to me for no apparent reason about a non-related topic. I believe it was about the NBA playoffs. The reason I thought it was funny was because we only were waiting for that elevator for maybe 30 seconds. So am I that extreme, no. I would however strike up a conversation in the event that there may be some extended period of time I might be around someone or perhaps to break the silence of the room. Sometimes I find it very uncomfortable to have complete silence in a room. Most of the time I can't stand it and I swear I would talk to myself if I had to.

To the second part of this question, I think I'm able to adapt to a situation and talk to random people for a couple of reasons. First, growing up, I moved a lot. The constant school hopping and what not created the ability to get to know people quickly. Second would be that I don't like be ignored. I'm not sure why. I would prefer to sit and have lunch with someone and talk to them verse sitting alone and reading a paper. I'm not the guy on the plane in the seat next to you who is completely silent. We're going to talk. Making contact is not difficult for me. I have been known to use icebreakers, trust me there are many woman out there that laughed at me for that! Self disclosure is also something that I use a lot of. To be honest, I feel as though I'm pretty transparent. When my friends talk about finances or something like that, I'm totally open about everything. I read awhile back that if friends and peers shared information they deemed "personal" more often with one another, they would learn a ton! I feel as if I am open about things, people might feel like they can trust me and that I'm not trying to be a weasel. I think that it has to be an important leadership skill to approach people and get things started. After all, that's what leaders need to be able to do! LEAD!

A521.7.4_SeabournBeau

Relate a knowledge sharing story from your personal experience. Be sure to describe the context of your story.

Not to long ago in the past, while at work, I noticed some small puffs of smoke coming from a building located on the airport property. At first glance it appeared to be smoke that could have been generated by a grill top opening or a car with a lot of exhaust coming from it. Naturally I did not get suspicious of the smoke and I proceeded to work. For some reason the smoke just did not seem correct to me and about a minute later I noticed a lot more smoke that appeared to be coming from a building located on the airport. Moments after that I witnessed a man walking at a fast pace away from the building. The building is only accessed on rare occasions by technicians and it just so happened that a technician was on the airport grounds at the time. Once again, naturally I thought it was that individual walking at a fast pace and once again I was mistaken. This person proceeded to run the entire width of the airport in a very fast manner and ran completely to the other side of the airport. It seemed as though he was running away from the smoke. It did not take me long to notify authorities in which I was on hold for over two minutes before receiving a actual person's voice. I informed that there was a person on the grounds that was not suppose to be and that they were preventing normal airport operations from taking place. Not to my surprise, the man jumped a couple barbed wire fences and disappeared into the crowd around the airport.

To follow up with what really happened, this person actually was traveling in a car at a high rate of speed. He the proceeded to crash the car into a sewer built along the airport fence. His car destroyed over 90 feet of airport fence before coming to a rest. The man surprisingly got out of the car and started running across the airport, fleeing from his accident. He was able to successfully run clear across an airport, jump two barbed wire fences and disappear without every being caught.  Luckily for the police it was actually his parents car and without to much hard work they eventually found out who "he" was. This story just goes to show that you have to be ready for anything at anytime. There was a few misinterpretations on my part which caused a small hesitation in contacting any authorities. All in all, this was not normal and shouldn't have happened this way.

A521.6.3_SeabournBeau

Based on this week's readings from the Denning text, identify the elements of high-performance teams and apply them to teams with whom you have worked in your organization. Next, Identify the importance of shared values and discuss the influence of shared values on your team's performance. Finally, examine the four patterns of working together and detail one positive and one negative experience. What could you have done to influence the outcomes?

To start, high performance teams are something that can not be created or pushed upon a group of people. It seems that they are created when a group of people build off of one another and then preform at a higher level. The group will shape to the situation and grow stronger over the time they spend together. They will all grow individually do to the expertise of each person and lastly they all will share the same passion and drive.

A good example of this in my own personal life would be the time I was deployed to Iraq as a mobile air traffic controller with eight others. In a short amount of time, we were expected to learn a new airport, apply our knowledge and then take over from the group that was currently in place. In this example, the needs of the airport helped shape the situation that we were put in. We, as a team could grasp the seriousness of the event and took our job that much more serious. Like the reading says, we grew stronger together over time. This happened for two reasons; first we had to in order to do our job and secondly, we got use to working with one another regularly. Each one of us brought out the better of each other. We were able to push one another to make them that much better at their job. That created a great success and made us much more effective as a team. Do to that particular situation, we all went on to be successful in our career fields. We were able to adapt, overcome and apply our job skills in a shot amount of time and then become better equipped and more knowledgeable as time progressed.

Last I wanted to mention the work group situation in the four patterns. In the Navy, they have a funny way of partnering people from a wide array of jobs into smaller groups to help them finish a totally different job. In this case, around twenty of us were selected to clean a large amount of buildings after a hurricane. The negative side of this would have been the fact that almost none of us had any experience in this field and the people who did, did not know how to properly teach us how to complete the task. The positive about that situation would have been that after some time we were actually able to complete the task. I guess it was sort of an "on the job training" session as the Navy would call it. Although not put together very well and in a short amount of time, we were able to compleete a somewhat rough task.