The FINANCIAL — At the beginning of every International Summer School on Leadership, we ask students what a leader actually is.
“The person making the decisions.” “Someone who can tell other people what to do.” “Someone who can impose his will on other people.” These are some of the most common answers from students, and they give us an insight into the way Georgian culture thinks about leadership. Many of our students adhere to the “Big Man Theory of Leadership” when they come into our program, and some of the most common examples of leaders they give are Stalin and Hitler (no kidding!).
“Leadership skills are important, not only for people in formal leadership positions, but for everyone who wants to make a difference” says Matthew S. Lee, instructor and Ph.D. Candidate in Management at Harvard Business School. Often the most effective leaders know how to share power, and lead others to greatness, instead of dominating themselves.
“I learned how to reach consensus in teams in an effective way”, says ISS 2010 alumna Ani Chkhikvadze. A lot of Georgian students work very well with people they already know, but have trouble achieving effective team processes when working with unfamiliar faces, because of the low level of trust in Georgian society. At the International Summer School on Leadership, students learn how to trust their peers through different trust exercises, in order to more effectively work together in teams.
“I learned that Georgians, if put in the right environment, are no less disciplined, creative, and collaborative than anyone in the developed world” says Mariam Melikadze, co-founder of the International Spark Program. “This means creating a culture that encourages people to learn from their mistakes, to speak their minds but also listen to others, and to only expect the best of students.”
Oftentimes students start off afraid to make mistakes, because they have grown up thinking that making mistakes means failing in life. At ISS, we encourage students to try things that they have never done before, fail, and learn from their failures.
Through the case study method and group work, we teach students to speak their mind and challenge authority. In a case study, students read about a challenge that a company or a person is facing. In the classroom, they then put themselves in the shoes of the protagonist and try to come up with a solution. There is never a correct answer, and everyone is encouraged to challenge each other, including the instructor. This creates an environment where it is not the person with the most authority whose ideas are venerated, but the person whose ideas are the best.
Applying our lessons in your own work — Cynics tell us that we are naive, and that these leadership methods will never work in a country like Georgia. It is true that Georgians have a unique culture, and that blanket solutions imported from the United States or Western Europe will probably never work in this part of the world. If change happens too fast, people will resist it, and if it doesn’t bring them immediate benefits, many of them will lose patience and revert back to old solutions.
Keeping that in mind, what can you do to be a better leader and a better team player? How can you use the lessons that we have learned to your own advantage?
First, recognize that leadership is not a position, but an activity. A lot of people feel that being a leader means having a fancy title, a big office, and a lot of certificates on your wall. This is called leadership by authority: you are a leader because you have been put in a position of leadership. However, we see leadership as an activity: to be a leader means creating a vision for your team and enabling them to make the best possible decisions. You are not making decisions alone: the best judgments are usually made by teams composed of people with different backgrounds. Sometimes leaders feel the urge to make decisions for their people, but oftentimes these people can make much better decisions themselves.
Second, understand the value of providing good feedback. Giving good feedback means being direct, and getting to the point, but it also means being constructive, and paying attention to the needs of the person you are advising. Feedback is unhelpful if it doesn’t help the person who receives it. A technique for giving constructive feedback that is widely used is the “sandwich technique”: emphasize a positive aspect first, then talk about something that could be improved, and end with another positive aspect. Doing this allows people to take in the constructive feedback and learn from it, but still feel good about themselves.
Third, recognize the value of explicitly setting norms in your group. Teams often get very annoyed by the behavior of other people in their group: they talk too much, they answer their cell phone during meetings, or they always come late. However, if your group does not have explicit norms about how to deal with these kinds of situations, the problem will never be solved. It usually works better to set these norms as a group, if it is not too big. People usually prefer norms that they have had the chance to influence, to norms that have been imposed by other people.
The way forward — There are some aspects in Georgian culture that are detrimental to good leadership, for example the trust in the Big Man Theory of Leadership. Even when students learn about Georgian history, there is an large emphasis on great leaders. It is deeply ingrained in the culture, and it will take a lot of time to move from a culture in which people put all their hopes in great leaders, to a more collaborative leadership culture. However, if you follow the advice I gave earlier – recognize leadership is not a position but an activity, understand the value of providing good feedback, and recognize the value of setting explicit norms – you will be able to make incremental changes in your leadership style and the mentality of the people you work with. Eventually, this will lead to better decisions, and a better Georgia.
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