Citation
(2014), "The Leaderful Fieldbook", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 22 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-03-2014-0035
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The Leaderful Fieldbook
Article Type: Suggested readings From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 22, Issue 2
Joseph Raelin and Davies Black
2013
ISBN: 9780891063803
Todays flatter business world cannot sustain dictatorial or autocratic leadership. It demands more collaborative leadership where the entire team leads.
The Leaderful Fieldbook, by Joseph Raelin, is a well-crafted manual on the transition from conventional to collaborative leadership. It will be useful to consultants, trainers, coaches, managers and team members with its rich inventory of practical activities leading to the improvement of personal and organizational performance.
The authors expertise in the theories and principles of the new leadership is demonstrated in his simple and to-the-point explanation of the levels of leadership behavior. He helps change agents and learners to exhibit these leadership levels through diagnostics, engaging and exhaustive sets of tools, plus exercises and case studies.
The book is based on the premise that democratic leadership is a "leaderful" practice. The word practice signifies that leadership may not be centered on the traits of any one individual but can be found in everyday professional conduct.
Joseph Raelin begins by explaining the traditional and leaderful-practice models of leadership. He then elaborates on the concurrent, collective, collaborative and compassionate elements of leaderful practice and connects them to change agents in the organization.
The first chapter focuses on individual-level change, as good self-leadership is needed to prepare teams or organizations for leadership. Through activities for participants, the author goes on to explain how change agents can use and improve upon their coaching skills to work with learners to discover their inner selves.
The activities begin with setting personal goals. The development of personal learning goals is seen as an evolving process and one way to uncover the elements of life that infuse it with meaning. The author succinctly describes how, with the help of a coach or trainer, the learner learns to set more challenging goals over time.
The next activity is based on leadership development. It assesses learners on how they view leadership.
The author then moves on to leaderful behavior. With the help of a simulation, the activity in this section exposes the default leadership behavior of participants when faced with a sudden need for leadership.
The author then moves on to the leaderful mind-set, which differs from leadership behavior in the sense that, contrary to influential leadership, it is more about creating a collaborative dialog. The leaderful mind-set tends towards greater humility in its belief that all accomplishments are usually dependent on the contributions of others. The activity, here, differentiates learners on the basis of their initial mind-set.
The next chapter builds on interpersonal-level change. The seven activities in this chapter – practicing diagnostic skills, left-hand column, balancing advocacy with inquiry, the "stolen" idea case, practicing what I preach, journeys to engage our intercultural competence and peer coaching using action learning – help coaches to work with learners to engage in more meaningful interpersonal conversations by encouraging them to share their own reflections and solicit those of others.
The third chapter proceeds to team-level change. The author believes that this is often seen through the vehicle of the learning team where time is dedicated to individual and group learning. The author provides an activity to develop facilitative skills.
The next part of the chapter deals with concurrent leadership. It explores the concept through an activity on pilots and mountaineers.
This is followed by consideration of situational development. Here, the author examines the role of the facilitator in helping teams to reach a stage of leaderful self-direction.
Leaders might employ two principal behaviors in their work in groups – task and maintenance behavior. The author explains that the right blend of these two depends upon the stage of development of the team. The development stages could be forming, storming, norming and performing. The author concludes this part with an activity exhibiting that the facilitator must be sufficiently adroit to be able to deploy each of these four styles depending upon the situation.
The fourth chapter deals with organizational-level change. It confronts the challenge of creating a learning culture in which it is acceptable to discuss forbidden topics, unsettling issues, conflicts or power relations.
The seven activities in this section – brokering leaderful change, closing the gap between espoused and enacted values, acting on our leaderful values, picturing the self and organization, demonstrating organizational commitment, meaning-making skills and assessment of worker participation – help the organizational-development consultant, who is the most effective change agent at this level, to work effectively with learners and organizations to produce more collaborative and reflective exchanges leading to cultures receptive to leaderful practices. These activities help the organizational-development consultant and learners to identify elements of a social-change process, understand the importance of it as a gateway into organizational values, facilitate the transition to an enacted leaderful culture and encourage learners to assess their performance on some of the most critical values of leaderful practice.
Having undergone this experience, learners are ready for the next level. Here they reflect on the roles and responsibilities in their organization, get an opportunity to assess their commitment and citizenship behavior, practise a set of meaning-making skills and assess their participation in the organization to further determine whether steps need be taken to involve learners in a range of organizational decisions and outcomes.
The fifth chapter elaborates upon the final step of ladder – network-level change. The author reminds the reader that working effectively in the knowledge economy depends on stakeholders outside the organization. Joseph Realin points out that the process of change at network level is dynamic. It is neither as controllable as conventional bureaucracy nor as voluntary as the other levels of change. The change agents, or "weavers", at this level work with others to mobilize and to document exchanges within the network. They also point out gaps and bottlenecks in knowledge resources and communication patterns and identify where clusters of connections may be formed from which the network could learn.
The previous levels of change discussed in the book instigate the necessary competencies for networks to flourish. When learners have experienced all the previous levels of change, they are required to exhibit "network-citizenship behavior". The seven activities of this section – stakeholder dialog, critical-moments reflection, network-citizenship behavior questionnaire, questions for network-weaver role development, the ten lessons for managing networks, the four dimensions of quality in network relationships and the seven core principles for effective public engagement – are designed to help network weavers to develop their skills to form and nourish social networks in ways that produce collaborative and sustainable network behavior.
The book is a must-have handbook and a repository of resources for practicing change agents. Exciting yet profound exercises, short yet hard-hitting case studies, brief yet highly actionable sets of tools and stories and real-life examples make this book a wonderful reference and an indispensable guide to anyone in the field of leadership development.
Reviewed by Dr Shailja Agarwal, associate professor, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, India.