Comprehend the essence of the learning leader concept (includes mentoring).

1. Why has the focus of leadership thinking shifted to the idea that "effective leaders must be learners?"

2. How can a learning leader open the way for others to learn and become learning leaders?

Comprehend the notion and importance of creativity and innovation within military units.

3. What are barriers to creativity and innovation?

4. What benefits does a military organization gain by having a creative and innovative environment?

Comprehend the role ethics plays in leadership.

5. What role do the Air Force "Core Values" play in the ethical climate of a military organization? What is the leader's role in developing the ethical climate?

6. How might you use the ethics references in Maj Kibbe's article, "The Role Ethics Plays in Leadership", to help build an ethical climate in your work area?

Comprehend methods used, and the importance of criteria, in measuring leadership effectiveness.

7. What tools do you use to measure your leadership effectiveness?

8. Why is it important to measure and assess your effectiveness as leaders?

501.1 Comprehend the essence of the learning leader concept (including mentoring).

501.11 Explain the main themes or ideas of the learning concept.

Modeling, mentoring, managing, and monitoring are key leader behaviors that promote learning.

1. Leaders Model Learning

- Listen to, search for, think of and spread ideas, to expose people to good ideas and role models
- Always work toward creating a learning environment. Set the example.
- Leaders of learning recognize the importance of reflecting on their own experience and the need to periodically retreat from the pace of their office to engage in self-renewal so that they might return re-energized and better able to be a catalyst for others.

2. Leaders Mentor Learning

- Mentor; be constantly teaching, ask questions, spark interactions
- Take a personal interest in the learning of others.
- Where learning is concerned, the mentoring behaviors of leaders are quite specific:
-- set learning agendas, targeting particular kinds of learning.
-- create a learning environment with challenging assignments
-- help process the learning experience, they debrief what , how.
- Through active and purposeful mentoring, leaders enhance the learning of others, helping them to develop their own initiative, strengthening them in the use of their own judgment, and enabling them to grow and to become better contributors

3. Leaders Manage Learning

- Manage learning; continually focus attention on the learning agenda
- Institutionalize the learning process.
- Use every opportunity to urge one group or division within the company to look at what another group is doing and learn from their experience.

4. Leaders Monitor Learning

- Monitor learning and in so doing, make learning everyone's responsibility
- Encourage feedback; without feedback there can be no learning.

Learning provides a sustainable competitive advantage.
Leadership makes learning happen.

501.12 Summarize the similarities and differences of the learning leader.
(Not that obvious in the reading. Have some doubt as to whether this was answered fully.)

- The similarities between Traditional Leaders (TL) and Learning Leaders (LL) is in what they do. Some of the differences are in how they do it
-- Both support learning and improvement
--- LL, promote and manage learning as an on-going organizational process
--- TL promote change in response to and occasional extraordinary event
-- Both evoke an emotional attachment from followers, i.e. motivate
--- LL are involved in developing the relationship, attempt to take it as wide spread as possible
--- TL, more detached in terms how the relationship develops
-- Both respond to crisis
--- TL diagnose organizational situation and draw from past experiences to handle situation
--- LL use past experience along with information learned through organizational learning process

- Other differences include:
-- TL not much concerned about modeling behavior.
--- LL recognize importance of modeling.
-- TL pride themselves on personal detachment, tough times take tough leaders
--- LL believe learning occurs through relational activities
-- LL encourage dissents, nonconformity as a source of new ideas

502.2 comprehend the notion and importance of creativity and innovation within military units.

501.21 Describe the characteristics of creativity and innovation

Creativity

- The ability to see things in a new and different way
- Requires people to view surroundings from a unique, new, and different perspective
- Must be accompanied by critical thinking, knowledge of certain subject matter, and thorough evaluation of problems
- Not necessarily revolutionary, but evolutionary

Innovation

- Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual
- innovations are surprisingly simple, clearly designed, and focused toward a specific goal
- Effective innovations start small. Otherwise, there is not enough time to make the modifications, changes, or adjustments that are usually needed to make the innovation a success

501.22 Describe the new thinking required of learning leaders.

- Managers/leaders must change their mind set from one of complacency to one of continuous improvement.
-- Foster learning and encourage improvement even when things are going well
-- Leaders must help their organization find learning from the commonplace as well as from the critical, from the failures as well as from the successes, and especially from those moments when it seems as though there is nothing to be learned.

501.23 From the "The Creative Leader" reading, summarize the 4 stages of the creative process.

I. Preparation:

- Most important stage
- Period when raw data is gathered
-- Also referred to as immersion
-- thinker is literally immersed in a flood of data
- Includes sorting out all the data

II. Incubation:

- Least understood, most controversial
- Period when ideas are hatched, developed, or take form
- a time of unconscious work, usually during a period away from work

III. Illumination:

- Sudden insight into the problem
- Precipitated by intense, but unsuccessful work
- A chance moment of reflection; The Aha! syndrome

IV. Verification:

- Essential stage because it brings an idea from theory to reality
- Tests the value of the solution

501.24 Explain the benefits of a creative and innovative work environment

- Two major benefits to stimulating creativity:
-- Prevent obsolescence: old ideas not always the best.
-- Increase productivity: There is always room for improved productivity

501.3 Comprehend the role ethics plays in leadership

501.31 Describe how the USAF core values relate to ethics.

- Ethics are "the rules or standards of conduct governing the members of a profession."
-- In order to be "ethical," (i.e., abiding by the rules or standards of conduct), one must understand the values from which ethics is built.

- Values are those principles, beliefs, standards, and constructs that individuals and groups consider to be very important.

-- Values define what is right and wrong
-- Core Values define the values within the Air Force's ethical system.

501.32 Explain the importance of developing an ethical climate to the military leader

Kibbe states, "The role ethics plays in leadership is very important, but it is a topic that typically receives little attention when military professionals study leadership. It is an important topic because ethics performs several key functions within the realm of leadership: ethics establishes the foundation from which professional trust and respect are built; ethics establishes what is expected of members of the military profession as they go about exercising their leadership skills to accomplish the mission; ethics establishes the acceptable parameters of conduct that members of the military profession are expected to operate within. It performs these roles by serving as the guiding framework from which to make correct leadership decisions, skillfully handle challenging leadership situations, and consider and discuss leadership issues. Ethics is the framework and fabric from which sound military leadership stems."

501.33 Summarize LTC Goldman's approach to developing military ethics education in the Armed Services.

- Have DoD take the lead in developing a joint character development initiative
-- Form planning group, led by military leaders with the authority to make things happen. -- Mission should be to create a detailed DoD character development plan
-- Initial task: create a consensus of where we need to go in terms of ethics

- Develop a military-wide training and education program of character development to teach service members to live the concepts of the services (unified) core values.
-- Coordinate services' regulatory documents to reflect the new unified core values.
-- Have program begin at initial military recruiting and training

- Use performance rating system to develop personnel and their character, rather than merely evaluating their performance.
-- If its rated, they will do it.

- Market the character development program to all military and civilian members
-- Creates and sustains an institutional identity with decided-upon values and goals.
-- Ensure prospective personnel understand something of the commitment required.
-- Attracts persons with ability, dedication, and capacity for growth

501.4 Comprehend methods used, and the importance of criteria, in measuring leadership effectiveness.

501.41 Based on Hughes, et.al. reading, describe the methods used to assess leadership.

The five most common are the critical incidents technique, interviews, observations, paper-and-pencil measures, and assessment centers.

1. Critical incidents technique: consists of having followers, peers, and/or superiors describe a set of incidents where a leader did either a particularly good or bad job. several problems with the technique
- It can take a lot of time and effort to gather critical incidents for a particular leader.
- Specifics of incidents vary dramatically across leaders; often not directly comparable.
-- Nearly impossible to compare sets of incidents-and thus the leaders-without some common metric or standard
-- Generally not used to assess leaders directly.

2. Interview: Both structured and unstructured interview
- Structured interviews
-- Interviewer asks the leader a predetermined set of questions
-- With its common set of questions, usually much easier to compare
- Unstructured interviews
-- Interviewer does not follow a predetermined set of questions
-- Interviewer has the latitude to allow the interview to proceed in any
-- Also difficult to compare the results/leader
- Both are time-consuming, limits the number interviewed

3. Observation: Can be structured or unstructured.
-- Trained observers categorize different behaviors into a predetermined set of dimensions.
- Type of observation differ with regard to when behaviors are categorized.
-- Structured: behavior dimensions/categories are predetermined
-- Unstructured: dimensions/categories are developed after data collected
- Takes considerable time and effort; number of leaders assessed tends to be small
- May be very difficult to categorize
- Only measures overt behavior; cannot measure the cognitive activities,

4. Paper-and-pencil measures:
- Most prevalent method
- Different kinds of paper-and-pencil measures, including personality inventories, intelligence tests, preference inventories, uestionnaires.
- Used to assess the behaviors or skills manifest by leaders, the emotional effects of leaders on followers, or the influence tactics used by leaders.
- Two aspects of questionnaires need to be considered
-- Different questionnaires measure different leadership processes; often tailored to examine only certain aspects
-- Results depends on who completes the questionnaire

5. Assessment Centers: Purpose of modern-day assessment centers is to assess and identify leadership potential.
- Most sophisticated method
- Uses all previously discussed techniques
-- Interviewed and observed during a series of challenging exercises or realistic problem scenarios where critical incidents of good and bad leadership behavior are noted.
-- They also make oral presentations, write letters and reports in the context of the scenarios, and complete a number of questionnaires, personality inventories, and intelligence tests.
-- Takes several days to complete assessment
-- assessment centers do a pretty good job of assessing leadership potential

501.42 Give examples of criteria a leader uses to measure his/her leadership effectiveness.

- Mission accomplishment -- did you get the job done
- Building foundational leadership qualities -- setting the standard for integrity within their organizations."
- Take care of your people -- always consider the people first
- Develop future leaders -- make a conscious effort to mold future leaders

501.43 Summarize alternate methods for assessing military leadership effectiveness. (Only one alternate method presented)

360-degree feedback

- A multi-rater assessment system
-- Everyone fills out lengthy, anonymous questionnaires about you
--- Superiors/supervisors, subordinates, peers, and yourself
-- results are collated, and reported/explained by the human resources department or the company that handled the questionnaires
-- Allows comparison between your opinion of yourself and that of others
- Results not usually used to determine your pay, promotions, or termination.
-- Technique as it's now applied doesn't work well for that.
-- Difficult to use for anything other than for self improvement/assessment

501.44 Summarize the pros and cons of 360 degree feedback based on Vinson's article, "The Pros and cons of 360-Degree Feedback: Making it Work."

Pros:
- Gathers behavioral observations from different groups within an organization.
- Helps to identify behavioral areas for improvement
- Often used only for employee development, not salary or promotion recommendations
- Has the potential to promote team cohesiveness
-- Tendency to work harder since you will be rated by peers
- May discrimination and bias since responsibility for feedback involves more people

Cons:
- Evaluators aren't always nice or positive.
-- Raters might see feedback provider as an opportunity to criticize others' behavior
- More raters involved, the more likely to have conflicting opinions
-- Who decides who is right?
- There is the question, How accurate and reliable is the feedback?
-- Employees can stack the deck by choosing their friends to provide feedback
-- Raters may experience "survey fatigue" from having to fill out countless forms and not give honest effort
-- If the feedback isn't truthful, it isn't going to be useful.