Players

Question I.

Reflect on the way you have been learning in several periods in your life?

1. What kind of learning styles have you experienced?
2. What kinds of learning styles are effective and inspiring for you?

Question II.

Imagine your future role in organizations and consider what aspects are important for you in taking initiative and be an actor in organizational change.

Question III.

Authentic leadership is described in a positive way and this way of leading others seems quite idealistic. This type of leadership can be used to influence people and bring them to cruelty and crime against humanity. Give examples of authentic leadership with negative societal effects and discuss how these negative effects can be prevented.

Question IV.

What makes it positive to show others weakness and under what kind of circumstances might this be positive and when is it more likely to realize negative effects? For a reference, see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8qyjgvBI 

[LINK werkt niet]

Question V.

Think about a personal experience when you had to go through a change process (could be anything).

1. What led you to it?
2. Where you afraid you wouldn’t succeed in it?
3. Was it a positive or negative experience?
4. Was it spurred by external factors or self-initiated?
5. Did you succeed?
6. With this in mind, imagine yourself in a changing organization, what steps would you take to successfully embrace the change process?

Question VI.

What are possibilities for yourself to develop social and personal awareness and develop your qualities as a leader?

Question VII.

What meaningful and inspiring leaders do you know from your personal experience? Reflect on your personal biography and development. Who was a real leader for you and what makes this person a leader for you?

Question VIII.

The chapter presents a number of skills that players should have in order to be successful in organizational change. Many of these skills relate to the Emotional Intelligence of the player. In fact, all four domains of the Emotional Intelligence model are covered by the required skills. But it is unusual that a person’s skill is average or above average in all four domains.

1. Can people become players of change without covering (being at least average or above) skills in all 4 domains of EI?
2. How can people on their own balance out their weaknesses?
3. What can other people for example managers and colleagues do in order to engage people that lack one of these skills?

Question IX.

Modern day corporation have come to a size which circumvents the world we live in. This has as direct consequence that most corporations also have a vibrant mix of their workforce when we are talking about cultural background. Curiosity is needed to understand and appreciate the cultural customs and values of colleagues. In big corporations one might find several different culture groups, which in principle should all get a different approach during the change process.

1. What does this mean concerning the feasibility of unbiased curiosity?
2. Is it possible to communicate to different employee groups with different messages at the same time, without creating troublesome feelings within the workforce?
3. Or is it better to stick with the communication style that best fits all?

Question X.

When a leader shows others new perspective for the future, set limits and guide changes he may inspire others but also frighten other people. In the film “Coach Carter” takes the coach the lead to train a basketball team without any perspective. First the young player Cruz resists the discipline and leadership style of his coach but become a believer in the path that is showed by the coach. What kind of meaningful leadership do you see when you have a look at the film:

Question XI.

How do leaders appreciate differences in an organization with a dominant masculine culture and what are the effects of this appreciation?

Question XII.

What does fair process means in day to day business and in turbulent times of changing?

Question XIII.

Describe how the CEO of Walmart appreciative leadership explains by using the term servant leadership and what does he see as the most important elements of appreciative and servant leadership:

Question XIV.

Learning from mistakes is one principle for learning leadership. To make this possible, an atmosphere is needed were people feel save to make mistakes. When the organizational culture is based on distrust, how can you create a climate where learning from mistakes is still possible?

Question XV.

In organizations with an open culture and a learning climate many people may experiment and learn from these experiments. What can you do to take care for adoption and diffusion of positive experiments when to many people are experimenting?

Question XVI.

Usually ‘people want change, but do not want to be changed’.

1. Do you recognize yourself in this sentence?
2. Did it ever happen to you that change was needed in an organization you were part of or in the approach your University project team was following or in another informal situation, but you were reluctant to accept changes because this would have meant admitting your mistakes or your prejudices?
3. Did it happen that you tried to implement change, but people around you did not accept it because they did not want to be changed? What happened in that case in the end? Was change accepted?
4. Do you think that if the change approach had been different, there would have been less reluctance to change? In case you were the one reluctant to change, did you realize only after that the reason was that you did not want to be changed, or were you aware of this also at that time?
5. How can we improve our personal self-awareness to be more prepared for future similar situations?

Question XVII.

Look at the change dilemmas described in the chapter about player groups and make a well-considered choice how to cope with these dilemmas related to a change process in an organization you are known with.

Question XVIII.

Read the practical example in the final paragraph of the chapter about player groups and write a reflection how you think the players in these organization has coped with the change dilemmas.

Question XIX.

Create a poster for yourself with eight different perspectives that are part of you

1. My fascinations?
2. My inspirations?
3. My distinctive qualities?
4. What I want to be in life?
5. What I want to contribute in life?
6. With whom do I want to engage?
7. What are my deepest drivers?
8. What are my deepest fears?

When you have made your poster, look for a companion who had done the same and exchange your narrative related to your poster.

Question XX.

Use the method of career anchors to discover your own career anchors. Ask a companion to do the mutual career anchor interview, use the career anchor questionnaire and exchange with your companion what you have learned from this exercise.