Leadership and Learning Organizations

                                                                            Synergy and Collaborative Values

       Leadership and Learning go hand in hand. They are a marriage that is bound together in a way that should never be broken. John F. Kennedy said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” Leaders are learners and their main job is to help their organizations and especially those people directly around them to learn, develop and contribute. Learning, therefore, is a collaborative group process with the leader as main facilitator and organizer. This is especially true in education where learning is the main mission of the organization.  Leaders must be more than just managers, administrators or stewards of change. The skills of management are essential to the everyday job of planning, organizing, directing and controlling. However, management is not leadership and leadership is not management.  Leaders are collaborators with a strong sense of democratic values. In other words, they have the ability to put the people, service and their organizations first (See Collaborative Teamwork).

       So, why are collaborative values and abilities essential to leadership and learning? First, leaders who know and understand the value of collaborative teamwork are able to think of the team, organization or group before their own self-interest. Good team members are service-oriented with a strong sense of what it takes to work together in a collaborative way to problem solve and achieve a goal. Great team members and leaders are able make everyone around them better and more productive. This effort is by its very nature a learning process as it takes time for people to learn how they can best contribute to the mission, goals and strategies of an organization. And, it takes time and understanding for leaders to bring out the best in their employees, faculty or staff in this process. The more leaders understand how to do this the better leaders or executives they will be and they will become better managers and supervisors as well.

       Besides the values of teamwork and service, other collaborative values include the democratic values of equality, participation and critical thinking. All of these values make collaborative groups successful in developing learners and productive workers and in helping to build organizations that endure. Our founding fathers had these values in mind when they created our present form of government built upon citizen participation and the principles of equality and service because they wanted it to last. Synergy is built upon these same collaborative values since only the highest forms of cooperation can create the harmony in organizations that transcends differences and helps us work together to resolve problems and transform each other in the process. Collaborative Learning in organizations is built upon this kind of knowledge that can take a lifetime to learn, but is often overlooked in education today in favor of the naked technical skills of management or administration. Synergy is such a powerful force in organizations and in collaborative groups, that if you do not understand it, you do not understand the essence of organizational development and leadership. So, in a sense building the learning organization is also a major step in learning how synergy works and how leaders facilitate this process in collaborative groups.

       So, what is synergy? Many people talk about it in terms of its effect, which is that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Or, in terms of organizations the group becomes greater than the sum of the individual members. However, this does not really explain how synergy works, which is the essence of order and harmony in all organizations. Synergy is achieved in collaborative groups in which the members receive mutual benefits by the same act at the same time.  In other words, everyone in the group or organization is working for the benefit of others first. This can only be achieved in groups and organizations where the members are service-oriented and are committed to the team first. John F. Kennedy understood this concept when he stated, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” He knew the power of service and galvanized the people in a goal to help each other by helping their country. So, the values of service and participation become realized in a way that is both organization building and transformational with mutual benefits to both the individual and the group at the same time. This process is not a luxury for exceptional leaders and organizations. It is essential for all leaders of learning organizations in order to develop employees, faculty and staff who are not only individually productive but contribute to the organization in a way that helps to fulfill its mission and make everyone better individually and as a group.  

       Also, this high synergy collaborative effort is not just an ideal goal. It is a practical necessity for every leader who hopes to build an organization that will sustain itself in good times and bad. And, this process in turn creates a learning environment that is safe and free enough to take the risks necessary to learn and to grow. Competitive groups fail in every way to achieve this same effect. Instead, they run contrary to collaborative efforts to work through problems and build on each other’s ideas because each member is primarily thinking about their own interests first with little interest in other people’s ideas or contributions. And, with this lack of concern for each other’s interests comes a lack of trust that prevents a true safe learning environment from developing.

       So, it becomes the most important job of a leader to collaborate effectively and build teams of workers who put the organization and mission first. And, it is essential at the same time to develop a learning environment in which the employees, faculty, and students feel safe enough to take the risks necessary to learn and to grow. Synergy allows us to accomplish this goal of building a learning organization if we know how to facilitate these collaborative and democratic values that produce mutual benefits by the same act at the same time with a firm commitment to the mission of the organization. The following is an example of how the President of a university was able to transform his school into a collaborative learning organization.

       For years Public University was mired in an increasingly structured and narrow view of education and the management of employees, faculty and curriculum. Since it was a public institution, change came only with great effort and the willingness to alter rules, procedures and tenure criteria that were outdated. These rules were also stagnating to the development of new ideas, better research and curriculum that encouraged students to cross the boundaries of disciplines and think more creatively. As students began to choose other alternatives to public education in greater numbers, a decision was made by the Board of Regents to hire a new president to make the necessary changes. Dr. Jakes, the new President, was an experienced collaborative leader, administrator and manager of change in higher education. He had a vision for Public University to become a learning organization and he had the collaborative ability to build the coalitions and cooperation among both the employees and the faculty to accomplish this successfully.

       He began by meeting with his department heads to share his vision for the university and to develop new tenure criteria that encouraged research and collaboration across disciplines and departments. The next step was to meet with faculty from each department to help them to understand the new goals of the university and to develop better communication for learning and research by eliminating unnecessary jargon and terminology that was replaced by language that could be clearly understood across disciplines. Some faculty objected because they were concerned that they would somehow lose their identity as a discipline if their technical language was altered. However, when they understood that their identity was built upon their actual knowledge in their fields and not their terminology and they realized how interdepartmental cooperation would encourage more and better research, they not only cooperated, they helped to build a language that everyone could understand.

       The next step in developing a learning organization was for Dr. Jakes to encourage regular meetings with faculty to build new interdisciplinary curriculum that emphasized more collaborative learning, critical thinking, leadership and communication across departments and disciplines. Also, he set up regular seminars for faculty to help them to understand how to use cultural context and collaborative learning to help students to connect their studies with career paths as well as benefits for humanity and to give them more opportunities for collaborative research across disciplines. Most importantly, he encouraged feedback among both his employees and faculty regarding their ideas and concerns about the direction of the university and held monthly meetings with various faculty representatives as well as department heads and supervisors. His openness to new ideas and his ability to work through problems collaboratively soon began to set an example for the entire staff and faculty of the university. And, as faculty and students felt safe and free enough, they began to take the risks necessary to learn and to grow individually and as a group. A culture of learning soon developed and gradually employees and faculty began to think of others first as a collaborative team.

       As a direct result of Dr. Jakes’ efforts to build an organization open to learning and change, new research and ideas were developed that brought innovative collaborative funding proposals to the university. And, new discoveries were made through collaborative research that helped develop pain killing drugs with no side effects and new natural treatments for disease prevention. Also, with the new curriculum that helped students learn more and faster with relevant connections to society and culture, more new enrollments developed than ever before. The richer and more meaningful collaborative contexts for learning and discovery also motivated the faculty to pursue more collaborative learning and research outside of class with other professors as well as the community. Through Dr. Jakes’ collaborative leadership the entire presence of the university took on new meaning in the community and every employee and faculty member found a new level of motivation.

 
Copyright 2009, Global Leadership Resources: For teaching or classroom use only.

 Note: The above example and concepts are based on the ideas and principles found in the books, Collaborative Leadership and Global Transformation and Transformative Leadership and High Synergy Motivation by Timothy Stagich, Ph.D.

                                                                         Discussion Questions

  1. Why is learning so important for leadership? What is the value of collaborative learning for leaders and organizations?
  2. How do collaborative values and teamwork help to build learning organizations?
  3. What is synergy? How does synergy work in collaborative groups/organizations?
  4. What roles do democratic values play in collaborative groups and organizations?
  5. How are individuals and groups transformed by synergy?
  6. How did Dr. Jakes use collaborative learning and synergy to build a learning organization at Public University?
  7. How did Dr. Jakes use collaborative learning and teamwork to motivate and help to create a learning environment safe enough to take the risks necessary to learn?
  8. What is cultural context? How did Dr. Jakes use it to improve curriculum?
  9. How did collaborative learning contribute to a more open and interdisciplinary environment at Public University?
  10. What were some of the greatest benefits and results of the transformation of Public University into a learning organization?

    

        

 

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