Blogging may have started out as something to do “just for fun”. Now, people are looking to blogs as a professional development tool. I was recently in conversation with my big sister who works in the Justice Department who basically wondered aloud how people can read and reply to blogs on work time and actually call that work. Like a lot of things, there are certainly plenty of blogs that aren’t appropriate to engage on the job, but there are many blogs (hopefully this is one) that attempt to add value to peoples’ personal and professional development by providing dialogue and provoking thought for those that gravitate to this type of medium. 

What do you think? Can blogs be productive at work? Should they be confined to personal time? How does one know the difference of what should and should not be engaged on their organization’s time?

As you ponder those questions, feel free to answer using our “comment” feature. We think this is a great new tool to facilitate discussion on leadership and organizational development issues. We welcome your observations.

  

Who’s leading the leader?

That sounds like a strange question, doesn’t it? Perhaps at first. But think about it. An argument could be made that every leader is also a follower – of someone, or something. Leaders don’t just “arrive” without having been influenced in their growth; nor is that likely to cease once their leadership is established. 

I can envision a leadership “family tree”. I can think about the leaders in my life and trace it back to those that led them, back through generations of leaders. 

Here’s why I think this is important: If you want to assess someone’s leadership potential and get an idea to what ends they are leading, all you have to do look up the tree and see what their leaders were about. Find a great leader and you’ll find a series of great leaders that preceded him or her. Find a bad leader, and the pattern will hold true.

So, as a leader, who are you following? And who did they follow?  

In a recent issue of Newsweek was an interesting story regarding the leadership in China entitled “China’s Changing Face: Managing a rising power’s move to center stage.” When power shifted from the Mao to Deng dynasty, a major shift in leadership accompanied. No longer was China in a state of paranoia and control as a result of the killings and persecutions of those who were perceived as acculturated by a foreign land (hence the cultural cleansing during the late 60’s and 70’s). The leadership style transitioned to being more open and accepting, to the point that forms of capitalism were allowed, more openness to religion existed, and communist law was relaxed. This shift has lead to a dynamic 30-year development period, similar to England’s struggle during the birth and fruition of the industrial revolution – that took 200 years, though! On an ever-shrinking globe, leadership makes a difference in less time and on a grander scale than in previous history. One exception might be Alexander the Great.

 

The vista is changing rapidly, nationally, and globally. Are leader’s prepared and/or preparing for the wave of global change? Nationalism is on the rise and military colonialism is being replaced by economic colonialism, where foreign investors and foreign government “companies” are setting up shop around the world by investing in a plethora of businesses including financial institutions.

 

Now for the big questions – with so many different players with varied ethical standards, who will help set the standard of global leadership and business ethics? Who will set the trend and provide the persuasive tone to create an appropriate model of ethical leadership?