Fundamental State of Leadership

Fundamental State of Leadership

Introduction

As leaders, when we do our work in best way and do not imitate others rather than doing so we look learn from our own values ??and experience, we achieve what the author Robert E. Quinn call the fundamental state of leadership (Quinn & Spreitzer, 2006). Fundamental state of leadership is a mindset that we usually take when facing a significant challenge: risk of professional failure, an opportunity for promotion, death of loved ones, divorce, a serious illness, or any other unforeseen event in our lives (Quinn, 2005). Crisis calls and we are at the height of the occasion. In everyday circumstances, leaders can remain in its normal state and do what they need to do. However, some challenges require a heightened perspective, which may be called fundamental state of leadership (Northouse, 2007).

At some point of time all of us have experienced a dark night of the soul where we were pulled out of our comfort zone by a great challenge. Because various individuals don't leave their comfort zone unless forced, several find it helpful; to follow a process when they choose to enter into Fundamental State of Leadership. Everyone in this world at some stage or another reached to fundamental state of leadership. We all have faced great professional and personal challenges. In this paper I am going to describe one situation that made me entre into fundamental state of leadership. My description will include how I moved from comfort to result centered stage, from externally to internally directed stage, from self to other focused, and finally from internally closed to externally open stage. Moreover the paper will include how I learned and whether this process fits in the process of learning in coaching.

Fundamental State of Leadership Leadership as state of mind was a concept developed by Robert Quinn in (2004) that claims that there are various states that serve as attractors for the actor to take action that would be seen as leadership in the given context (Quinn, 2005). FSL established internal context which inspire an individual to respond and is reflected into 4 interrelated attitudes. There are two functions of model of FSL. First function is to create an attractor that encourages current behavior for betterment of the organization. Second function is to open individuals to become more consciously aware of his/her patterns and perceptions of behavior (Goldstein, 2007). In this function, FSL has more self directed approach. I have seen this in my own experience.

I was 24 and I for the first time in university was teaching gig. About one week before the starting of class I asked my supervising professor that how are we going to do this means how much do you expect me to be grading, what book did you order etc. he said u r mistaken, You are the sole instructor for this course and why have not you ordered the course books yet. I was not able to sleep all night before ...