Leadership blog post - Renu Chakrabarty

      Writing this blog post gave me a chance to put into writing some thoughts floating around in my head, as well as make some connections between anecdotal experiences and the literature on leadership. By no means an exhaustive reflection, a few thoughts are below.

      The article by Sunnie Giles on "The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World," made the case that mastering certain qualities is difficult since it entails acting against our nature. One quality that stood out to me was empowering others to self-organize and while providing clear direction. From personal experience, I tend to work better with a goal in mind and open lines of communication with my boss (or bosses), but without being micro-managed and second-guessed. On the other side of that, when I have lead teams, I try to lead by example, and by trying to understand questions (and challenges to direction) from a first principles perspective - that is, assuming that the question is genuine and may stem from a communications gap. Sometimes I have to remind myself to not be defensive, or jump-in to explain, but to just let the question get laid out, and then have a conversation (or several conversations). Many times, what may at first pass seem to be a challenge boils down to a misunderstanding of the goal; and sometimes it stems from my misunderstanding of the implications of a chosen path. As the author notes, there can be a reluctance to share power if a leader believes his position is being challenged, and the challenge is to not go into flight-or-fight response mode. Understanding this reaction is a good way to help manage it, and get the ego out of the way of good solutions.

     In many ways, when there is no major crisis and work is getting done, good leadership is invisible. Even though good leadership may have been part of what created and maintained a status quo in which productive work is possible, the leader doesn’t necessarily get any credit. Additionally, human nature tends to focus on the negative instead of the positive. We get comfortable with what was once appreciated, and our expectation of what constitutes "enough" gets higher over time. From a worker perspective, if you remember how "bad" things used to be, it’s easier to appreciate the new situation without always looking for more. But if you don’t have that perspective, then it’s easy to take things for granted - which isn’t to say workers should settle for sub-standard working conditions. From a management perspective, state government isn’t the easiest venue to provide "perks" to employees either. So while something that may be relatively easy to provide in the private sector, such as bottled water, flextime, or raises, it can get a lot more bureaucratic to provide in the public sector with the specters of grievances and budget cuts. This is where basic fairness and having a connection to the larger group is important. As Giles notes, "emotions are contagious in the workplace: Employees feel emotionally depleted just watching unpleasant interactions between coworkers." If one tier of employees are the "haves" and others are "have nots" then people are not inclined to overlook some perceived slights and perks, and workplace motivation and productivity go down. WVDEP tends to do a pretty good job on creating a sense of connection and belonging; for example, everyone from interns to executive management uses the same workout facilities, same water sources, and has access to the same restrooms. That does seem like a big deal, but when you see all levels within the agency going about their daily routines, it helps set the tone for interactions in meetings and on projects.

      As for a leadership crucible, to date mine have been more like a series of experiences where it has become increasingly clear that while a challenging task may at first seem to be technical in nature, it turns out that more critical to really getting things done is convincing actual, real people (and sometimes re-convincing them over time) to cooperate to accomplish things that may be outside their comfort zones and usual ways of doing business. As frustrating as it can be (especially in the beginning), it is very rewarding to have a project with tangible results in which everyone on the project feels pride and ownership. For example, building relationships with folks in several sister state agencies, local citizen groups, and federal agencies was the only way to start promoting mobile source-related conservation activities since the Division of Air Quality’s jurisdiction is limited to stationary sources for the most part. By slowly building trust, the first sub-grants to county schools to voluntarily add diesel oxidation catalysts to school bus mufflers was accomplished . Building on that, led to a campaign to install signage and promote anti-idling on school grounds across the state, and eventually, bringing in the states’ first hybrid electric diesel transit buses. Of course these and other projects could not have been accomplished without appropriate technology being available, but they never would have been accomplished without building connections with people and understanding their varying perspectives well enough to convince them to willingly work together, outside of any regulatory requirement, to improve air quality for citizens, including children. To this day, I hear folks within the agency and at the Department of Education talk about "our" buses and "our" signs, and that makes me realize the importance having a sense of connection and shared vision is to accomplishing goals as well as laying a foundation for future collaboration.