Leadership

Week One

“Can we learn to become effective leaders?”

Abdul Hasib Safi

 What is learning?
• Learning is “a process that leads to change, which
occurs as a result of experience and increases the
potential for improved performance and future
learning” (Ambrose et al, 2010, p.3). Ex. Turning on
the TV for first time.
• “Learning is the relatively permanent change in a
person’s knowledge or behaviour due to
experience.
–From Learning in Encyclopaedia of Educational
Research, Richard E. Mayer 
 Memory
1. Types of explicit or declarative memory:
1.1. Short term or working memory: think of this as the focus of
current attention, or what you are actively thinking about right now.
1.2. Long term: which is broken down further into semantic memory
(facts) and episodic memory (specific events).
2. Stages of memory processing:
2.1. Encoding is the process of forming new memories.
2.2. Storage comes next, and is the process of information
maintenance.
2.3. And finally there is the process of gaining access to stored
knowledge, referred to as retrieval.
 VAK Learning System
• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic
 VAK Learning System
1. Visual learning style “learn through seeing and writing…”
1.1. Relate most effectively to written information, notes,
diagrams, and pictures.
1.2. Can be verbal (sees words) or pictorial (sees
pictures)
1.3. Remembers faces but not names
1.4. Think in pictures, uses color
1.5. Facial expression show their emotions
1.6. May be good writers, journalists, graphic design
 VAK Learning System
2. Auditory learning style “learn through listening…”
2.1. Learn from spoken instruction
2.2. Written information has little meaning until it has been heard
2.3. Write lightly and it is not always legible
2.4. Talk while they write
2.5. Remember names and forget faces
2.6. Distracted by noise
2.7. Remember by listening, especially with music
2.8. May be good speakers, and specialize in law or politics
 VAK Learning System
3. Kinesthetic (tactile) learning style “learn through moving, doing and
touching…”
3.1. Learn through touch and movement in space
3.2. Remember what was done, not seen or talked about
3.3. Gets physically involved
3.4. Enjoy playing games

Action: take a VAK self assessment test

 Quick VAK Learning Assessment
1. Learners like to learn by writing things down in their
own words
2. Learners engage better during lecture discussion
3. Learners underline or highlight texts with different
colours
4. Learners often talk to themselves, and read out loud
5. Learners enjoy role-play scenarios
6. Learners tend to remember faces and places by using
their imagination, seldom getting lost in new
surroundings
“Leadership and learning are indispensable
to each other.”
• ~John F. Kennedy
The Action-Observation-Reflection Model
by David Kolb

• Making the most of experience is key to developing

one’s leadership ability.
• The theory shows that leadership development is
enhanced when the experience involves three different
processes:
– Action
– Observation
– Reflection
The Spiral of Experience: Colin Powell’s
example.
 The Key Role of Perception in the
Spiral of Experience
• Experience is not just a matter of what events
happen to you; it also depends on how you
perceive those events.
• Perception affects all three phases of the action-
observation-reflection model.
• People actively shape and construct their
experiences.
 Perception and Action
• Research found that perceptions and biases affect
supervisors’ actions towards poorly performing subordinates.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: Occurs when our expectations or
predictions play a causal role in bringing about the events we
predict.
• Research has shown that having expectations about others
can subtly influence our actions.
• These actions can, in turn, affect the way others behave.
 Perception and Observation
• Observation and perception both deal with attending to
events around us.
– We are selective in what we attend to and what we,
in turn, perceive.
• Perceptual sets can influence any of our senses:
– They are the tendency or bias to perceive one thing
and not another.
– Feelings, needs, prior experience and expectations
can all trigger a perceptual set.
 Perception and Reflection
• Attributions: Explanations we develop for the behaviors
or actions we attend to.
• Self-serving bias: Tendency to make external
attributions for one’s own failures, yet make internal
attributions for one’s successes.
• Actor/observer difference: Refers to the fact that
people who are observing an action are much more likely
than the actor to make the fundamental attribution error.
 Perception and Reflection (continued)

• Reflection also involves higher functions like evaluation

and judgment, not just perception and attribution.
 Organizational Learning Single –
Double Loop Learning
• Single Loop Learning: is error correction
by following the rules and operating norms
when solving a problem. Ex. Thermostat: it
only operates by following these results: it
detects that the specific room is worm, so
it turns down the temperature or it detects
the room is too cold so it turns up the
temperature.
• Double – Loop Learning: is error
correction by changing and critically
questioning the rules and operating norms
when solving problems: This learning
involves more thinking outside the box!
Creativity is a must when questioning and
thinking outside the operating norms. Ex.
Why the temperature is the best for the
situation? And comparing which
temperature is best for the room.
In double loop learning. We are using critical
questioning, thinking, and problem solving in
the organization.
 Single and Double-Loop Learning by Chris
Argyris and Donald Schon
• Single-loop learners seek relatively little feedback that
may significantly confront their fundamental ideas or
actions.
– Individuals learn only about subjects within the “comfort zone”
of their belief systems.
• Double-loop learning involves a willingness to confront
one’s own views and an invitation to others to do so, too.
– Mastering double-loop learning can be thought of as learning
how to learn.
Thanks for Attention!