Leadership and K9 training: Examining Leadership Teaming and Shaping behaviors using Kantor Four-Player model and Operant Conditioning
The exercise sources (handouts) and the PDF of this page can be found for download in PDF format can be found here:
http://www.cll-group.com/agile_news_splash/leadershipandk9behavior
or in slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/jujucath/documents
and can also be found as an attachment to this page.
Facilitator: Catherine Louis, to contact her via email: cll at cll-group.com
Time: 10:45 Saturday
Introduction:
This session is a collaborative session designed to examine Leadership teaming and shaping behaviors using the Kantor "Four-Player" model and BF Skinner's "Operant Conditioning."
Objectives:
1) Iterate on what "Good Leadership" offers.
Provided with examples of Good Leadership traits
2) Map these traits to Kantor 4-player, examine results
3) Map these traits to Operant Conditioning, examine results
Provided with examples of Bad leadership traits
4) Map these traits to Kantor 4-player, examine results
5) Map these traits to Operant Conditioning, examine results
Exercise Part 1: Given the premise of being only 3 months “new†at a company, what are the things you need from a leader? The team iterated on this idea and came up with the following list of what they expect from leadership. Leadership offers a place to go for
1) career counseling
2) trade-off decisions (when a decision one way affects the product or business in another)
3) architectural decisions
4) getting your blockages, or impediments to get help resolving
5) business vision
6) mentoring
7) history
8) information
9) information to ignore
Exercise Part 2: The team was then asked to jot down on stickies notes about things their examples of what their GREAT leaders did that were “leadership†actions. Then the team placed these actions in the Kantor 4-player model displaying whether these actions were “moverâ€, “followerâ€, “opposerâ€, or “bystander†actions, resulting in the following:
Mover:
Lead by example
Set clear objectives for the team
Was so good at resolving conflicts in meetings
Spends hours together
Empowered me to make decisions
Gave me choices
Mentored and taught me the ropes for the next level of success
Understands about personal needs and limitation
Has the perspective of the whole business in his/her response
Follower:
Knows when to follow
Spaces the information
Bystander:
Outlined the goal but lets you figure it out.
Doesn’t tell me what to do, just sets the context for strategy and goal and direction.
Opposer:
Defends team and team members.
The team came to the conclusion that GREAT leaders are quite heavy in the “MOVER†quadrant.
Exercise Part 3: The team then plotted the actions their “GREAT leader†took in Operant Conditioning with the following results:
Reinforcement (added stimulus)
-Constructive criticism
-Gave sysadmin ‘god’ privilege
-Encouragement to reach beyond comfort zone
-Using Kantor 4-player model in this exercise (talk worked at user group!)
-Time off
-Free lunch
-Beers
-People work towards whatever the bonus is
Penalty (removed stimulus)
-Shift a desired responsibility to someone else
-Cover production start-up
Escape (removing aversive stimulus)
-Removed reporting requirements
-Removed pain points
-Gave a company credit card vs expense report headaches
Punishment (adding aversive stimulus)
-Peer pressure
-Adding scheduled check-ins to push me to complete actions
-Posting action items in the team room and reading them at the meeting (encouraging peer pressure)
The team came to the conclusion that it was very difficult to find actions a great leader took in the Punishment (adding aversive stimulus) other than using peer pressure as the aversive stimulus.
Exercise Part 4:
The team then decided to do the same analysis with an AWFUL leader, with the following results:
Mover:
Bypass communication channels
Ignore organizational goals
Ignoring success
Don’t keep their word
Schedule after hour meetings
Care more about careers then success of team and organization
Support another leader who accosted a woman in the parking lot
Publicly air dirty laundry
Schedule after hours meetings
Ignore successes
My way or the Highway Command Control
Oversteps bounds by making commitments for a team.
Public criticism
All communication is punitive
Prescribes the exact (poor) solution
Dresses the team down in public
Takes credit for others’ work
Follower:
Weasel-like behavior
Golden rule: whoever has the gold we follow
Not realizing his technical inability
Functional manager as Scrum Master
Opposer:
Yelled at for not finding billable work after being yelled at for finding billable work the previous week
Demonstrates favoritism
Speak poorly about their team and staff
Did not trust teams technical opinions
Bystander:
Kept finding new excuses to put off performance reviews
Don’t interact with people “belowâ€
Always blame others while standing by
Completely disengages and then is unable to support.
While the BAD leader was also heavy in the Mover quadrant, there were no definitive conclusions drawn by plotting “bad leader†traits in the Kantor 4-player model.
Exercise Part 5: We then took those yellow stickies and migrated them to the 4-quadrant Operand Conditioning model. There was a surprising result that most all of the stickies fell under the Punishment quadrant. The conclusion the team drew with this exercise was startling in that BAD leaders did not use reinforcement, or escape conditioning preferring to focus on punishment by added aversive stimulus.
Goal: Increase behavior Goal: Decrease behavior
Reinforcement (added stimulus)
Penalty (removed stimulus)
Escape (removing aversive stimulus)
Punishment (adding aversive stimulus)
-Ignoring success
-Don’t keep their word
-Schedule after hour meetings
-Publicly air dirty laundry
-Ignore successes
-My way or the Highway Command Control
-Oversteps bounds by making commitments for a team.
-Public criticism
-All communication is punitive
-Prescribes the exact (poor) solution
-Dresses the team down in public
-Takes credit for others’ work
-Yelled at for not finding billable work after being yelled at for finding billable work the previous week
-Demonstrates favoritism
-Speak poorly about their team and staff
-Did not trust teams technical opinions
-Always blame others
The exercise sources (handouts) and the PDF of this page can be found for download in PDF format can be found here:
http://www.cll-group.com/agile_news_splash/leadershipandk9behavior
or in slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/jujucath/documents
and can also be found as an attachment to this page.
Facilitator: Catherine Louis, to contact her via email: cll at cll-group.com
Time: 10:45 Saturday
Introduction:
This session is a collaborative session designed to examine Leadership teaming and shaping behaviors using the Kantor "Four-Player" model and BF Skinner's "Operant Conditioning."
Objectives:
1) Iterate on what "Good Leadership" offers.
Provided with examples of Good Leadership traits
2) Map these traits to Kantor 4-player, examine results
3) Map these traits to Operant Conditioning, examine results
Provided with examples of Bad leadership traits
4) Map these traits to Kantor 4-player, examine results
5) Map these traits to Operant Conditioning, examine results
Exercise Part 1: Given the premise of being only 3 months “new†at a company, what are the things you need from a leader? The team iterated on this idea and came up with the following list of what they expect from leadership. Leadership offers a place to go for
1) career counseling
2) trade-off decisions (when a decision one way affects the product or business in another)
3) architectural decisions
4) getting your blockages, or impediments to get help resolving
5) business vision
6) mentoring
7) history
8) information
9) information to ignore
Exercise Part 2: The team was then asked to jot down on stickies notes about things their examples of what their GREAT leaders did that were “leadership†actions. Then the team placed these actions in the Kantor 4-player model displaying whether these actions were “moverâ€, “followerâ€, “opposerâ€, or “bystander†actions, resulting in the following:
Mover:
Lead by example
Set clear objectives for the team
Was so good at resolving conflicts in meetings
Spends hours together
Empowered me to make decisions
Gave me choices
Mentored and taught me the ropes for the next level of success
Understands about personal needs and limitation
Has the perspective of the whole business in his/her response
Follower:
Knows when to follow
Spaces the information
Bystander:
Outlined the goal but lets you figure it out.
Doesn’t tell me what to do, just sets the context for strategy and goal and direction.
Opposer:
Defends team and team members.
The team came to the conclusion that GREAT leaders are quite heavy in the “MOVER†quadrant.
Exercise Part 3: The team then plotted the actions their “GREAT leader†took in Operant Conditioning with the following results:
Reinforcement (added stimulus)
-Constructive criticism
-Gave sysadmin ‘god’ privilege
-Encouragement to reach beyond comfort zone
-Using Kantor 4-player model in this exercise (talk worked at user group!)
-Time off
-Free lunch
-Beers
-People work towards whatever the bonus is
Penalty (removed stimulus)
-Shift a desired responsibility to someone else
-Cover production start-up
Escape (removing aversive stimulus)
-Removed reporting requirements
-Removed pain points
-Gave a company credit card vs expense report headaches
Punishment (adding aversive stimulus)
-Peer pressure
-Adding scheduled check-ins to push me to complete actions
-Posting action items in the team room and reading them at the meeting (encouraging peer pressure)
The team came to the conclusion that it was very difficult to find actions a great leader took in the Punishment (adding aversive stimulus) other than using peer pressure as the aversive stimulus.
Exercise Part 4:
The team then decided to do the same analysis with an AWFUL leader, with the following results:
Mover:
Bypass communication channels
Ignore organizational goals
Ignoring success
Don’t keep their word
Schedule after hour meetings
Care more about careers then success of team and organization
Support another leader who accosted a woman in the parking lot
Publicly air dirty laundry
Schedule after hours meetings
Ignore successes
My way or the Highway Command Control
Oversteps bounds by making commitments for a team.
Public criticism
All communication is punitive
Prescribes the exact (poor) solution
Dresses the team down in public
Takes credit for others’ work
Follower:
Weasel-like behavior
Golden rule: whoever has the gold we follow
Not realizing his technical inability
Functional manager as Scrum Master
Opposer:
Yelled at for not finding billable work after being yelled at for finding billable work the previous week
Demonstrates favoritism
Speak poorly about their team and staff
Did not trust teams technical opinions
Bystander:
Kept finding new excuses to put off performance reviews
Don’t interact with people “belowâ€
Always blame others while standing by
Completely disengages and then is unable to support.
While the BAD leader was also heavy in the Mover quadrant, there were no definitive conclusions drawn by plotting “bad leader†traits in the Kantor 4-player model.
Exercise Part 5: We then took those yellow stickies and migrated them to the 4-quadrant Operand Conditioning model. There was a surprising result that most all of the stickies fell under the Punishment quadrant. The conclusion the team drew with this exercise was startling in that BAD leaders did not use reinforcement, or escape conditioning preferring to focus on punishment by added aversive stimulus.
Goal: Increase behavior Goal: Decrease behavior
Reinforcement (added stimulus)
Penalty (removed stimulus)
Escape (removing aversive stimulus)
Punishment (adding aversive stimulus)
-Ignoring success
-Don’t keep their word
-Schedule after hour meetings
-Publicly air dirty laundry
-Ignore successes
-My way or the Highway Command Control
-Oversteps bounds by making commitments for a team.
-Public criticism
-All communication is punitive
-Prescribes the exact (poor) solution
-Dresses the team down in public
-Takes credit for others’ work
-Yelled at for not finding billable work after being yelled at for finding billable work the previous week
-Demonstrates favoritism
-Speak poorly about their team and staff
-Did not trust teams technical opinions
-Always blame others