Expedition Toolkit
This section of the book contains several tools designed to help you continue the process of developing your leadership skills. The Critical Leadership Skills Survey is an instrument to help you assess the extent to which you typically practice the ten strategies outlined in Leading at The Edge. The survey is intended to stimulate thinking about your leadership style; it is not meant to be a final, categorical assessment of your leadership ability.
The questionnaire will, however, allow you to step back and reflect, and it can be an effective feedback instrument as well. I have found that having others complete the Critical Leadership Skills Survey to assess my leadership style is an enlightening, productive experience.
The second tool—Your Leadership Expedition: A Personal Development Plan—provides a way of bringing together, in a comprehensive plan for professional development, your insights from the Critical Leadership Skills Survey and your responses to the questions posed in the Expedition Log at the end of Chapters 1 through 10.
Identifying Hidden Conflicts: Conducting a Moose Round-Up is the third tool, which is designed to help leaders identify issues that hamper productivity and team unity. The guide provides examples of situations in which the tool is most effective, along with detailed instructions for conducting a “Round-Up.”
A fourth tool, Resolving Conflicts: Lessons from the Martial Arts, enables leaders to work through sticky issues once the sources of friction have been identified. This collaborative method uses principles from the martial art of aikido to give leaders a new perspective on conflict resolution.
Finally, Further Readings from The Edge includes a list of books dealing with experiences at the Survival Edge. It includes books recounting the Shackleton saga as well as books about other survival stories.
One of my goals is to continue to expand the list with other stories that illustrate effective and ineffective leadership and teamwork at The Edge. I am interested in accounts that illustrate the use of the ten strategies in both business and survival situations. If you have a story to contribute, I would be pleased to hear from you. I can be contacted through my email address, Dennis. [email protected], or at:
The Syncretism Group, Inc.
869 Boston Post Road, Suite 201
Madison, CT 06443
Phone: 203-779-5329