Journal #3 Positive deviance

Behind every cohesive community, stands a good leader.What qualities do we look for in our leaders? Is it someone who will stick to the party platform? Someone with the largest cadre of foot soldiers and advisors? Someone who is sound bite savvy? Or, as I submit, someone with less tangible but more substantive virtues of soul, spirit, and faith. As citizens, we have the responsibility to be a leader, and create positive change. The way and why we view the world in terms of “doing good” is as important to the actions and examples of actually doing good.

Being a leader calls for creativity. When infusing incentives in a creative and innovative way the work place becomes a playground for success.   Leadership skills can be directed by encouraging a sense of connection and a sense of belonging within one’s social group. Reminding another of their accomplishments, taking responsibility for independent acts, and being generous with one’s time, values and taking a responsibility for their community creates respect and makes you a conscious leader. 

 Dan Pink submits there are three factors to better performance. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When one has the desire to be self directed, the urge to improve, and a feeling of use incredibly magical things happen. As seen in MIT studies, at a certain point high monetary incentives no longer are anomalous to higher performance. As David Rock claims, the brain is a social organ. Many of our psysiological and neurological reactions are exceptionally shaped by social interaction. He contradicts Maslow's theory of social needs to be in the middle of the pyramid, rather he submits it is on the same level as our instinctual need of survival.

How do our social needs connect to being a good employee or boss? Because when social interaction and innovation is encouraged, productivity increases. As leaders we can also follow Rock's 5 social qualities. These are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Formed into a fun little SCARF acronym Rock says you can visualize it as the "headgear an organization can wear to prevent exposure to dysfunction." 

When we utilize our SCARF as well as Pink's three factors to better performance; autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we can become better leaders of tomorrow.