Semester Project Dashboard

Creative Leadership Nadine Kmmel

Final Version 19.12.2014

i
l i s te n

ng

flect
self re

Im great, but you are not!

We are great,
but you are not!

My life sucks!

Life sucks!

We are great!

ion

ti
at t e n

Im great, but you are not!

Life sucks!

on

50%

We are great,
but you are not!

My life sucks!

ing
l i s te n n
tio
c
refle tion
flec
self re

0%

We are great!

no reaction
65%

25%

self reflection

50%

reserve

approval

rejection

80%

enthusiasm

75%

25%

0%

100%

State of Mind/
Feeling

Attitude

Aktion

Tribal Stage of Community

Tribal Stage of Self

Bigger Goal

Encouragement/ Inspiration

Confidence and
Motivation

The communities we live and work in influence how we feel, work and develop.
To be able to choose a beneficial and
motivating community in contrast to a
negative and inhibitory one, we need
a trustworthy indicator. This indicator
must be such as to help us recognize in
which stage, of the 5 stages we know
from the tribal leadership concept, a
community is in. The signal we can use
to measure such a stage affiliation is language. The sensor or tool we need is the
ability to listen. The scale we can use to
interpret what we hear comes directly
form Dave Logans book Tribal Leadership and looks as follows:

Equally important to the stage of our

community is our own stage. The indicator however is a little different as
we dont need to rely on the to some
extend uncertain external indicator
of language. We are the only once to
know what attitude and feeling lies
behind our outer facade and we should
definitely use this knowledge. Our tool
to do so must be of course honest self
reflection. The Goal as it was with the
stages of the communities we live and
work in is of course to come as close
as possible to a stage 5 situation. From
Dave Logans book we already know
that we can only climb stages step by
step. Because of this fact it is very important to know in which stage we are
currently in ourselves, in order to know
what stage to aim at next.

If we have managed to define our bigger goal in life, or at least a goal for a
certain period of our life, we should
keep this goal in mind always. The
majority of our actions should serve this
bigger and valuable target. Of course to
measure such kind of thing we need to
pay close attention to what we do and
to what our actions lead to. The scale
which has the unit percent this time
shows, due to the green color coming
from the left, that a 100% cant be the
goal here. As realistically it wouldnt be
possible to lead all our every day actions
into serving one bigger purpose, we can
be satisfied with 60% or higher. To know
how many of our actions serve our goal
can influence our motivation every day.

Of course once own opinion about a

project is important and most people
dont have enough trust in their so
called gut feeling, but the opinion
and attitudes from other people are
important too. Mostly because we want
to encourage and inspire other people
and because we can archive much more
with a motivated team than we can
archive alone. How our community and
acquaintance react towards our actions
and projects can give us a slide hint
about the quality of what we do. Sometimes it will be much more than a hint
and sometimes it will mean nothing at
all. For this reason we need more than
one tool to get and use the information
we need. First we need to listen closely
and understand what is really meant.
Second we need to reflect on what we
have heard and third we need to reflect
on our selves or the project concerned.

Talking about confidence and self

motivation we reached a topic mostly
women have problems with. Of course I
dont want to generalize this topic, but I
think women have a stronger tendency
to doubt themselves. However it is important to know about the bad as well
as about good feelings. As the indicator for this again is a feeling or state of
mind the tool to work with is again self
reflection and honesty towards oneself.
Of course as a normal human you will
have tasks that are not quite motivating to do or times where fears are more
prominent than confident feelings, but
as it is you should always aim a little
higher than what is realistic. Not to hurt
yourself, because you may not archive
this higher goal, but to not be hindered
by negative prejudices.

Language

Life sucks! = Stage 1

My life sucks! = Stage 2
Im great but you are not = Stage 3
We are great and you are not = Stage 4
We are great = Stage 5
To be able to choose the right community for ourselves or maybe more
importantly to avoid the negative environment of a stage 1 or 2 community
can drastically change once life. If you
made it to stage 4 yourself for example
but suddenly have to work in a stage 2
environment, there is a great risk that
you will fall back to stage 2 yourself.

se

Attitude

n
o
i
t
c
e
lf refl

Tools
Visual Indicator for Current Situation

50%

Visual Indicator
for the Evaluation of the Current Situation.

75%

25%

0%

Units

100%

State of Mind/
Feeling

Confidence and
Motivation

Indicator/ Signal,
which can be picked up using the related tools.

Theme/ Subject

Semester Project Leadership Scenarios

Creative Leadership Nadine Kmmel
Final Version 19.12.2014

Lead
a group of
people in a more
private field of
action!

Lead a group
of free lancers to
do values based
work!

Lead my own
design agency!

I think as a design student you mostly imagine yourself working in a

well respected design agency, doing only the fun creative stuff and let
others work out the formalities. With a bit of work experience you realize that these formalities influence the process of design so much, that
it might be better to be able to influence those formalities yourself.
Eventually you start dreaming up how your own design agency would
look like and how you would lead the people working for you.

For a while now Im thinking about how to find the right people to
work with. At the moment Im working alone in my little office in
Mainz, which on the one hand is really good as I can concentrate and
nobody distracts me from important work besides myself. Still I sometimes miss the special atmosphere that always arises when a view creative people are working together in one room. Of course just sitting
together, working in one room is not enough, but it is the first step. The
first step to inspire new values, start joint projects and find a bigger
goal the community can work towards. I deliberately say that this bigger goal has to be found in the future, together with the people that
will form the community, because I would like to lead but not force my
own opinion or values on someone. I strongly believe that a person has
to be convinced not persuaded when it comes to values. What I like especially about working with people who rank evenly is, that leadership
can be shared. Like with geese our example from nature, from which
we can learn so much in a Heterarchy leadership system, the leader
can change according to the requirements of a situation.

For me to lead my own design agency would mean a certain kind of

success first, to have a lot of externally assign project, enough to work
without worrying about paying my employees. In my wildest dreams
I imagines myself living in one of the great design cities like Copenhagen or Stockholm, but of course realistically my office would be in
Mainz, the city I currently live in. I guess the older you are the more
deeply rooted you are too.
I cant imagine having more than 10 employees, as I would like to have
a close personal contact to the people I work with. People would be
hand picked for their skills as well as their values. The hierarchy in the
company would be quite horizontal and I would want my employees
to always speak their mind. Successes would be celebrated with the
whole team and together we would develop a system for organization and motivation in order to work effectively, raise the quality of our
projects but cut over hours to a minimum. One way to kind of dust the
brain would be to work on independent projects once in a while, either
to apply for a design award or to find a producer later.

As with my own agency it is most likely that I will develop this coworking situation in Mainz my home city. Realistically I expect that 3 to 10
people could work together in such a way.
In contrast to my first leadership scenario this one is much more easy
to realize and also fits better with what I imagine to be the best possible way of people working together. Secondly and this relates to
the third leadership scenario I chose I know that I love my job as a
designer and cant really imagine being able to do another thing as enthusiastically and good besides working as a designer, which of course
demand the majority of my time too.

Of course in this thought my ideal imagination so to say the agency

not only does beautiful, sustainable projects, but also is reasonably
good paid for its work. When I dream up my own office I see of course
the best possible situation. When I start thinking about how to get
their problems, risks and obstacles become more prominent in my
mind. Leading my own design agency would be a goal with many
steps and milestones in between and for me personally this is not
the only way of life that would make me happy and satisfied with my
career path.

at t
Im great, but you are not!

Im great, but you are not!

ion

50%

no reaction
65%

reserve

approval

self re

We are great!

Life sucks!

We are great!

flectio

Life sucks!

0%

80%

rejection

enthusiasm

75%

25%

on

25%

50%

self reflecti

We are great,
but you are not!

My life sucks!

e nt

listening
reflection
selfrefelktion

listening

We are great,
but you are not!

My life sucks!

To lead a group of people in a more private field of action is the most

vague leadership scenario for me as I like to work as a designer and my
work consumes definitely the majority of my time. However there are a
view areas of activities I could see myself in besides my job. For example I do like kids a lot and explaining is something I enjoy very much.
For this reason I could see my self working in the field of children education. Womens rights is also something Im interested in and would
like to help develop. These two interest could even be combined. As
Im not participating in one area or the other yet, it is hard for me to
imagine my role as a leader. Maybe I could start a free time program
where sustainability is thought in a fun way. Or create a kind of circle
for women of different religions. A lot could be done and the leader
needed for a certain kind of activity or situation will only become clear
when the ball is already rolling.

0%

100%

Language

Attitude

Aktion

Attitude

State of Mind/
Feeling

Tribal Stage of Community

Tribal Stage of Self

Bigger Goal

Encouragement/ Inspiration

Confidence and
Motivation

For all three scenarios the measuring devices from my dashboard would look as you can see above. Of course this would be the optimal setting, the situation I would work to archive. My team of coworkers would be satisfied
with our work and values and would constantly commute between stage 4 and 5. I as their leader would be more steady and in a stage 5 state of mind, which I would try to radiate and help the others to reach more often. With
all the every day struggles and tasks we would still manage to connect over 50% of our activities with our bigger goal and values. Doing so would keep the motivation and encouragement of us and our communities the
people we work with and such like constantly high and the atmosphere good on all levels. Last but not leas I myself would be in a state of mind that I can only compare with how I imagine a proud mother must thinks of her
family.