More about the 5 minute leader

"Now, supervision is falling away into self organizing...”

“Management is what all employees who want more autonomy need to take on.”

-Joan Magretta, What Management Is

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Our experience shows that this can be a huge challenge on two fronts.

1. Those in power trusting that the responsibilities they give to others will, in fact, be followed through on in an acceptable way. 

2. Those who are asked to take on more responsibility and autonomy, trusting that there will be some space for learning and mistake making.

We hope to model shared leadership with this blog. Each week, a concept will be surfaced through a short story. You will be able to read each post in 5 minutes. 

We are also inviting you to share in the learning by participating by leaving comments, including your understanding of the topic. Dialogue is the goal.

The third component of this blog is that in each post, you will be invited to try something that takes 5 minutes or less. You will also be invited into experiments that take longer, but there will always be a 5 minute experiment to try. 

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The name (The 5 Minute Leader) is a nod to Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson who wrote The One Minute Manager back in 1982. While leadership and management have evolved significantly since then, I have always been intrigued with the idea of trying one-minute experiments as a manager. 

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The challenge we face today as leaders is not a problem to be solved, but rather is developmental. Meaning there is no one expert who has the solution, but that it can be developed with people, experiments and time. As we evolve through this, we find that we actually become a different version of ourselves.  

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Let’s begin a dialogue about how we can grow as facilitative leaders.

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Carl Blanz, supported by Growing Edge partners, Patrick O’Brian and Michelle Nordhougen