Jul

18

Leadership Lessons from Geese

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Fact 1: As each goose flaps its wings it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.
Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

Fact 2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.
Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

Fact 3: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.
Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities and unique arrangements of gifts, talents or resources.

Fact 4: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
Lesson: We need to make sure honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

Fact 5: When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.
Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.

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3 Responses to “Leadership Lessons from Geese”

  1. Skip on July 18th, 2006 9:38 PM

    Wow! Great minds do think alike. Earlier today, I reposted Lessons from a post I did a year ago.

  2. Architect’s Linkblog » Blog Archive » 12 Links for 7/18/06 on July 19th, 2006 3:36 AM

    [...] Agile Work Resources - Cheat sheets for agile processes. Innovation Happens Elsewhere - The book is now available for free online reading. “It will help you decide on whether open source is right for your project, and, if so, what steps you should take to proceed and some mistakes you should avoid.” Some Personal Reflections on the Changing Nature of Strategy - Observations on how strategies have changed for IT organizations over the last twenty five years. Slow Down For Your Customers’ Sakes Too - “It’s a fallacy that responding quickly naturally increases customer satisfaction. What people want from you is your full attention to their needs and concerns.” Risk management for IT innovation - No suggestions for how to manage risk, but a good write up on why CIO’s/EA’s are frequently averse to risk and a reminder that nevertheless innovation is necessary. Light Enterprise Architecture - “The light enterprise architecture is ‘light’ because it suggest to establish the enterprise infrastructure architecture rather than architect the enterprise and design the central planned enterprise architecture blueprint.” Secrets of great teams: How to build a great team - Research results on smaller teams being more effective. I loved this quote “We’re certainly not against the concept of teamwork. But that’s the point: All the happy-sounding twaddle obscures the actual practice of it”. Ruby Support in Visual Studio Coming - A new commercial Visual Studio plugin to facilitate Ruby development. Grid Computing with the Java Parallel Processing Framework - An overview of the open source project for easing development of grid applications with Java. Portalmania with an SOA twist - How SOA is now making portals more important due to the need for a UI for all those services. Leadership Lessons from Geese - An amusing and informative article about geese behavior in flocks and lessons we can learn in relation to leading groups. The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell - A nice summarized list of leadership principles from Colin Powell. I think lesson #2: “The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them.” is a great observation that applies well to problem solving leadership positions. [...]

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