How will you incorporate boundary spanning leadership into your everyday life? What challenges do you anticipate, and what impact do you hope to have?

Reflecting over the past five weeks gives much in the way of new strategies learned.  In understanding that the definition of boundary spanning leadership is the “ability to create direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in service of a higher vision or goal” (Ernst & Chrobot-Mason, 2011, p. 5), that is accomplished every day at work in the jail.  It will continue across all forms of boundaries which are vertical, horizontal, stakeholder, demographic, and geographic.  Learning about the pitfalls such as the Us vs. Them or silos increases the knowledge of how to counteract them so distrust does not develop because that can get in the way of effective group collaboration (Ernst & Chrobot-Mason, 2011). 

I have already begun to utilize what we have learned by using the buffering tactic of building team cohesion.  I am creating a bulletin board for the “BEE” award which is “Be Exceptional Everyday”.  This will have index cards and a box for coworkers to nominate other coworkers.  It also pulls in another buffering tactic of creating a unified team identity by making us stand out from the other two shifts.  I am also creating ways to utilize reflecting in our squad meetings every morning.  This is the perfect platform for them to listen and learn from each other. Buffering is great because it insulates the organization from outside influences that may be chaotic and come flooding in (Lynn, 2005).

I also want to begin to teach my supervisors all these ways of boundary spanning leadership so they can use them when dealing with officers that are having conflict with each other or groups that are not able to work together.  My supervisors used a connecting tactic of mixing it up outside the office just recently at Christmas time.  They scheduled a holiday party at a neutral spot with food, games, and karaoke.  It went a long way to build morale and help our shift connect with each other and their supervisors.  I am going to encourage them to use more of these as they learn about them.  In the past, silos have formed within the office and I want to be able to bring out some of these tactics to dispel the negative and drama that may try to cause issues.   

Do you agree with the direction I took, or would you do something different?