Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Sparks + Embers Episode No. 13: The Requirements of Professional Leadership Psychology (Apprenticeship)
53 Plays2 months ago
Credentialist systems serve legitimate purposes: quality assurance, risk mitigation, professional legitimacy. The challenge isn't eliminating credentials but creating space for competency-based development alongside formal requirements, much like how the bridge-builders now work with government documentation requirements while maintaining traditional knowledge transmission. Research shows effective mentorship operates through complex interactions between mentor characteristics, learner needs, environmental supports, and timing – not through singular pathways.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Sparks and Embers'
00:00:05
Speaker
There's something about a campfire. We gather around it, stare into the flames and find ourselves in conversations we never planned to have. I'm Tiffany. And I'm Tyler. And this is Sparks and Embers, 10 minutes of what sticks when we step back from the fire.
00:00:21
Speaker
Each week, we distill insights from our kindling newsletter, sharing the questions that won't let go and the connections that surprised us. We hope this creates space for whatever wants to emerge around your own fires.
Exploring Apprenticeship Leadership Model
00:00:34
Speaker
This week's episode of Sparks and Embers and the feature in the Kindling Newsletter bears the brunt of the blame for the topic that we've been discussing around the apprenticeship leadership model.
00:00:46
Speaker
Much of the ideas that are built into the overall series came from the time that i spent in corporate America. Climbing the ladder, participating in the rat race, however you want to describe it.
00:00:57
Speaker
This week we are tackling that venue and we are discussing what it means to apply the apprenticeship leadership model in a professional setting. Our view of the professional world often is all about mastering tools, financial models, project plans, technical systems. The feedback from these tools is immediate and the progress measurable.
00:01:19
Speaker
Until we start taking on the management and supervision and what we eventually call the leadership of other human beings. Our view on what it means to be leaders is
Challenges in Leadership and Generational Blame
00:01:31
Speaker
broken. I'm not going to defend that, but I will give an example.
00:01:34
Speaker
An example that routinely gets me frustrated with leaders who have neglected to recognize what their role is actually as a leader and what are the tools at their disposal.
00:01:48
Speaker
The picture that they paint is oftentimes in this conversation about generation versus generation. I used to deliver a keynote where I would provide a slide that described the generation of young workers entering the workforce who were entitled, who didn't have a good work ethic.
00:02:07
Speaker
I'd look around the audience and people would be nodding, laughing, nearly high-fiving with the commiseration of what they have to deal with as leaders managing all these young folk.
00:02:18
Speaker
And then we would drop the bomb, which is, it was an article that was taken from 1970 that was talking about the generation that were now the audience in the room. Blaming youth is not leadership.
00:02:32
Speaker
I would be a fool to be a woodworker in my woodshop, blaming my tools because they were not sharp. Blaming my tools because they weren't doing what I told them to.
00:02:45
Speaker
Blaming my tools for being naive or entitled because they expect me to know how to lead. We do this. We give ourselves a pass as the leaders partially because we confuse management with leadership.
00:03:05
Speaker
We get promoted and suddenly success requires understanding other people's psychology. What motivates their behavior? What blocks learning? How does confidence interact with competence?
00:03:17
Speaker
How What creates psychological safety? These are big questions that we have to explore as leaders, and they don't get answered through management classes.
00:03:27
Speaker
Many of us are unprepared. Our primary instrument is now human psychology, and our system gives short attention to frameworks for understanding it, largely because we would rather focus on management tools.
00:03:41
Speaker
Management is not leadership.
Understanding the Confidence-Competence Cycle
00:03:44
Speaker
This is where it goes wrong. And that's what we discussed this week, is how the apprenticeship leadership model provides a better platform for defining what leadership is.
00:03:56
Speaker
I was introduced to one of the tools that we discuss this week called the confidence-competence cycle a little over a decade into my professional career.
00:04:07
Speaker
Picture two axes. First, the competence running vertically and confidence running horizontally. Four quadrants emerge, each requiring completely different leadership approaches.
00:04:18
Speaker
In one quadrant, this is the high confidence, low competence is the dangerous novice. Fresh from previous successes, they know enough to be dangerous. They make decisions without understanding consequences. They solve problems without seeing systems.
00:04:32
Speaker
And six months later, reality introduces itself and they become the overwhelmed apprentice. Low confidence, low competence. They know they don't know, but paralysis can set in.
00:04:44
Speaker
The imposter expert can solve complex problems but doubts their judgment. This is that individual who starts getting into the high competence but they still are low confidence.
00:04:55
Speaker
They defer to others with less knowledge but more positional authority and organizations underutilize their talents because they won't claim their expertise. And then there's the master apprentice who represents our goal state.
00:05:11
Speaker
Deep competence paired with earned confidence. Not confidence in what they know, but in their capacity to figure out what they don't know. The apprenticeship leadership model says that whether I am leader or whether I am subordinate or employee or apprentice,
00:05:31
Speaker
I am experiencing this cycle all the time. What determines who advances through this cycle? It's those who surrender to apprenticeship. They accept that developing competence takes longer than developing surface confidence.
00:05:46
Speaker
They treat questions as tools for growth rather than signs of weakness. Here's what we know about professional environments. They require simultaneous operation in three modes.
00:05:58
Speaker
Continuous learning as apprentice, peer collaboration as journey person, and then wisdom transmission as master. And this isn't additional work. It's how competence gets built, maintained and transmitted across generations, across organizations.
00:06:13
Speaker
Every role includes these dimensions at the same time. In a morning technical review, someone might function as master of system architecture, apprentice of new framework patterns, and journey person collaborating with peers on project management.
00:06:27
Speaker
It is this wearing of the hats at all times that carries changing contextual functional responsibilities for which we are accountable for all of those roles all at once.
00:06:40
Speaker
And in our model of leadership today, we somehow forget that. The apprentice carries responsibilities beyond just passive learning. Diligent engagement, openness to guidance, building respect without destructive deference, those are things that the apprentice, that we oftentimes refer to as subordinates, must
Roles in Knowledge Transfer
00:07:01
Speaker
cultivate.
00:07:01
Speaker
But the master, the leader, must cultivate the very same things in their role. Because when they do that, when a junior team member says, I understand you, want me to change the approach, but I'm not clear on the underlying principle, they fulfill their apprentice responsibility to help the master improve knowledge transmission.
00:07:23
Speaker
Masters ensure knowledge survival beyond individual tenure while modeling continuous learning. Teaching requires deliberate structuring of learning experiences while remaining open to new insights from those they develop.
00:07:35
Speaker
A bi-directional flow operates through questions apprentices ask that masters haven't considered, fresh perspectives that challenge established approaches, and feedback on mentoring effectiveness.
00:07:47
Speaker
That is different than what most people see as the role of the title in the C-suite, as the role of the manager. We have asked to develop people within systems designed for efficiency rather than development. We must balance individual growth with organizational demands and navigate between what serves people and what serves metrics.
00:08:11
Speaker
The bridge builders of Megalaya, which we discuss again in this article, face this very tension. Government agencies want measurable outcomes. How many bridges? What load capacity? What tourism revenue?
00:08:25
Speaker
But bridge building success cannot be reduced to quarterly metrics. The value appears across generations. We look in this article also at quality improvement research as another example in healthcare, where it's framed as an ethical imperative. Medical professionals have a moral obligation to improve patient care regardless of institutional pressure.
00:08:49
Speaker
Professional leaders face the same ethical foundation, developing people's capability to contribute value, not managing them as resources for organizational extraction.
Sustainable Leadership and Ethical Challenges
00:09:00
Speaker
This is not simple. The hardest part is trusting that patient cultivation will generate the influence we want. In a culture obsessed with viral growth and exponential scaling, choosing to grow at a pace foundational systems can support feels like choosing to remain irrelevant.
00:09:18
Speaker
But living bridges suggest otherwise. The structures that last are the ones that grow at the pace their root systems can support. Professional influence flows through relationships that can be mapped on organizational charts.
00:09:33
Speaker
Trust accumulates through consistent behavior. Influence grows through service to others' needs. Authority emerges from demonstrated competence and character over time.
00:09:45
Speaker
Some decisions serve generations we will never meet. Professional leadership requires the same perspective over time. We're not just optimizing for this quarter's results. so We are contributing to professional ecosystems that will develop people and solve problems long after we have moved on.
00:10:06
Speaker
The structures that last are those that serve life across generations, not just efficiency within quarters. And the leaders who matter are those who create conditions for others flourishing, not just their own advancement.
00:10:19
Speaker
And that is the spirit of the apprenticeship leadership model within the professional world, within what we need to see today. And I know most of us understand this is subversive to the way that leadership is conducted and all of the incentives that push for short-term thinking. But that is what we are inviting you to explore with us in this week's feature article of the Kindling Newsletter. We hope you'll join us there.
00:10:48
Speaker
Thanks for sitting around the fire with us.
Community Building and Subscription Encouragement
00:10:50
Speaker
If these conversations sparked something, subscribe to Sparks Numbers and all our shows on Apple and Spotify. And if you're moved to, please leave us a review or share this episode with your friends.
00:11:00
Speaker
Both help us build this community. For the longer material that feeds these episodes, subscribe to the Kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com backslash kindling. That's goodpainco.com backslash kindling.
00:11:14
Speaker
We release it weekly with the kind of content that keeps these unexpected conversations going. We provide the kindling, you bring the fire. Until next time, keep the questions burning.