This document discusses flexing leadership styles using the Leadership Compass model. It provides an overview of the four directions - North, South, East, West - and their associated strengths and challenges. Participants reflected on their own dominant style, considered how to manage up and across styles, and practiced applying their weakest style to a scenario. The goal was to develop self-awareness and balance to strengthen personal and team leadership.

1. Flexing Your Leadership Style
Bonner congress 2022
With Ariane Hoy

2. Today’s Goals
•Develop self-awareness
about your approach to
work and leadership
style
•Assess your strengths
and challenges, in order
to grow
•Consider styles as a tool
for personal growth,
project management,
and teamwork

3. Re
fl
ection and
Pair Share
•Think of a time that
you had to lead
during your Bonner
Program experience.
•Did you grow from
that experience?
Share one way.

4. • What’s Your Approach?
• Discussion of Strengths
& Challenges
• Jump to Your Weakness:
What Can You Learn?
• Tips for Managing Up
& Sharing Pointers
• Analyzing Your Bonner
Team(s)
• Setting Goals for Growth
Overview

5. The Leadership
Compass

6. Background
• All directions have profound
strengths and potential
weaknesses, and every person
is seen as capable of growing
in each direction.
• warrior (north)
• healer (south)
• teacher (west)
• visionary (east)
• Each direction has a primary
"human resource," including
power (north), love (south),
wisdom (west), and vision
(east), as well as primary
struggles.

7. Identify Your
Top Strength
✓ What’s your
fi
rst
inclination when you
get a new project?
✓ What’s your tendency
when you’re under
pressure?
✓ What feedback have
you been given?
✓ What seems most
comfortable?

8. ★ Assertive, active, decisive
★ Likes to determine course of events and be in control of professional
relationship
★ Enjoys challenges presented by dif
fi
cult situations and people
★ Thinks in terms of “bottom line”
★ Quick to decide; expresses urgency for others to take action
★ Perseveres, not stopped by hearing “No,”
★ Probes and presses to get at hidden resistances
★ Likes variety, novelty, new projects
★ Comfortable being in front
★ Values action-oriented phrases, “Do it now!”, “I’ll do it”, “What’s
the bottom line?”
North Approaches

9. ★ Understands how people need to receive information to act on it
★ Integrates others input in determining direction of what’s happening
★ Value-driven regarding aspects of professional life
★ Uses professional relationships to accomplish tasks
★ Interaction is a primary way of getting things done
★ Supportive to colleagues and peers
★ Willingness to trust others’ statements at face value
★ Feeling-based, trusts own emotions and intuition
★ Receptive to other’s ideas, builds on ideas, team player, non-
competitive
★ Able to focus on the present
★ Values words like “right” and “fair”, and thinks about the process
and people involved
South Approaches

10. ★ Visionary who focuses on the big picture
★ Generative and creative thinker
★ Able to think outside the box
★ Very idea-oriented; focuses on future thought
★ Makes decisions by standing in the future (insight/imagination)
★ Insight into mission and purpose
★ Looks for overarching themes, ideas
★ Adept at and enjoys problem solving
★ Likes to experiment, explore
★ Appreciates a lot of information
★ Values words like “option,” “possibility,” “imagine”
East Approaches

11. ★ Understands what information is needed to assist in decision making
★ Seen as practical, dependable and thorough in task situations
★ Provides planning and resources, is helpful to others in these ways
and comes through for the team
★ Moves carefully and follows procedures and guidelines
★ Uses data analysis and logic to make decisions
★ Weighs all sides of an issue, balanced
★ Introspective, self-analytical, critical thinker
★ Skilled at
fi
nding the critical
fl
aws in an idea or project
★ Maximizes existing resources
★ Leverages information about what has been done in the past
★ Values word like “objective”, “analysis”, and thinks about the
details involved in planning and implementation
West Approaches

12. ❖What’s great about your style?
❖What are the challenges of your style?
(Which are hardest for you to work
with?)
❖When you go too far or overuse style,
what are your weaknesses?
Group Discussion

13. “Overuse”
“When you take your style to
an extreme, or are in
fl
exible,
what do you think the other
directions are saying about
working with you?”

14. ★ Can easily overlook process and comprehensive strategic planning
when driven by need to act and decide
★ Can get defensive, argue, try to “out expert” others
★ Can lose patience, pushes for decision before its time, avoids
discussion
★ Can be autocratic, want things their way, has dif
fi
culty being a team
member
★ Sees things in terms of black and white, not much tolerance for
ambiguity
★ May go beyond limits, get impulsive, disregard practical issues
★ Not heedful of others’ feelings, may be perceived as cold
★ Has trouble relinquishing control -
fi
nds it hard to delegate, “If
you want something done right, do it yourself!”
North Overuse

15. ★ Can lose focus on goals when believes relationships or people’s needs
are being compromised; becomes derailed by poor process
★ Has trouble saying “No” to requests
★ Internalizes dif
fi
culty and assumes blame
★ Prone to disappointment when relationship is seen as 2nd to task
★ Dif
fi
culty confronting or handling anger (own or others’);
may be manipulated by emotions
★ Can over-compromise in order to avoid con
fl
ict
★ Immersed in the present or now; loses track of time; may not take
action or see long-range view
★ Can become too focused on the process and people, at the
expense of accomplishing goals
South Overuse

16. ★ Can put too much emphasis on vision — at the expense of action or
details
★ Can lose focus on tasks
★ Not time-bound, may lose track of time and not get work
implemented
★ Tends to be highly enthusiastic early on, then burn out over the long
haul
★ May lose interest in projects that do not have a comprehensive
vision
★ May
fi
nd self frustrated and overwhelmed when outcomes are not in
ling with vision
★ Poor follow through on projects, can develop a reputation for
lack of dependability and attention to detail
East Overuse

17. ★ Can become stubborn and entrenched in position
★ Can be indecisive, collect unnecessary data, mired in details,
“analysis paralysis”
★ May appear cold, withdrawn, with respect to others’ working styles
★ Tendency toward remaining on the sidelines, watchfulness,
observation
★ Can become distant
★ May be seen as insensitive to others’ emotions or resistant to change
★ Can be bogged down by information, doing analysis and
planning at the expense of moving forward
West Overuse

18. Similarities
• DISC Leadership Style
Assessment
• Dominance (North)
• Steadiness (South)
• Conscientiousness (West)
• In
fl
uence (East)
• True Colors Style Assessment;
a little less East
• Orange (North)
• Blue (South)
• Green (West)
• Gold (doesn’t quite align)

19. Let’s take pulse of the
room, ending with
weakest style.

20. Scenario Discussion

21. Scenario (from Weakest)
• You are the Bonner Leadership Team currently working on
planning your Sophomore Exchange. The Sophomore Exchange is to
be an event or activity, 1-2 days long, that brings together two or more
Bonner Programs. Your Bonner Director has asked your class to play a
leadership role by planning an awesome exchange that will involve
3-4 schools. It should be inspiring and give people a sense that there
are students across many campuses involved in service, activism, and
social justice. You may want to weave in service and/or programming
to support this. You have given you a budget of $2,000, and one
month for a timeline. As a team, working from your weakest direction:
1. Discuss and develop a work plan with key steps.
2. Include activities that will achieve the goal, considering how this
style would approach it. Remember, you want to “try on” this
style in what you outline.

22. ★ Each Direction: Please share highlights of your plan.
★ Questions for Discussion:
★ How was it to work in your “weakest” direction?
Observations?
★ Comments from peers (from that style):
How did they do?
★ From this exercise, what did you learn about the value
of having diverse styles and approaches on a team?
Scenario Report Back

23. 1. Use as a tool for working better with
your supervisor and peers by
“Managing Up and Out"
2. Use it as a tool for project design and
management.
3. Use it as a tool for continual growth
and re
fl
ection.
Flexing More

24. Now, map your
own real BLT and Boss.

25. Managing Up & Out
• What is the primary style of your Bonner Coordinator and/or Director?
• How might you use this framework to work more effectively with that
staff member? Discuss and present ideas in small groups.
South “So Nice”
East “Blue Sky”
West “Practical”
North
“Action
Jackson”

26. Personal Compass

27. Team Compass

28. Project Management
• Think of an upcoming project you have as a Bonner student leader.
How could you use the lessons from this framework to plan and
implement that work more effectively?
South
Build a strong
diverse team
East
Articulate a
bold vision.
West
Learn from
others & plan.
North
Set goals &
take action.

29. Write and share 2-3 goals
for strengthening your
styles and balance.