With the leadership compass, SDU intends to encourage managers to practice good leadership, to reflect on their own leadership practice and to work on their personal leadership development.
The leadership compass consists of four guiding and interdependent perspectives: Direction, Interaction, Engagement and Leadership. The perspectives are based on the values of propriety, accountability, motivation and dialogue.
Each perspective includes a number of reflection questions. The questions serve as tools for the individual manager to reflect on good leadership values in his/her management and find inspiration for being in a continuous learning and development process and thereby practicing a flexible and agile managerial style.
The questions also reflect the expectation of good leadership at SDU. For example, the question ’How do I communicate the terms and ambitions of the University and my unit?’ implicitly refers to good leadership in the form of ‘The manager communicates the conditions and ambitions of the University and his/her unit’. Determining how to go about this is precisely the manager’s responsibility, taking into consideration their context, tasks and employees.
Based on their own managerial experience and position within the organisation, each manager may interpret the questions so that they make sense for his/her specific leadership practice.
The reflection questions will be included as a natural element in SDU’s various development and competence courses for managers, and are also suitable for discussion in management discussion groups and other management networks.
As a manager, it is essential to work with your personal leadership framework. It is a complex and lifelong process that requires time. Therefore, it is also important that the individual manager, in interaction with the rest of management, prioritises the necessary time and finds relevant opportunities to work with his/her personal leadership foundation.
