Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PM PrepCast for PMP Exam Prep: Joseph Flahiff, PMP, PMI-ACP Have you heard of supportive leadership? I certainly had not. I knew what servant leadership was, but the concept of supportive leadership was a definite unknown. But that changed when Joseph Flahiff (www.whitewaterprojects.com -- www.linkedin.com/in/josephflahiff) got in touch with me and suggested this interview. I was intrigued. The good news is that Joseph is a prolific writer who has a number of articles on the topic. He reviews the concept from various angles and he also has a number of great examples of how he works with his customers to implement supportive leadership in their organizations and how he uses the concept as a project leader himself. You’ll be able to incorporate all of this as part of your own project leadership almost right away. And of course we will also touch upon the main difference between supportive leadership and servant leadership. You’ll be just as surprised as I was. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode #363. This is The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Have you heard of supportive leadership? I certainly had not.I knew what servant leadership was, but the concept of supportive leadership--that was a definite unknown. But that changed when Joseph Flahiff got in touch with me and suggested this interview. I was intrigued. The good news is that Joseph is a prolific writer who has a number of articles on the topic. He reviews the concept from various angles and he also has a number of great examples of how he works with his customers to implement supportive leadership in their organizations and how he uses the concept as a project leader himself. You'll be able to incorporate all of this as part of your own project leadership almost right away. And, of course, we will also touch upon the main difference between supportive leadership and servant leadership. You'll probably be just as surprised as I was. And now, enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female Voice: The Project Management Podcast's feature interview: Today with Joseph Flahiff, project management author, consultant and organizational alchemist. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, Joseph! Welcome back to the podcast. Joseph Flahiff: Hey Cornelius, thank you. Pleasure to be here. Cornelius Fichtner: So, supportive leadership is our topic today, but let me skip all the way to the end of our conversation. What is going to be the big takeaway that our listeners will learn from this discussion? Joseph Flahiff: I think the big takeaway will actually depend on where the listener is coming from. So, they'll either hear a completely new or, at least, a slightly new, different approach to leadership; or they will be hearing something that maybe confirms and gives them more language to speak about what they feel internally already. Cornelius Fichtner: So, is supportive leadership something new? Joseph Flahiff: Is supportive leadership new? It's not really necessarily new per se, but I've put a language and a framework around some things that I've always done and that I've seen work well in my clients. So, in that sense, as a thing it's relatively new. There's a million forms of leadership, and we're all trying to describe what great leadership looks like, and how we see great leaders act, so this is my framework for describing how great leaders work. Cornelius Fichtner: And talking how you describe this, you wrote several articles about supportive leadership and in them you talk about supportive leadership mostly in the context of line management and operations management. Does it translate over into project management? Joseph Flahiff: Absolutely. Actually, that's where I come from--the project management w