06 Apr The reflective leader

Reflection is more than pausing to think. In the context of leadership, it is a deliberate process of examining your experiences, decisions and actions to gain deeper insights and understanding. Unlike other leadership development practices focusing on acquiring external skills, reflection is an introspective process. It involves self-awareness, critical thinking, and a willingness to question your assumptions and beliefs.

A model of reflective leadership

The reflective leadership model has four components:

• Awareness of self and others and the impact of your behaviour,
• Judgment of self, learning from experience, gaining perspective and giving yourself feedback,
• Consistently acting on your decisions, and
• Reflecting throughout this cycle to learn and coaching yourself.

Approached in this way, reflective leadership leads to personal growth, better decision-making, enhanced leadership skills, and improved team performance.

As a leader…

Reflective leadership is a personalised approach that adapts to individual needs and circumstances.

By reflecting as a leader, you will better recognise your strengths and areas for improvement, understand your motivations and align your actions with your values. This degree of self-awareness is fundamental to developing your leadership capabilities.

Consequently, you will become more adept at analysing complex situations, considering multiple perspectives and identifying creative solutions. This, in turn, fosters continuous improvement and innovation.

Practising self-reflection

Practising self-reflection requires discipline and deliberate purpose. It requires putting a hold on the chaos of life and taking the time to think and ponder about it. This is not easy for many people to do.

Setting aside the time to step back and process events, your thoughts and feelings is an incredibly valuable practice.

Many people find a learning journal helpful. The tool in the last paragraph below is modern and easy to use.

Finally…

Reflecting allows us to create a pause between our thoughts and emotional responses and our actions.   It helps us gain perspective, come to terms with events and learn from our experiences.

To be more effective, you must do more reflecting.

In the words of Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living”.

A journaling tool you can use

Follow this link to Reflection.app, a free private AI-enhanced journal that helps you gather your highlights and lowlights as they happen. It shares your entries with you for guided reflection at the end of each month and year.