#5 - Reflection!
30 Mar 24
Effective leaders have perfected the art of being self-critical about their performance.
They do this through daily self-reflection which is incorporated into their routine.
They will analyse what went well, and not so well throughout the day in terms of their own performance.
They will also observe and learn from others, incorporating any lessons to be learned into their own style and adapting it to their own circumstances.
In order to be truly effective, this exercise should be done daily and the leader needs to be fully honest in their self-appraisal of performance.
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#5 - Reflection!
What?
Albert Einstein famously said that 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.
This is very true of leadership. The fact is that the only way you are able to get better at leading people is by doing more of it, or if you receive constructive feedback.
Constructive feedback typically only happens twice per year; once at mid-year and then again at the end of the reporting year. By that time it's too late and your end of year performance assessment has already been decided!
Self-Reflection offers you a chance to address these gaps by capitalising on your own ability to be self-critical so you can self-assess.
Why?
Reflecting on your performance is one of the best kept secrets that highly effective leaders deploy to hone their skills. It's how they iteratively improve. It's free to do and, over time, delivers a compound effect which has minimal daily outlay.
What makes it effective is that you can do it as often, and wherever, you like.
But there is a catch...
You have to be honest with yourself. You have to develop the art of being self-critical, but not to the point where you are flagellating yourself. That is self-defeating.
The aim of reflection is simply to refine and hone your skills, through the use of immediate reflective feedback based around experiences gained through your daily practical leadership application.
How?
In order to do this properly, you have to make time for it.
The best way to do this is to analyse your current working day and set yourself up for success.
There is no point doing a self-reflection exercise amidst the chaos of the working day.
To get the most out of it, it's best done in one of two ways:
- If you work in an office, bookend the day with a shutdown routine and then use your commute to decompress, and analyse your day as you travel home. This is time well-spent.
- If you work at home, embed a 30 minute self-reflection session into your work shutdown routine. This allows you to fully switch off from work before you enter 'at home' mode.
In both cases, the self-reflection session should cover the following as you play back what happened throughout the day:
- Overall, was it a successful or unsuccessful day? Why did you assess it as such?
- Over the course of the day, what went well in terms of the way you dealt with issues? What is worth using as best practice?
- Conversely, ask what didn't go so well? Why didn't it go well? How could you improve your performance if you were presented with that issue again?
- Did you witness any great examples from others that you interacted with, that you could learn from and perhaps incorporate into your own style? Equally, were there lessons learned from others' performances that would be good for you to make a note of, so you don't fall into the same traps and make the same mistakes?
Finally, make brief bullet point notes to record your observations. These will serve to remind you and act as an aide memoire.
In Summary
I hope that you enjoyed reading this newsletter and that it has given you food for thought.
Continual reflection is one of the most powerful tools you can deploy with minimal daily outlay. It delivers a huge return on your investment in terms of the time required to do it.
Build it into your routine from today, and see the results for yourself!
Have a great week!
Whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you:
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