Reflecting On Leadership
Reflection involves thinking about our experiences. Day to day experiences of leadership, in our personal and our working lives, offer opportunities for reflection and therefore learning. Development of each of the Leadership Capabilities involves an ability to explore, question, and evaluate one's own performance and development. That reflection might be about: • Self- leadership eg What supports, or holds you back, from leading? • Motivating and inspiring eg What have you done that has encouraged others to be the best they can be? How have you achieved this? • Collaborating and influencing eg What is the impact of your leadership on others and how can you develop your abilities to take others with you? • Creativity and innovation eg What has helped you (or perhaps stopped you) 'thinking out of the box' - and supporting others to do the same? • Empowering eg What part do you play in promoting an empowering culture? What could you do differently - or better - to empower others? • Vision eg What experiences have you had that have informed your vision for the future and what does this tell you about how you can put your ambitions into practice? The purpose of reflection on leadership is to gain a better understanding of ourselves (our values, knowledge and skills), so we can learn from our experiences, and adapt and respond to new leadership challenges.
The reflective process involves:
Acting
on our learning about ourselves and our capabilities eg putting new insights and ideas into action, seeing new opportunities for leadership.
Experiencing
what you and others did, or didn’t do, the context in which the experience happened.
Learning
from reflection eg gaining a deeper understanding of how we feel about taking on a leadership role.
Reflecting
on the experience (replaying and reevaluating the experience, paying close attention to our actions and feelings and using our knowledge of eg past experiences of leadership,...