Self-Reflection: Enhancing Decision-Making Skills for Effective Leadership
Self-reflection may not be the first skill you think of when looking to improve your leadership style, but it’s a surprisingly important one.
This year I’ve been thinking about topics that impact your career as a leader. Ones that you wouldn’t necessarily connect with your success. In the realm of effective management, self-reflection and, by extension, self-awareness are two skills that build confidence and courage.
Self-Reflection and Self-Awareness for Leaders
We’ve all worked with leaders who have said one thing and done another. Or seem to lack their own vision of how to move forward. Developing a deeper understanding of yourself and how you lead is essential to personal growth and professional success. You achieve this understanding through the twin processes of self-reflection and self awareness.
This isn’t a process that you can do in a vacuum. Eventually, you need to bounce it off the world by reaching out to trusted colleagues who can provide insight into how your actions are perceived in the workplace.
Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is the process of deliberating on your own experiences and behaviors. By examining your actions and the motivations behind them, you gain valuable insights into your personal preferences, goals, and values.
Here are specific examples of self-reflection:
Recall a recent challenge at work. Did your response align with your values?
After completing a project, consider what you learned and what you could improve.
Self Awareness
Self awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to see yourself clearly through the lens of introspection and reflection. It's an honest acknowledgment of your strengths, weaknesses, emotions, and beliefs. Here are methods to enhance self awareness:
Reflect regularly: Keep a journal to record and analyze your daily thoughts and decisions.
Solicit feedback: Engage with peers and mentors to understand how others perceive you.
By harnessing self-reflection to drive self awareness, you’re better equipped to make informed decisions, improve your relationships, and pursue your ideal career trajectory.
The Power of Self-Reflection in Leadership
As you advance in your leadership journey, self-reflection becomes an indispensable tool. It allows you to assess your abilities, realign your goals, and strengthen your leadership skills.
Poor leaders aren’t aware of how self-reflection and self awareness interact. And because they don’t take the time to self-assess, their leadership suffers. Poor leadership is often a misunderstanding between knowing one's weaknesses and failing to address them. Recognize that self-awareness without transformation is futile.
It takes confidence to look at yourself. Having the courage to scrutinize your own actions and decisions is a sign of strong leadership. It's about asking yourself tough questions like "How effective is my leadership?" and "What can I do to improve?". This introspection demands confidence, because you may uncover truths that are uncomfortable, yet critical for growth. And you’ll know that you’re strong enough to rise to the challenge. Whatever you may find that needs to be worked on.
Remember that there is no such thing as failure in this world. It’s only when you repeatedly fail at the same thing, without learning from past experience, that you are letting yourself down.
Be open to feedback from your peers, colleagues, and employees. Embrace feedback as a catalyst for professional development. When you're receptive to the perspectives of your colleagues, you pave the way for improvement. Consider questions like "How do my actions align with my team's values?" and use the insights to refine your leadership approach. Remember, feedback is not just to be received, but also to be acted upon.
Self-Reflection Strategies for Leaders
Many corporate cultures have some form of a feedback loop in process, but there is often a lack of guidance for solo exercises that can benefit leaders. Here are a few ideas to practice as you improve this skill.
Journaling
Maintaining a journal is a powerful method for self-reflection. Routinely reviewing the pillars of the Career Satisfaction Assessment is a great place to start.
Start by setting an appointment to review your Career Satisfaction Assessment each month. Notice which areas you feel most complete in and which may need a little work. Then focus your journaling on the areas you would like to improve upon. If you feel stuck, feel free to use the following questions for self-reflection as prompts. Prompts are helpful to explore deeper questions about your goals, fears, and achievement. for your journaling:
Questions for Self-Reflection Journal Prompts
How do you want to make a difference?
What does making a difference mean to me?
What can I change to be more satisfied in [enter pillar] area?
When was the last time I had fun at work?
What Individual Connections do I value in my work network?
What connections am I missing in my work network?
How am I supporting my team?
In one year, what does my ideal work life look like?
What do I think a balanced work and life look like? What steps do I need to take to achieve that?
Where am I bored? What could I do to make this area more challenging for myself as a leader?
Meditation, Mindfulness and Multitasking
Executive mindfulness is gaining traction among C-suite leaders as a key to unlocking deeper career satisfaction and balancing professional achievements with personal well-being. Meditation and mindfulness practices enable you to focus on the present moment without judgment. It's clear that mindfulness can transform not only your career path but also improve overall leadership success and life satisfaction.
Mindfulness doesn’t mean you need to book out all your vacation days at a Buddhist retreat on the top of a mountain. It does ask that you bring moments of conscious awareness to your everyday practices. Don’t just do something because you’ve always done it, especially if you find you dread a certain task or action, ask yourself why and pay attention to how you navigate that task. By mindfully exploring the results, you pave the way for a new mindset, aligning your professional path with personal contentment.
Multitasking is often the enemy of mindfulness.
For one, most of us think we’re better at multitasking than we are. Another issue is that multitasking prevents us from being truly present with any of the things we’re juggling. Do you ever check email while you’re watching a movie and talking to your kids? And what do you remember about each of those three things? Nothing? Yeah, me too.
Think of mindfulness as the antithesis of multitasking. When you are mindful of your actions and present to the current task, that means you can bring your full self to every activity you commit to. And 100% of you is better than 90% or 50% any day.
Try it. Your work, family, friends, significant others - they will notice a difference.
360 Feedback Sessions
360 Feedback processes are a corporate led, structured opportunity for you to gather insights on your performance from multiple perspectives, serving as a foundation for significant personal and professional development.
In a 360 feedback process, you receive confidential, anonymous feedback from the people who work around you. This typically includes your supervisor, peers, and direct reports. By assessing the diverse opinions, you’re provided with a well-rounded view of your behaviors and skills. When participating in 360 feedback, consider these points:
Objectivity: Ensure feedback is observable and factual.
Specificity: Seek examples to illustrate the feedback.
How To Take Feedback and Put It into Action
After receiving feedback, it's crucial to generate an actionable plan. Don’t simply accept the feedback at face value. Share it with others you trust and work on the following steps:
Identify Growth Areas: Pinpoint specific areas for improvement.
Set Goals: Establish SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) objectives.
Create Action Steps: Break down your goals into tangible actions.
Build in some Accountability: Invite the support of your boss or a trusted colleague, pair up with someone in your organization to support each other, or work with a coach. Research has shown that planning for accountability increases your likelihood of success in achieving your goals. You have the responsibility to be open to feedback and recognize that personal growth is a continuous journey.
Improve Your Self-Reflection Practices
Self-reflection can be an incredibly rewarding process if you give yourself the time to do it.
If you find that you have trouble keeping a self-reflection appointment, working with an executive coach may help you build more structure into the process. Introspection like this isn’t always easy, but in the end you will be a better leader, happier employee and lead a much more fulfilling life.