Leadership without honest self-reflection is no leadership but ego driven gain
If there is anything I wish for humanity to develop, than it is the ability to self-reflect. It is an essential element for personal growth, better relationships, less conflicts, liberated living and transparent leadership. Or in short, gain the awareness what drives your behaviour and actions, and take the bold and often quite humbling decision to improve yourself.
In todays world, where we are bombarded with news flashes, digital input, opinions, new ideas, new technologies and what not. Who are you in all this turmoil? What is true for you? How are you influenced? Are you even aware you are influenced? Where is your ego protecting you? Where is status and outer confirmation driving your actions and decisions? Where do you copy the idea of your colleague without knowing? Are you aware of your unconscious behavioural actions?
Answering these questions requires the skill of self-reflection. A skill not many of us have learned while growing up. What we have developed are ways to protect ourselves not to feel pain or discomfort. That is where the ego keeps you in false control over your life and away from your true self.
Some scientist say that not every one of us is wired to be self-reflective, that might be true for some. What matters if you are self-reflective?
Too often we hide behind scientific conclusions, or we hide behind ‘but they can’t, so I don’t have to …’. And that is exactly where self-reflection begins. The willingness to leave everyone else with their challenges, behaviour and wiring, and look at yourself, your behaviour, your beliefs and your thoughts. The willingness to figure out if you can develop this.
Willingness is key here
For willingness we need a motivator, a why. What is there to gain, would the mind ask?
The simple answer is: you need it in order to grow as a person and become a more complete human being, for yourself. You need it to be a good leader, parent, child, spouse, friend, colleague.
Here is the catch22: we all believe we are good as we are. We all believe our mirror image we like to see. We all believe the other, the circumstance, the bad luck, is most of the time responsible for ‘having’ it wrongly. Or we even believe that nothing can be changed. So why bother?
Just imagine the following
· The smile on your spouse’ face the moment you admit you wrong doing and explain how you have self-reflected and gained new insights.
· The big sigh you can feel in your organisation, the moment you vulnerably share your role in the project and how you’ve learned from it
· The contagiousness amongst friends when you start to present yourself more vulnerable and share your new insights. Your conversations and connection will change.
· The relief on your child’s face when you admitted you snapped for the wrong reasons, positively confirm your child’s behaviour and sincerely connect in that moment again.
· The spaciousness you feel insight you, expanding and expanding, each time you become more honest with yourself. This one is hard to put in words but self-reflecting is de-armouring your heart and opens your heart. It will open you up to other senses.
This all doesn’t have to be heavy and intense. Our newly gained insights can be brought with lightness and humour!
‘I was wrong’ and move on is not self-reflecting
Self-reflecting is pausing and ask yourself why did I behave like this? Most often it is an automated pattern you are hardly aware of at first. What was my role? Why did it hurt me? What feeling did I ignore. What thoughts came up. What do I believe here to be true. What am I forcing? What am I fearing? What am I avoiding?
The list with self-reflecting questions is endless.
It is not only ‘on the wrong doing side’. Self reflecting on your positive behaviour is equally valuable. Just like we have automated patterns to hide pain, we can also have a lack of self awareness on the qualities we are naturally good at. Confirming your qualities through self-reflecting will not make you arrogant, and in case it does, you need to reflect on it some more ;-).
We all prepare our strength and weaknesses for any job interview, but isn’t that just a high level overview with the purpose to get a job? And once we are hired, are we still aware of our list and do we show our strengths naturally to be at service to our job and do we actively improve our weaknesses? Once a year reflection moment with your manager doesn’t quite do it. That has little to do with the depth of self reflection I am talking about here.
Self-reflecting is a skill just like we use language to communicate
Self reflection is an ongoing element in your daily life to expand yourself to the natural version of you.
It requires self observation (with quite some radical honesty) regularly, to learn about your thoughts, reaction and behaviour. And you know what, 90% of self-reflection is your individual inner process. It is your inner dialogue and willingness to release what doesn’t serve you anymore. In the examples above it showed more like a open sharing, but that is not needed at all. What matters is that, over time, your thoughts are changing, your behaviour is changing, you feel more at ease, you release your controlling patterns, you know more about you true values and vision, and you feel more empowered to share your ideas even when that is very different from your friends and colleagues. In other words, over time you will become authentically who you are.
When you learn to self reflect and ask yourself these questions, you will see that you have built defense mechanism that actually don’t serve you. You will also learn that many ideas and beliefs are not yours to begin with, but are adapted by innocently believing information while growing up and interacting in our societies.
Self reflecting will guide you to live from within: that is where true happiness is to be found
The path of self-reflecting can be a bit rocky, and it is not done in a day. It can give discomfort breaking through habits that felt safe. However the reward is beyond what you can imagine today: true happiness, empowered, invincibility, truly positive view on life, no anxiety or stress, peaceful, and best of all you will create a life that totally fits with you. Once we experience the benefits, self-reflecting becomes part of your way of living.
Within organizations today, self-reflecting is in its infant stage. The thing is, we don’t have to roll out self-reflection in another transformation program, because that doesn’t offer the needed safe space. All we need to be willing to do, is work with it for ourselves: to become that better colleague, a better leader, to work with less stress and more ease, to let go of your controlling behaviour that puts your colleague down. And perhaps to be honest with yourself that the corporate structure is not making you so happy and it is time to move on.
Don’t make self reflection a big thing. Just be curious and open. Ask the self reflecting questions at the end of your day, reflect back on your own behaviour. Ask a friend or loved one how they look at a certain thing about you. Take their comment openly and just reflect. Over the years, I experienced that some comments has taken me quite a while to see what they meant, with other comments I could easily release a silly pattern. I also learned that part of their comment is their projection onto you. So don’t take everything persponally. Learn to play with it. It is actually quite interesting to observe how difficult it is to be honest with ourselves. Self-reflection is like training an inner muscle to become authentic, grounded, with a straightened spine and an open view.
Through self reflecting we create a positive ripple effect. Be(come) that new self aware leader and you will make it far in all areas of your life.