Leadership is a muscle.
The best leaders train their leadership daily. And measure regularly their leadership health and fitness from the perspective of those on the receiving end of leadership.
(P)reflection is a powerful workout to strengthen your leadership muscle. (P)reflection happens when leaders take time before, during and after their leadership work to think deeply about the leader they want to become in the future. How their leadership can contribute even more to individual and collective success.
(P)reflection can have many forms, for example my mentor Marshall Goldsmith is famous for his daily questions. This HBR article describes including all involved to “excavate the deeper causes of good results and bad.” This simple, free TrackingCoachApp has helped me to collect over 10,000 (p)reflections from the successful leaders I am privileged to accompany.
The After Action Review is extremely simple and highly effective. Every leader I work with contracts to complete (p)reflection monthly. This real example is shared courtesy of a successful leader who wrote this (p)reflection in about 15 minutes. His (p)reflections paid off when his colleagues recognized and acknowledged his leadership growth in a mini survey based on his 2 growth goals.
1. What did you set out to do?
Based on the results of my Leadership Circle 360° Assessment I focused on two leadership growth areas:
a. Leading with purpose
b. Connecting individually to achieve our goals together
2. What actually happened and how did it happen?
I established monthly FeedForwards with colleagues to collaborate and advance my leadership. These sessions, combined with a weekly check-in with my coach, accelerated the feedback loops and helped to fine-tune my growth. The short cycle times and consistency of the feedback, driven by situational analysis, gave a context for my leadership growth so that I could further leverage the fundamentals of Stakeholder Centered Leadership.
Additionally, I collected my leadership reflections each day with the TrackingCoach app. This is a fantastic tool for cataloging the reality of daily work – capturing the ups and downs each day and providing a catalyst for reflection and self-correction.
3. What insight did you gain from the actions you have taken?
I was impressed by the value generated through the monthly FeedForwards – by simply giving others the opportunity to give inputs. Usually, it was a simple idea the others always had in the back of their mind but never had the venue to share or were too shy to share but felt comfortable in this venue. Sometimes it was a reflection on a specific incident. Regardless, the wave of insights helped to tune the cogs of my leadership growth.
4. What are you going to do to maximize this investment in time and money?
I will continue FeedForwards and TrackingCoach – they have proven to be a catalyst for change and mutual growth. The positive energy that the FeedForwards have created is palpable – my colleagues and I both see a clear value in the sessions. The outcome of this is continuous leadership growth – to accelerate progress in the company, to lead with vision, to increase team happiness, and to grow the company and the team together.
What examples of (p)reflection have benefitted you and your organization the most? Please share your example to inspire others!
Bill Zeeb and the infinitas team help successful leaders and teams to be recognized and acknowledged by their coworkers as measurably more effective in 12 months or less. Guaranteed. Bill’s passion is to find and share a better way to leadership growth leveraging the scientific method and a highly structured and highly time efficient process proven with hundreds of CEO’s. A US citizen, who has lived and worked in Europe since 1990, Bill loves skiing 100+ days in one season, competing in extreme triathlons (first ever podium Alpes d’Huez 2019) and working with leaders who are ready to do the hard work to achieve extreme leadership and business growth, to better serve their teams and become better ancestors.
