What would you invest to dramatically increase the power of your leadership and the personal satisfaction of leading? Would you spend a week in a workshop? Travel to a distant city? You may not need to do any of those. Developing a practice of reflection and journaling has the potential to take you far on your leadership journey.
The past three months have been a time of intense introspection for me. As a result, I have come to know myself as a leader in a deeper way. These new insights allow me to bring more of myself to my leadership and thus to lead more powerfully.
Drawing on my own journey, I want to share with you some thoughts about how you can deepen your own leadership through reflection. Reflection and journaling allow you to learn from yourself over time, to see how your leadership is changing and where you might want to go next on your leadership journey.
To maximize the benefits of a reflection practice, you’ll need to balance the opposite poles of three aspects of your reflection. Each of these aspects has a somewhat paradoxical quality. Embracing the paradox gives your reflection more depth and power. The three aspects to balance in your reflection practice are questioning, timing, and talking. In each of these, it’s not that one way is better but that you’ll get more from your reflection if you balance different ways of doing it.
Balancing Questioning:
Questioning concerns what you choose to reflect on and brings into focus the balance between freedom and structure. Sometimes it’s useful to simply reflect on and write about whatever is floating around in your mind. Perhaps you wake up puzzled over a failed communication at work yesterday. Let those thoughts and feelings flow out through your pen. Don’t edit or control it; just let it flow. At other times, you’ll want to reflect on a specific topic or question. Perhaps it’s a question from something you’ve read, an issue raised by a mentor or coach, or anything else that seems to be working on you. By allowing your mind free rein at times and guiding it gently at other times, you’ll blend the need to be with where you are and the need to extend yourself in a specific direction to move forward.
Balancing Timing:
Timing is about the balance of consistency and flexibility. Regular reflection is a discipline like meditation or prayer or fitness. As such, the practice will progress more rapidly if there is a regular time set aside for reflection. Still, there will be times when something will be bubbling up for you and you’ll benefit by finding time (even 10 minutes) to write about what’s coming up or what’s puzzling you. Embrace the paradox of being both consistent and flexible.
Balancing Talking:
The balance I’m referring to here is the balance between solitude and community. While the majority of your reflection will be a conversation with yourself, your practice will deepen considerably if there are trusted friends or colleagues with whom you can reflect in community. I’m not talking about help or advice but about a place for mutual, open-hearted sharing. Sharing with someone with whom you can allow yourself the vulnerability of uncertainty. This may be conversations with individual friends or it may happen in the context of a group retreat where both solitude and sharing are supported. Seton Cove’s “Leadership Pilgrimage” and Ed Perry’s “Life of Meaning” workshop have each been such a place for me.
My own reflection this summer has given me deeper insights into my gifts and challenges as a leader as they relate to creativity, organizational culture, vulnerability, consensus building, compassion, risk taking, and much more. If you’re serious about becoming a stronger leader, about having a bigger impact, then commit to reflecting daily for 60 days. It won’t cost you a dime and you can judge the results for yourself.
A Personal Example of Balancing the Paradoxes
Here is a brief glimpse into my leadership journey this summer to give you an example of being in a dynamic balance for these aspects of a reflective practice.
In July, I spent 5 weeks of focused, intense reflection in the “Life of Meaning” workshop. The assignments provided tons of structure – questions to write about, things to read and assignments to prepare. Thus, during those five weeks, my usual balance in questioning tipped far towards structure. At the same time, my usual balance in timing tipped way toward flexibility. While I generally journal in the early morning, I found I needed large blocks of time and took them wherever my calendar permitted. In the balance of talking, the dial on both the conversations with myself and conversations with others got turned up. One particular week before the Life of Meaning session after having spent many hours in solitary reflection and journaling, I felt a strong need for a sounding board. I reached out to two trusted friends and both were able to have coffee with me at the same time on short notice. (Such a calendar luxury!) We met at the local Starbucks and had one of the deepest, most impactful conversations of my leadership journey to date, which we now refer to as our “Starbuckification.” (Thank you, Melissa and Kevin!)
Ideas for Questions to Journal About
Poetry is a good source. Pull out a favorite collection of poetry and sit with one of the poems for a bit. Questions or topics will likely bubble up. Write them down as they surface without judging or editing. That will give you a nice starter collection. Another good source is Brenee Brown’s new book “The Gifts of Imperfection.” Worth a read and guaranteed to give you some questions to ponder that will deepen your leadership.