Transcript

JEAN HARTLEY:

It can be quite hard to review yourself, in terms of your own leadership practices and purposes. But it's really important to do that, and to be engaged in continual monitoring of yourself in a low key way, to really think about where might you not be performing very well as a leader? Or, where could you improve? And there's lots of data- probably lots of data in your environment that will help you about that.

So it might be the body language of other people. You can sense they're not quite engaged with you. Or it may be that the dynamics of a meeting don't feel quite right. Maybe there's some rather long pauses, or people are reluctant to speak, or only the most powerful people in the room speak. Or it may be that your poor leadership is revealed because you have an angry clash with somebody. Or it may be that everybody agrees to what should be done, but somehow it doesn't get done. What's sometimes called active passivity.

So I think keeping monitoring of yourself, of the people that you're interacting with, and thinking about what's my purpose as a leader? And how far am I able to achieve that? That continual reviewing of yourself can be really important.

But you may also want to engage in other ways of reflecting. You might want to, for example, keep a reflective journal. Quite a lot of experienced leaders will use their journey home at the end of the day, whether by train or car or whatever, to just reflect on the day's events, and to think quite critically of themselves. How did I do in that? Did I put across this idea in the right way? Could I have been kinder or more diplomatic to that person? Should I have been firmer with somebody else? How far are we with the task that we're trying to achieve?

So that sense of self-reflection is very good.

And then, in addition, you may want to draw in other people to help you in your self-reflection. Maybe you have somebody who can act as a mentor to you. Or maybe you have a coach. Or you might want to participate in an action learning set around leadership to help you go over and reflect on and analyse situations that you've been in, so that you can try and improve for the next time.