Lifelong Learning and Development
One of the most important aspects about self-leadership is to understand what leadership actually is.
One angle which we can use to explore this is to consider the word leadership itself. The word has many connotations arising from the type of word it actually is.
- ‘To Lead’ – this is a verb, a doing word.
For example, “she was able to lead well given the circumstances” or “she had an impressive way of leading the group”.
When considered this way, it suggests that leadership is something which we do, an action we are able to take.
- ‘Leader’ – this is commonly considered a noun, a word used to describe a person.
For example “she was very much the leader of the group”.
When we consider it this was, it suggests that it is a role or position which someone can hold, therefore a word used describe particular people.
- ‘Leadership’ – this is commonly considered a noun collective noun, a word used to group things together.
For example, “he worked hard to develop his leadership skills” or “they were all part of the leadership group”.
When we consider the word this way, it suggests that leadership is a subsection of skills or people. A way of grouping tangible things together.
The fact that leadership could be both a collective noun and a verb adds slightly to the confusion as to what it actually is. However, this can be clarified by accepting a definition for the word, which we have done with the definition given by Alberto Silva.
“Leadership is the process of interactive influence that occurs when, in a given context, some people accept someone as their leader to achieve common goals.”
Within this definition, there is the word “process”, which suggests we are erring more towards it being a doing word; a verb. However, also within the definition is the word “leader” itself, which also cements that it is a word used to describe the role of a particular person, and therefore a noun.
So, when we accept that it is a process, we can begin to acknowledge (a) what it encompasses, and (b) what it achieves. As with all processes, it takes us from a collection of inputs towards a series of outcomes.
In this instance, the collection of inputs we need to consider for leadership are:
- People – this includes the level and range of abilities within the group as well as the level of initial motivation which they have.
- Situation – this includes the time at which we are leading, the preceding circumstances that led to the task, the conditions surrounding the team and task itself, as well as the interconnected nature within the team, alongside the link between the required tasks and the outside world.
- Facilities and Resources – this includes the environment within which the team must work, and the tasks must be completed, as well as the available external resources which can be used or brought in to complete the task.
- Time – this encompasses the timescale which the team must work within to complete the tasks.
Leadership therefore takes these inputs and utilises a level of influence over these. From our definition, there is an interactive influence. This therefore both impacts upon these four components, as well as considers and adapts as a result of these.
The process of leadership therefore aims to achieve one of more of the following outcomes:
- Products – this is the development of either a new, or improved product. This is a tangible outcome from the work which has been carried out by the team. Being either a physical product or a designed process or procedure. For example, it could be the development of a new piece of technology, or the fine tuning of a previously established process.
- Profits – this is a monetary reward, and it is not just an increased level of income, as it could equally be a decreased level of spending. This is a financial impact on the organisation within which the team functions.
- Achievements – this is the achievement of a goal which has been set, for example a key performance indicator such as sales, production, or savings. This is something measurable, which could be compared to on a regular basis to determine progress towards an end goal.
- Affiliation – this is a level of connection. Whether it be between people within the team, between those in the team and the wider organisation, the organisation and those outside of it, or between people and the work itself (often referred to as ‘buy-in’).
- Development/Growth – this is a level of competency or learning achieved by those in the team (and yourself as the leader). This could be improving the level of performance, the quality of the outcome or the efficiency of the production itself. This could also be an external growth or development of the individual’s skillset, the collective skillset of the team or even the organisation as a whole; be it through learning or even expansion and onboarding.
- Wider Impacts – this is a measure of the impact in which the team or organisation has on the world around them, for example environmental, economic, or social development.
As with all processes therefore, it can continuously be adapted, refined, and improved.
No process is 100% efficient, every time. This is as true of leadership as it with the combustion of fuel within an engine; there will always be some loss along the way, in terms of energy and time.
The best leaders know this, and as such they continuously look to develop themselves. They hold a high level of self-awareness, identifying their shortcomings as a leader as well as their areas of strength. They then appreciate that they need to continuously be learning and improving, in both their shortcomings as well as their areas of strength.
Success in leadership will follow the same formula as success in any other discipline. The question, however, is what our definition of success is. What does it look like? Afterall, leadership is a process not an outcome.
Within sport for example, success for a team may be winning. However, success for an individual player, who performs the actions which help to achieve the team outcome, would be to perform to the best of their ability, to reach a level of mastery.
Therefore, for leadership, success should be considered achieving mastery. Mastery in this instance would be defined in the following way:
“A comprehensive knowledge or skill in a particular subject or activity.”
A part of mastery is the measure of comprehensiveness; now this is a forever moving measure. For example, if we consider the progression of knowledge and skill within the sciences, what was once mastery within medicine in the 19th century would have been long left behind within the medical field today. As global knowledge, understanding and skill progresses so too does the level at which we would consider mastery to be. This is illustrated within the diagram below:
What we can see with this visual, is that when we stop learning and growing, improving our current level of knowledge, understanding and skill, we end up being left behind very quickly and falling far short of the standard of mastery.
Mastery in leadership therefore not a goal, it is a process of continual, life-long learning. This would require the acquisition of new knowledge, adding to an overall understanding of the practice of leadership and then the embedding of these new practices to develop a greater skillset. This is continual and therefore, with the learning of a new skill, the learning should not be considered finished and instead new knowledge should be sought out.
What therefore is learning?
By definition the process of learning is:
“A relatively permanent change in knowledge or behaviour as a result of experience.”
When we consider the avenues of learning which we have each experienced personally, these can be summarised in the following ways:
- Learning occurs as a result of intentionally seeking out new knowledge and experiences.
- Learning occurs as a result of reflecting upon prior experiences or knowledge which had previously been reviewed.
What might these sources of new knowledge be? These could be from books or online, podcasts, videos, observing others, or even talking to others. These discussions could be with either an experienced professional, or your team. Sometimes the best advice on how to lead someone, is asking them what they need from you to be as effective as they can be.
So, what’s the opposite of learning in this instance? This would be repeating the same cycle, the same mistakes, and succumbing to old habits. Now we can all feel stuck at times, and we can all experience that inner frustration which comes from repeating the same cycle again and again. This leads to the feeling of being on a hamster wheel, churning away but never feeling like you are getting anywhere or making progress.
Why might we fall into this cycle? Sometimes, things move too fast to even realise we are repeating the same mistakes, or that we are being left behind by others. We can feel like a swan floating on a current; to everyone else we have it all under control, but below the surface we are paddling away furiously, only to stay in one place.
At times, what is needed is a space to step away, slow down and work on ourselves. This act of reflection is important, as reflection is where knowledge transforms into insight and therefore understanding. Without this, the knowledge can fall away and never truly impact on our skillset and the actions we take; we fail to change and develop. However, this space for reflection becomes even more powerful when it is accompanied by a balance between challenge and support.
Whether we create this space for ourselves, or the space is facilitated by someone such as a coach. It is important for accelerated growth and development to ensure there is an appropriate level of challenge being introduced alongside the right level of support.
What sort of things can be used to introduce challenge? These could be questions which are asked, tasks or goals which are set or the act of receiving actionable feedback. These are therefore things which we could be creating for ourselves or through using an external source for such as a coach or facilitator.
Support is harder to provide ourselves, however this could be in the form of a structure or procedure which we follow rather than guidance from others. We could also look to be easier on ourselves as a form of support, giving ourselves the freedom to fail is key to growth, and therefore by giving ourselves this freedom we have created a self-supporting environment.
But what is failure?
What does it mean to fail?
Failure is often defined as a lack of success. However, a better definition of failure is:
“The result of not meeting or matching up to either internal or external expectations.”
This definition shows us that failure only occurs due to a certain standard which has been placed and has not been met. This could be a goal or target, a desired outcome, or an expected reality. We might for example, associate a repeated result as being a success, and when this repeated result is not achieved then we deem this to be failure.
The freedom to fail is key.
This is something which should be implemented in all work-place cultures. Every success, large or small, is built on a foundation of what I call “failing forwards”. When we fail, we find:
- Ways in which something cannot be achieved.
- Areas where improvements can be made.
- We have the capacity to not succeed and move forwards.
- That the world does not end when we fail.
Ultimately failure provides us with two key outcomes: learning and resilience.
The adage that we learn more through failure than we do through success is true. When we succeed, all we do is learn that the desired outcome can be achieved through this way. However, we then become reliant on this way to achieve that outcome.
When we fail, we find out elements that worked and elements which didn’t, we learn from the small successes within the failure and build upon these. As a result, we find that we are more open to the alternatives and variations which can also achieve the desired outcome.
Also, by seeing what happens as a result of failure, and finding out that it is very rarely as bad as we imagine and have therefore built it up to be in our heads, we develop a mindset which is more open to trying, even when failure is the most likely outcome. This is what builds resilience, where resilience is defined as:
“The capacity to successfully adapt to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and adjustments to external and internal demands.”
You can see here resilience requires adaptation as a result of an external experience. This is very closely related to our accepted definition of learning. As a result, in order to develop our resilience, we need to learn in the presence of challenges.
The easiest challenge to provide is a goal or task which is seemingly out of reach, or unobtainable through our current capacity. In other words, we must take ourselves out of our comfort zone. When we do this, there are two regions we can take ourselves into; the zone of proximal development which is where we are able to achieve success with the help of others, and the “out of reach” zone which is where we are currently unable to achieve success despite the help of others.
When we achieve success or failure within the zone of proximal development, the form of resilience we develop is fragile as we learn that the success or failure is shared with others. Therefore, it is easy to take comfort in this shared responsibility for the success or failure, and only take ownership for part of the failures which may come.
When we take ourselves to our out of reach zone, we learn a deeper form of resilience. We learn what we are currently capable of, how far the guidance and support of others can take us. However, we must also make sure that the narrative which we tell ourselves around any failure within this zone is only a failure due to our current capabilities, not that we will never be able to achieve success.
When we are in these challenging situations, where success is currently unachievable to us, and we learn to change our internal narrative around our capabilities and the challenging situation we are facing, we develop a stronger form of resilience. This is because we have put ourselves in a very uncomfortable situation and come out the other side intact despite the failure.
It is these situations which are often avoided, yet are essential to truly develop a strong form of resilience. There are several situations and examples where this is proven.
- The Greatest Generation: this is the generation which come between the lost generation and the silent generation. These are people who were born between 1901 and 1927 and therefore not only lived through the second world war, but were old enough to remember it. Some also lived through the first world war as well. As such, they were truly tested and put into some of the most challenging situations. By living through these repeated challenges, such as those who were conscripted, those who lived within war zones, those who lived through the blitz and even those who were evacuated from their families and moved to live with families outside of frequently targeted and bombed cities. These challenges not only tested these individuals far beyond their capabilities, but they also showed them that they could make it through to the other side, despite there being a “failure” due to a desired outcome or reality not being met.
- Special Forces Training: resilience is a key attribute for all members of the special forces around the world. As such tests and tasks are planned into the training to put recruits into this “out of reach” zone. The bar for success is set so high that it is completely impossible to achieve success. Therefore, failure is the only possible outcome. This pushes recruits to show them that they can deal with persistent failures, come through the other side and still progress. This embodies the concept of “failing forwards”. Failure may be inevitable; however, they still progress and move forwards, and in doing so they develop strong levels of resilience which most of us see as impossible.
So why are these situations often avoided? Why do we create environments and support systems which ensure people are taken to the zone of proximal development yet protect people from this “out of reach” zone? And what has this avoidance of the “out of reach” zone led to?
We often find that by avoiding these types of challenges, these situations which are “unwinnable”, we have neglected to build this strong form of resilience. We have not learnt that we are able to come through situations where failure is inevitable. As a result, our tolerance to stress is also under-developed and we can suffer from more frequent episodes of anxiety. Our stress-anxiety response is something which we have explored in the previous section and will explore again in a later section.
Returning to the challenge and support model, the correct balance between these two can achieve ‘flow’. This is often attributed to the zone of proximal development, where maximised levels of learning and progress occurs. However, this flow state is very hard to achieve and requires more than just challenge and support. True flow achieves successful outcomes on a regular basis, and therefore simply ‘knowing’ something new needs to be taken further to ‘doing’ something new, which is where understanding is developed, and new skills and habits have been formed.
So, how do we bridge this knowing-doing gap?
We first need to consider the individual as well as the environment they are in. It is not enough to just challenge our thinking and provide ourselves with a support process. As we have seen within one of our earlier sections, to develop new habits and behaviours, we need to initiate change in the way we do things. Our internal systems allow us to grow and develop towards an ideal-self, by internally measuring this against our real-self. Therefore, as we learn something new, we need to align this knowledge and any corresponding approaches with our inner values. When we do so, we can become emotionally connected to this new approach and integrate it within our internal model of out ideal-self.
Therefore, to bridge the gap between knowing something and doing that thing, actually involved an element of ownership, which we shall refer to as ‘being’. We have to personally own the change we are looking to make in order to take actions towards achieving it. This opens the important mechanism of intrinsic motivation.
An example of this might be wanting to get in to shape. We all know that getting into shape involves exercising and adjusting our diet in order to create the conditions necessary to do so. When written this way it can seem very simple and easy to do. However, it is actually much harder than that as there are multiple ‘failure points’ where we can fall back into poor habits, and ‘decision points’ where it is easy to make an unconducive choice. Let’s say we wanted to work out every morning before work, we could list out a few of our morning failure points and decision points as:
- Our morning alarm time.
- The choice to get out of bed.
- Our breakfast decision.
- The choice to go to the gym.
- Packing our gym kit.
- The act of going to the gym.
- The choice to get out the car when we get there.
- Our motivation to work out when we get there.
- Our ongoing motivation to push ourselves when we are tired.
- Our decision surrounding our post-work out food.
All these failure points and decision points rest on our intrinsic motivation to make the change necessary to achieve our goals. However, there are two approaches to making a change and self-motivating, one which is much more powerful.
- The ‘Doing’ Approach: This starts with knowing something will be better. As such we set an associated goal or target linked to this new approach. We then make a decision to change something associated with this goal or target. We regularly measure our progress against this goal or target, and our perceived measure of progress then feeds our achievement drive, which becomes the motivation behind each subsequent decision. Therefore, the change is only repeated for as long as our measure of progress is positive and substantial.
- The ‘Being’ Approach: This again starts with knowing something will be better. However, we start to align the change with our inner values. We then look to embody this change by owning it. The change, and the process of this change or act, becomes our measure; “did we do the change/act?” The drive to perform the change or act becomes the motivation as this decision now defines us. Therefore, the change is repeated regularly and forms a new habit as it is now part of who we are and who we want to be.
In our example, the ‘doing’ approach will start with something like losing x number of kilograms. This becomes a goal or target, and with this in mind we decide to have a healthy breakfast and go to the gym in the morning. This is repeated for a week as it is novel and new, and at the end of the week we see that we have made a small amount of progress on the scales, which motivates us to continue with this again the next week. However, our initial success in this first week is not replicated in the second week and motivation to continue with this change wanes. Soon, within a few weeks, the change is forgotten, and we have fallen back into our old habits.
The ’being’ approach will instead start with an exploration of why they want to get in to shape. This may be to feel healthier, to be able to play with their children without getting out of breath or tired, and to live a longer healthier life. We then align our inner values of family, spending quality time together and being healthy in our old age, with the choices of eating healthier meals and going to the gym regularly. By identifying our why and aligning the act with our values we have identified behaviours which define our new ideal-self. We aim to be a gym goer who makes healthy food choices regularly. We have now programmed our internal measure of our real-self to be this, and we will more likely act accordingly. Will we always make the right choices? No. But we will more often than not. As such, our self-evaluation measures our choices against this new ideal-self, and when we make choices aligned with this, such as a healthy breakfast and going to the gym, the process of making a conducive choice feeds our self-esteem, which is a much more powerful measure of motivation. Therefore, the change is sustained, regardless of any failures or shortcomings, as the change is part of who we are and who we want to be.
With leadership being a process itself, it is much easier to use the ‘being’ approach to any practices which could be associated with it. Therefore, when we learn a new concept or idea, we can look to align the practice with the type of leader we want to be, and in doing so own the change itself. By owning this change, we become more resilient to any shortcomings or failures associated with the change.
To make the change easier to achieve, and therefore reach success, we can follow a simple formula.
This combines everything which we have currently explored in this section.
The first thing which is necessary is an initial desire to learn and make the change itself. If we aren’t open to change then it will never happen. This requires us to acknowledge that as a leader we are never complete, we are never the ‘final product’, and that in fact there is no such thing as ‘the perfect leader’ and therefore all leaders are incomplete.
The second element is having the opportunity to try and develop. This involves being in the right place at the right time to practice in an environment where we will be both challenged and supported; including having the freedom to fail without consequence and receive actionable feedback to make improvements.
The third element is having sufficient time to practice and embed not only the change, but to also make improvements. Within this time element is the need to channel our energy towards changes which are going to make the most difference and lead us towards a more effective form of leadership. Effective leadership for example does not fixate on weaknesses and working within these areas, but instead amplifying areas of strength.
A parallel here would be a striker in football. To become the world’s best striker, they would not spend much time working on their throw-ins which they may have identified as a weak area of their game. Instead, they would work intentionally on their movement and finishing, which are areas of strength. These are areas which when maximised would allow them to be one the world’s most effective strikers.
Growth therefore is maximised from intentional work on our own areas of strength, as well as acknowledging and embracing that our weaknesses cam be complimented by the strengths within our teams. The diverse brilliance of our team is what completes our leadership profile. Yes, we can spend some time working on improving our weaknesses, however we will never become a world leader in an area of weakness, however we could become a world leader in our areas of strength.
A final concept to consider within the time spent element, is the balancing act between the total amount of available time being spent intentionally working on a skill and the returns on the development.
When we only spend a small portion of our time intentionally working on a skill, we might make small improvements, however this is merely a token gesture as we are working well within our comfort zones. When we push beyond this slightly, we find that small increases in the time devoted leads to greater and greater development in terms of overall development and the rate of development; this is what we might call compound improvements.
At the peak of the compound improvement zone is the zone of maximal development. Where exactly this lies depends on each individual and the amount of time which they have available to act on intentionally developing a skill. When we push beyond this and start devoting more and more of our time on intentional development, we find that we start getting diminished returns, the additional effort is becoming detrimental to our improvements, beyond this we get into the overworking zone where we are no longer giving ourselves time to relax, unwind and take care of ourselves which are equally important within growth and development. If we push this too far, we end up in the detrimental zone where we are actually taking steps backwards rather than forwards.
Therefore, what is important here is that we develop our self-awareness enough to identify where our zone of proximal development lies, this may take experimentation and pushing ourselves to find where our diminished returns come in, then we can ease back a little and maintain ourselves within this zone.
The fourth element within the formula is ensuring that we remain motivated to achieving success. This involves working to define our why, aligning our values, and refining our habits and behaviour to repeatedly grow. We need to be able to answer the question ‘why are you taking this journey?’ When we are able to answer this question and have aligned our inner values with the journey, we are able to build resilience to any associated shortcomings or failures. We can then change our internal narrative, allowing us to come up against unwinnable challenges and have the resilience to bounce back.
True lifelong learning and development requires us to be resilient to both working towards continued success within our zone of proximal development, but equally towards failures within our ‘out of reach’ zone, in the understanding that future growth will expand our zone of proximal development into this ‘out of reach’ zone.
One of strongest motivators, in particular within a position of leadership, is that of meaning and service. We find solace within being of service to others, providing a meaningful contribution to our community. One of the biggest causes of individuals feeling lost, having feelings of failure, and feeling insignificant, stems from living a life where they feel they are not making a meaningful contribution to society as a whole or their community. When we consider this a demotivating factor, this turns the final element of the formula negative, and as such we end up not making any progress towards success and instead, we end up further from success than when we started.
Returning to the act of service to others within our leadership position, we can make use of our development by feeding this forward and teaching others, in doing so we multiply the impact of our self-development. When we use our self-development to develop others, it becomes easier to maintain motivation as the locus of motivation has shifted from an internal locus to an external locus.
The easiest way to maintain this source of motivation is to utilise an age-old method of developing others, that is the following approach:
1. ‘I do it.’
This is the part which most people stop at. This is where we have sought out and learnt a new skill, approach or simply expanded our knowledge base around the journey we are taking towards success. At this point we are now able to do something better than before, or something new which we couldn’t do before. We have moved closer towards what we currently consider as success.
2. ‘We do it together.’
This is the part where we start to practice true leadership. Rather than simply developing our skillset and utilising this within our approach to others, we look to help develop this skill within others. We are sharing the approach with other individuals within our teams or our peers. We bring them along on the journey, sharing our new skillset or knowledge, and in doing so show them the impact of this development and how it could benefit them. We are taking the lead on this, but they are with us seeing the impact of the new action which we have taken as a result of the work which we have done developing ourselves.
3. ‘You do it while I am here to support.’
This stage is where we begin to empower others. We have worked with them to share the learning we have had. Now we are there to guide and support them whilst they own the learning too. We have helped to develop and grow them, and we are now there to allow them to implement their learning.
4. ‘You do it with someone else.’
This final stage is where we look to encourage leadership in others. Here they go out and share their learning and development with someone else. We have developed a leader rather than a follower, and the learning we have made ourselves has now multiplied and can grow exponentially. This is where the ultimate motivation comes from, as every small step and improvement we have made as a leader to ourselves, now has ever expanding ripples within the community we are a part of.
All through this process we should be making use of two powerful tools of reflection, firstly self-evaluation and secondly feedback. The power of both was discussed within the Self-Awareness and Reflection chapter. However, let’s explore how can we actively utilise these mechanisms to ensure growth and development.
The process of evaluation is a personal form of reflection, where we look to measure our actual external actions against our desired external actions, as well as the results which our actions led to. This can easily take the form of journaling, which is a very powerful tool. The journal could be a pre-written structured journal, or simply an empty notebook alongside a source of prompts which we can use for ourselves.
The most important thing here is that we are not writing a blow-by-blow recollection of what happened that day/week/month. Instead, we are looking to answer questions which are specific to uncovering the discrepancy between the desired outcome and the actual outcome along our development journey.
An example of a series of evaluating questions which could be used here are:
1. Outcome Reflection:
What was the actual outcome of your development today/this week/this month, and how does this compare to your initial desired outcome?
2. Action Evaluation:
What actions did you take today/this week/this month, and how do they align with the actions which you intended to take to achieve your desired outcome?
3. Identifying Discrepancies:
What are the key differences between your desired results and your actual results and what might have caused this gap?
4. Learning from Experience:
What key lessons can you extract from this experience and how did your mindset, approach or actions contribute to this outcome?
5. Behavioural Insights:
Were there any patterns or behaviours which you repeated that contributed to this outcome, and which of these should you improve or change?
6. Recognising Obstacles:
What internal or external obstacles may have prevented you from achieving your desired outcome, and how did you address these?
7. Identifying Growth Areas:
What specific knowledge, habits, or skills do you need to develop further in order to bridge the gap between the desired and actual outcomes?
8. Future Strategy:
What will you do differently next time to improve your results, and what steps can you take now to prepare for this change?
9. Commitment to Growth:
What is one key action which you can commit to today, that will push you closer to your desired goal and support your long-term development towards success?
The act of seeking feedback is where we engage with others within our development journey. We all have blind spots and engaging others within our development journey looks at helping to identify these blind spots as well as becoming aware of the result of our external actions. At times what we learn, and implement, can have a different impact than the one which we are looking to achieve and believe will come. We may for example believe that our actions have had a particular impact on our teams, when the actual result of our actions was different to the one which we perceived it to be.
A good approach would be a 360-degree feedback mechanism. Some of the questions which could be used of those within our team, our peers and our superiors could be:
1. Leadership Effectiveness:
How would you describe my effectiveness as a leader in recent decisions or initiatives?
What strengths stood out, and where do you see room for improvement?
2. Decision-Making Clarity:
When I make decisions, do you feel that I clearly communicate the rationale and expected outcomes?
How could I improve in ensuring transparency or alignment in decision-making?
3. Adaptability:
In situations where unexpected challenges arose, how well do you feel I adapted and guided the team?
What could I do differently to be more flexible or proactive in my leadership approach?
4. Empowering Others:
How successful have I been in empowering others and delegating responsibility?
Are there areas where I could be more effective in fostering trust and encouraging autonomy within the team?
5. Communication Style:
How would you describe my communication style, especially when handling leadership decisions?
Do you feel that I’m approachable and open to feedback, or are there ways I could enhance communication with the team?
6. Emotional Intelligence:
How do I handle emotionally charged or high-pressure situations as a leader?
Do you feel that I show empathy and understanding, or are there areas where I could better manage my emotional responses?
7. Support for Development:
How well have I supported your growth and development as part of the team?
Are there specific actions I could take to better mentor, coach, or provide guidance for your professional development?
8. Conflict Resolution:
When conflicts or disagreements arise, how effectively do I mediate or resolve them?
How could I improve my approach to creating a more collaborative and conflict-resilient team environment?
9. Vision and Alignment:
How well do you think I articulate the overall vision and align the team’s efforts toward that goal?
Are there ways I could enhance how I inspire and motivate the team to stay aligned with our shared objectives?
10. Self-Development Commitment:
From your perspective, do you see evidence of my commitment to self-development and leadership growth?
How can I better demonstrate that I am working on improving my leadership skills and decisions?
These feedback seeking questions will help to highlight our leadership profile within the eyes of those we worth with. The answers of which can be very revealing. How we utilise these questions could depend on the level trust and psychological safety which we have built within our team.
Should we not have a sufficient level to guarantee honest feedback directly, we could utilise these questions in an anonymous way. This anonymous approach could help individuals feel more secure in responding to them in an honest way, and by publicly feeding back to the group what we have found and what changes we will look to make, and following through on these, we would help to build this trust and psychological safety.
Christopher Waters
Founder of LAMDA Solutions