The Reflective Leader

Background

As a doctoral student in Global Leadership, I recently read What is global leadership? 10 key behaviors that define great global leaders (Gundling et al, 2011). It contained a great deal thoughtful research into the essential traits of global leaders and suggested that they could be used to create a foundation for developing global leaders. They suggest a wide-range of strategies from action-learning projects to relationship-building exercises and executive coaching. While I don’t discount the value of these activities, an middle-leaders are often not in a position to implement these programs. Therefore, those of us who are serious about developing ourselves as global leaders must figure out how to do it ourselves.

Guilding et al (2011) states that “For current and future business leaders who have the discipline to be the curators of their own learning, the ten key leadership behaviors outlined in this book can provide a framework for reflection and self-development” (What individual leaders can do, para 1).

Feeling inspired, I set out to create an explicit reflection process to force myself to get out of my comfort zone and grapple with each of these 10 key behaviors. I looked around at several reflection tools to help guide this process, but they all seemed focused on a single reflection on one’s leadership generally over time rather than habitually reflecting on specific experiences. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted a tool that would help me reflect on a specific, recent leadership experience, evaluate my part in it, and create simple goals for improvement. 

The following framework and reflection tool come from my synthesis of the literature and was created to meet my needs. For anyone serious about making productive reflection a regular part of their leadership practice, I hope this serves as an inspiration. 

Framework

10 Key Behaviors of Global Leaders

Gundling et al (2011) provides us with a powerful framework from which to understand global leadership. It is an excellent resource for global leaders with challenging new ideas about interpersonal relationships, compelling brain research, and extended antidotes and case studies on global leaders. They distill their research into 10 key behaviors of global leaders, and while these may be valuable attributes of any leader, they become essential in a global context. Gundling et al (2011) groups each the 10 behaviors into five pairs:

Seeing Differences: Cultural Self-Awareness & Inviting the Unknown

Closing the gap: Results through Relationships & Frame-Shifting

Opening the system: Expanding Ownership & Developing Future Leaders

Preserving balance: Adapting and Adding Value & Core Values and Flexibility

Establishing solutions: Influencing across Boundaries & Third Way Solutions

These 10 behaviors suggest several themes which are particularly valuable starting places for reflective leaders: Leadership behaviors which have been successful in the past may be counterproductive in a different global context; and global leaders must rely more heavily on others.

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Reflective Practice

Reflective practice can be defined in many ways, but is perhaps most helpfully defined as a structured way of building understanding of events, others and oneself so that new choices and actions become available (Miller, 2007). For reflective practice to have value, it must be more than just a thought exercise; it must be analytical and move one toward action (Domova & Loughran, 2009). 

Linking this type of reflection to written goals can have a powerful impact when done regularly. Cheryl J. Travers et al (2015) showed that setting growth goals and writing daily reflections on these goals not only helps one reach their goals, but perhaps just as important, helps one identify sub-goals, gain self-awareness and improve self-efficacy.

Opportunities for reflection often arise from uncertainty or frustrations that challenge one’s values (Rogers, 2001). Therefore, reflection is often related to problem-solving, but it shouldn’t be reactionary. Instead, reflection should be a regular enough habit whereby problems are reflected upon before they occur rather than simply after (Hart, 1990). 

Design Thinking

If reflective practice is most effective when it provides new, tangible solutions, then leaders might be helped by viewing their own leadership as a product. Thus, like all successful product design cycles, the way one leads should be matched to a well-understood problems. Furthermore, it should embrace an iterative process (Bedingfield, 2011). 

Here we can see a reflection cycle (Gibbs, 1998) and a commonly used product design cycle ("The Design Cycle + HF Methods", n.d.). While there are some obvious similarities, the links are rather abstract because the reflection cycle focuses on metacognition and the design cycle focuses on pragmatics.