5.3.8 Leadership And Reflection

Reflective practice is nowadays seen as essential for effective work with vulnerable populations. This Sub-Chapter will look at leadership and reflection from a slightly different perspective – more akin to the phenomenon of reciprocity that we came across in the Chapter on Anthropology.

So what is reflection?

We discussed symmetry already and the common understanding of our reflection is that what we see when we look into a mirror!

I, the looker, and my image are symmetrical along the axis of symmetry (remember that term from the symmetry link above) which is the face of the mirror.  This, of course, is my reflection – that which is reflected back to me by the polished face of the mirror – or the still lake as we saw in the Chapter where I mentioned the not-very-reflective-Narcissus.

In the human/psychological world, I will assign a slightly different meaning to reflection.

I will define it as the ability (and willingness – which is very important) to consider what impact our behaviour has on both the physical and human environment, take responsibility for it, and then consider the response by the environment – particularly other people.  

There is a cause and effect that is intrinsic to this description.  The effect is that which is reflected back to us as a result of our action – which is the cause.

This is a little more complex than seeing our perfect image in a mirror (our reflection) because we don’t know for certain how the environment (or the other person) is going to re-act when we act.

Let us consider two rules – one from the world of physics and one from our religious tradition.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction is Newton’s First Law.  Translating this to humanity, (and suspending, for a moment, Jesus‘ exhortation to offer the other cheek if we are slapped) it could mean if I hit you – you hit me back. Or it could mean if I’m nice to you you’ll be nice to me. Both of these statements might have an element of truth in them – but because of the complexity of the human being they are not always true.

And from our religious tradition we also have do unto others as you would like them to do to you. This is all very well – but what if the other doesn’t like what you like?

So while reflection in the physical world (the mirror) is precise and exact and certain, reflection in the human sphere is full of uncertainty. 

As a very simple kick-start on our discussion on reflection I ask you to consider whether people who have the ability and willingness to reflect are happy and those who do not or struggle a lot with it tend to be somewhat discontented with life.

I ask this question because it came to me when I considered the developmental aspect of reflection.

At three years of age we have not developed the capability to reflect. During what we call the terrible-threes we assume that the entire universe should bow to our demands and if it doesn’t it’s like a disaster – metaphorically of course.

By seven (which, when I was going to school, used to be called the age of reason), in normal developmental trajectory, we’ve learned a bit about reflection and that it’s good for us.  That is, reflection is associated with getting our needs met and/or accepting that we cannot always get our needs met. This is an important developmental stage in respect of acceptance of reality and taking responsibility and there are associated good feelings about it.

In teenage years we suspend reflection again but this is for different reasons that we do it at three.  This time we are desperately trying to forge our own identity and place in the world, rebelling against our parents and the establishment in general.

I believe that if we are overly punished as children and/or conditioned to believe that the world is hierarchical and top-down at our maturational stages, we’ll struggle a bit in learning the very important developmental skill of reflection.

This may be because of the protective armour (that we described in a previous Chapter) we construct to defend ourselves, or, in the top-down case, our ready acceptance of myth.  When we reflect, we are a little bit vulnerable – because the result of our reflection could be disadvantageous for ourselves.

Just as a simple example, if I reflected on the implications of buying cheap clothes that are coming from a factory where children are exploited my conscience might be aroused and I might choose to buy only those clothes that are made in a factory where people are not exploited – and then have to pay a lot more!

Or if I as a community leader (because this Chapter is all about Leadership) reflect on the implications of making a decision to get something done quickly that rides roughshod over the wishes of people who are living in the community – or, indeed, staff that I am leading- I might experience fear that 1): my authority will be eroded, or 2): my lack of knowledge will be shown up, or 3): I won’t get credit for whatever it is I was going to do.  

So sometimes reflection can be very challenging!

When I was young history was all about wars – from Ancient Rome to our own War of Independence. Who won, who lost, how many countries were subdued and how great Empires were established and, indeed, in our own case, how we fought for our freedom.

Because of this, the word leader (to me anyway) conjured up images of men (or women – but usually men) who led mighty armies on great ventures that changed the map of the world.

As I got a little more informed, I realised that most of the mighty armies were led by leaders who crushed dissent and imposed their will on others who blindly followed because of fear or reward.

Looking back now, I would describe such leaders as quick-thinking fast processors, who outsmart their opponents in their rise to the top, or, are born into power, (i.e. inherit it instead of being elected) on continual alert for and suspicious of any alternative view that might threaten their position.

Getting away from wars, I considered great sporting managers who motivate small groups of very talented (and sometimes very immature) young men and women, cohering their energy into a force that wins championships, to be leaders.  Or, perhaps, business people who start with nothing but an idea and through force of personality and salesmanship build a corporate empire.

And then I realised that there was more to history than wars! And leadership was not all about death and destruction – or, indeed, winning championships or building businesses.

I realised that good people like Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King motivated millions by their sheer honesty and goodness, and appealed to people’s better nature, channelling their anger at being treated unjustly into world-changing non-violent movements.

Unlike the cruel leaders who led great armies, such people did not really fear criticism or dissent because they were confident enough both in the goodness of their message and their own powers of persuasion to know that people would follow them.

How about reflection? Well, for me, reflection was for poets and philosophers, artists and dreamers and people who are good at being but who get little or nothing done.

Such people – according to general opinion, fill our cultural or entertainment gap, we enjoy their talents and generally appreciate their intellect or creativity, but we know that they couldn’t feed us or make anything that would actually be useful for us.  

Traditionally, it was considered that busy people who have to do a lot don’t have time for day-dreaming, ruminating, spending time with themselves doing nothing, and reflection.

Well, nowadays they do!  Look at the growth in the popularity of mindfulness, meditation, yoga etc. for all types of people including busy managers, executives, and leaders of all sorts.

And obviously they believe that their leadership will benefit from some reflection but – like a lot of traits I mention – while it might be a luxury or diversion for some types of leadership, it is essential in community leadership.

And the more hurt the community, the more reflection is needed.

When we speak of leadership and reflection in the context of the Focus Group, the type of reflection might be a little different to mindfulness or day-dreaming – though they are important.

Remember that we want to reward risk taking, creativity and even perhaps a little bit of non-conformity!  I probably don’t need to say that the day-to-day work can be hectic with little time for reflection – there always seem to be so many things to be done, all of which are urgent.

Yet I believe that time taken out to reflect is one of the most important elements of good enough community leadership.

Remember also that we want to include people who might have different views, norms, values etc. and I am sure that you will agree that that one of our more important tasks is to meld all the diverse skills and views in our team into a coherent whole so that the energy available from the whole (yes you’ve guessed it) is greater than the sum of the individual parts. 

Given that reward of risk taking and the coherence of different views/talents etc. are both priorities, I believe that a very important purpose of reflection is to monitor what is happening to me when I am faced with the challenge of someone on the team wanting to take a risk or when someone expresses a view that is at variance with what I believe myself.

If I do not know what is happening inside (i.e. how I am feeling), I will probably default to the familiar or the ordinary, and on the one hand might miss out on something exciting, or, indeed, plunge into something with little forethought as to the consequences.

The next post will examine the implications of my awareness of what is being reflected back to me in such situations.

Reflection has many functions for leaders in organisations that support our Focus Group and I have described some of them above.

Because reflection assists imagination, we may use it to imagine a new direction for ourselves, for a person who seeks help, or for our organisation.

It also assists the growth of wisdom, which can propagate through a team the same as anything else.  If we as leaders are guardians of the ethos – so to speak – we need reflection to ensure that we are more of what we should be and less of what we shouldn’t be.

Or in our team, we can imagine a new way of doing things, or looking at things – i.e. seeing the same things through different eyes.  Reflection promotes vision, and promoting a vision requires confidence, the skills to argue for ideas to win people over to a particular way of thinking, and the moral courage to stand up for the vision. 

Implementation of a vision involves taking a risk as well as bringing people on board. And it also involves honouring and making sense of the dissenting voices or the angry reactions.

I love idealism and its fellow traveller enthusiasm.  I believe that idealism is using our imagination in action.  I stated earlier that sometimes I have there must be a better way moments, and these moments – I have no doubt – come from the idealise – imagine process, with reflection assisting.

Now before I go on I would like to distinguish idealism from ideology and perfectionism.  There is no ideal world really.  I have referred elsewhere to how harmful the pursuit of perfectionism is, and that good enough is what we need to aim for in ventures involving humans.  (And terrible harm has been done to people by leaders pursuing the perfect ideology).

If I am idealistic I have the ability and willingness to imagine something that, perhaps, might not be practically attainable now but nonetheless acts as inspiration for change for the better.

It is very sad that in some workplaces we have to leave our idealism at the door when we go to work, and it should not be so.

I believe that reflection assists in 1): keeping idealism and enthusiasm alive in teams, and, 2): (very important) ensuring that our own idealism and enthusiasm is based on reality – and doesn’t leave people behind.

Even if it sometimes needs to be reined in a little bit it is much easier to do that when it is there in abundance than to be constantly pressurising people to do things.

Also, allowing idealism to flourish is almost always a win-win situation because most people love idealism, common sense, and the passion that seems to bind them together. And, like, enthusiasm, it is infectious.

I believe that keeping sparks of idealism alive is an antidote to the cynicism that is so easy to default to when we come up against situations where big organisations seem to care more about image, size, status, efficiency etc. than they do about people who are very hurt.

Good enough community leadership involves affirming qualities that will help us manage, motivate, challenge, support, make good enough decisions, and include.

We cannot include if we don’t reflect on where we are or how we are with others, or what is going on inside ourselves as we make judgements on who is good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, worthy or unworthy, and above all who is progressing and who is not.

Perhaps (and I am only going on what I have observed here) many people with leadership ambition in the Pillars who like to follow the ‘reflect – symbolise – imagine – create’ path (some people might call this the road less travelled) have a low tolerance of frustration. They find it difficult to wait around for the system to change how it does its business.

Others either have more acceptance of how things are, afford reflection a lesser status than fast processing, or, indeed, are happy that everything is working well. So advancement involves perpetuating what is safe for the system, i.e. keeping the predictable going, [1] being risk averse, and, generally, rewarding conformity.

But we can all choose to be different, and this is where reflection comes in.

[1]. As one writer put it once – I forget who – I read the expression and I thought it summed things up well.

In this Sub-Chapter on reflection, and in the context of Leadership, I would like to explore multitasking.

Multitasking is defined as being able to do two or more tasks at the same time, rather than having to finish one task before we start another.  I didn’t really hear the term multitasking until about ten years ago. I first heard it when people were describing differences between women and men – there are jokes about how women can multitask and men can’t.

I don’t think that I’m a great multitasker; I generally make mistakes unless I concentrate on one of them and leave the other till the first one is finished.  I’m fairly good at mixing and matching tasks but not doing them at the same time.

It may well be true that women can multitask – but for the purposes of this Sub-Chapter, when I talk about incorporating reflection into leadership and decision making – because the majority of tasks involve decision-making – I am going to come down on the side of recommending that, for success in any venture which is of any importance at all, we need to do one thing at a time, and I believe that this is true whether we are male or female.

The reason I believe that we need to give decisions of importance our full attention is that when we decide on something, we need to use our unique human ability and intelligence to symbolise, and imagine what the result of our decision will be.

That is, how will the environment change after our decision, who will it affect, what consequences will there be for us and others, and our organisation.

Now I don’t propose that we do this for every routine tittle-tattle decision that we make every day – but this post is not really about those kinds of decisions.

I don’t believe that we can imagine outcomes, and the ramifications and implications of outcomes unless we can concentrate and allow time to reflect and stay-on-task.  And I don’t believe that this is possible when we are constantly interrupted and being called away to do a different task.

If we were working on some task that required concentration, and someone was walking in our door every 30 seconds to tell us something, and then demand a response from us, we’d soon let him know that we were trying to focus and politely ask to give us some time alone.

But this is exactly what happens with emails, the internet in general, and in particular social media, as we are constantly interrupted by some message or notification or other, and as we fiddle with our smart-phone, (or whatever gadget is at hand) diverting our attention to a task that can’t wait even one hour.

And I believe that our unconscious has a way of tricking us into avoiding difficult decisions.

This is because concentration and reflection go hand in hand.  When we are distracted I believe that we find it harder to think deeply, and, importantly, harder to stay with difficult questions which will undoubtedly come our way because we are in a leadership position.

A distraction, (or a thought that emerges because of a distraction) appears to be attractive at particular times of stress in decision making. We find a way of removing our attention from the unpleasant task to the task that distracts us, and offers us some gratification (or even, sometimes, entertainment). 

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I say all the above in the full knowledge that as we invent or develop something we seem to be able to adapt to it fairly quickly.  Perhaps a younger generation will not be as affected by constant interruption as I or others in my generation, as they will have got used to it growing up and integrated distraction into their daily work.

Time will tell – it usually does!

On the subject of reflection, I’d like to ponder on the differences between therapeutic intervention and leadership.

Many of us who are community leaders have been helping people in distress, many of whom may be in our Focus Group, for a long time.  We may have learned along the way that when helping someone the first thought is important.  This is because it is often the thought that the person seeking help would normally dismiss, suppress or simply pass over, and think to be unimportant.

It is revealing and relevant at the same time.

We even have a name for a first thought that is then dismissed as being irrelevant.  It is called a Freudian Slip, after the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who proposed that we bury things in our unconscious and then they slip out in casual conversation – revealing a truth that is much closer to what is real for us than the rehearsed, prepared statement.

Practitioners who have experience will allow for this, (or not, whichever the case may be) in strategies for helping people.  And because of our training in this field, where we feel that our gut reaction is always of value, we may also feel that our own first thought is important and place a lot of emphasis on its usefulness.

But in making an important decision, as leaders have to do, our first thought might not always be the one that will work out well.  It may emanate from deep in our unconscious, but in so doing there is a danger that it may be generated by our emotional reaction to the subject under consideration, or our – as yet unconsidered – prejudice.

However when we are patient and consider different aspects as well as allowing different parts of our mind come into play, we have  a better chance of coming up with thoughts that are developed, mature and possibly a lot more helpful.  The reason for this is that the brain is always making connections so it can take us by surprise if we are open to it.

We need time to think about the second thought too, and ponder previous mistakes, recognise them, and curtail the natural desire that we all have to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.  

In my opinion (and experience) a golden rule of leadership is not to go with the first thought – always allow the problem to ferment away in the unconscious.  It’s the same process that helps us figure out a solution to a crossword puzzle, or remember the name of a film star that we can’t think of, but that comes to us the next day.

Leaders everywhere who take their responsibilities seriously often agonise over many different dilemmas involving competing priorities and while advice and support can be sought and acted upon in decision making the decision is the leader’s and the leader’s alone.

Finally in this Sub-Chapter on Reflection I would like to note the difference between reflection and continually looking inward.

Reflection is necessary to ponder on our doubts, difficult decisions, questions, and dilemmas of leadership, not to lose ourselves in some self-serving short-sighted obsession with a particular issue.

In reflecting we may allow doubts, dilemmas or new perspectives, to emerge. Reflection assists us in addressing them directly, honestly, and courageously, and seeking answers that are congruent with our value systems and the value systems of our organisations.

The best answers are often found when we rid ourselves of distractions ….. and peer pressure.

Reflection seems to have found its way into our lives.  The idea of young people taking a gap year is surely a sign of this, and it is also, of course, a sign of our overall wealth and prosperity.

I am sure that those who toiled endlessly to scrape a living on the land or went down into the mines to extract coal to earn a pittance to feed their families had little appetite to part-fund (or, more likely, fully fund) their older teens or young twenty-somethings through a gap year!

Nowadays it is seen to be a way of taking time out to reflect, to find out what we might be good at, or what interests us, so that we can get a job and have a career in something that we enjoy.

And who could argue with that? 

Leaders need to take time to find gaps in our busy schedules so that we can find ourselves, and focus on our own thoughts, removing ourselves from others’ wisdom and/or others’ convenient truths.

A bit like the white noise that I described earlier, taking time alone removes us from the clutter of living so we can hear our own thoughts and voice.

And sometimes gaps can be found in real time.

One way that I find gaps is to do routine tasks – tasks that do not require too much cognitive or emotional energy.  I find that doing such tasks also assists in the humility department.