Tag: REflection

Leadership

First Principles Based Leadership Requires First Order Learning

Premise I read this post by John Hunter, which was originally published in 2014 but is still very relevant. In this blog, he shares one key insight from the work of Deming – managing (or leading) can’t be taught (prescriptive) and needs to be learnt (experiential). First Order Learning Vs Second Order Learning One needs to learn to lead by leading and to manage by managing. We can learn from our own experience (first order learning) or from the experience of those who have gone before us (second order learning). When we learn from our own experience, we start to […]

Leadership

First Principles Based Leadership – Cultivating Self Awareness

In my last post, I shared the importance for leaders to work on five different kinds of awareness (self, social, cultural, contextual and systemic). Today and in the next four posts, I will delve into how can we go about cultivating and improving each one of these awareness. Today, let’s explore how we can go about cultivating and improving our self awareness. Any and all deep dive into self awareness can only start by delving deeper into our consciousness. We can do this in a few different ways. Meditation We could use meditation to access our sub-conscious. As many seers […]

Leadership

Elevate Your Leadership Effectiveness

Premise One of the core responsibilities we have as leaders is to think about our business and continuously reflect on how we can improve the overall effectiveness of our leadership, our teams and therefore the business. Here are four questions that we need to reflect upon on a regular basis, and when done well, they can help elevate the effectiveness of our leadership: Questions to ask Yourself Regularly 1} What am I not paying attention to? Why? What can I do about it? 2} What is being left unsaid by my team members? Why? What can I do about it? […]

Leadership

Good Leadership needs High Level of Self Awareness

Good Leaders continually work on improving their self awareness. They want to understand what they do, why they do it, what drives them, what are their ambitions and why do they aspire to achieve them. As Pema Chodron indicates, They are not afraid to look at themselves honestly, gently and from time to time. They try to understand what are their strengths and weaknesses; what are their blindspots and biases. They do so by reflecting on their actions, by seeking feedback from all the relevant stakeholders. They are willing to go to their dark places, so that their teams may […]

Leadership

Learning How to Learn

We live in a world which is constantly changing and if we really want to stay relevant, we need to find a way to learn new things (technology, process, business models, behaviours, skills, etc) all the time. So, it pays to get better at learning or get better at learning how we learn. Each one of us learns in a different way. Some of us learn better by reading. Some of us by watching videos. Some by getting our hands dirty by trying something. And some others through conversation and by apprenticeship. What we are attempting to learn also has […]