[Practical Self Management Intensive] Week 3 Reflection _Transition to the new work system; (3) Deliberate Development
0/ Rethink Leadership
As long as we work, perhaps someday we would become a team leader or a leader of an organization.
For me, the keys to being a good leader were showing powerful charisma to make people follow me, attaining knowledge in everything, and making the final decision on behalf of subordinates. However, I began to reframe the old way of thinking redefining the meaning of the leadership.
“Becoming a Leader is becoming Yourself” — Russ Moxley
[excerpt from ‘An Everyone Culture’]
I have had the opportunity to reflect on myself technically and imagine being a better me learning to be more transparent with myself during Week 3. Although it was not easy at all to expose myself to others and to analyze deep inside me, I believed that this practice would allow me to handle obstacles facing along my journey toward the short-term and the long-term goal.
1/ Deliberate Development
Now imagine working in a place that is sending the message, every day, “We hired you because we thought you were good, not because we thought you were perfect. We are all here to get better, and the only way we will get better is to make mistakes, reveal our limitations, and support each other to overcome them.”
While reading the paragraph above (described in Week 3 booklet), I was struck by the thought that the workplace can be a safe and a healthy space expecting the sustainable personal and collective growth. I have assumed that this could be the ideal way of better working together walking towards the same goal/mission.
To accurately understand the deliberate development, we’ve learned in what way we should listen to people sharing our story that we felt unseen, unheard, and unrespected in pair. When it comes to explaining my emotional states, I easily feel so embarrassed for several reasons, in fact. However, I found myself freely revealing my emotions in that situation because my practice partner did not interrupt me, nor did he analyze the root cause, nor did he jump to conclusions, and nor did he give me any solution. Maybe, I felt safe to reveal my vulnerabilities experiencing the importance of the listening attitude.
2/ Immunity to Change
This was the hardest part to carry out as it required the systematic analysis of deep inside me. Immunity to Change devised by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey explains the hidden dynamics that make people keep repeating the same behavior despite genuine intentions to change. The steps to addressing Immunity to Change are as follows;
If I set up 1) the improvement goal, then I analyzed 2) the action to achieve the goal. After that, I needed to think about 3) the behaviors that interfere with my goal. These steps were quite okay with me. But, my struggles began on the next step that required to define 4) the hidden fear and 5) the big assumption. This was because I had to explicitly state things that I did not want to admit. It was the strange, painstaking, and frustrating experience. I felt inclined to sink into the ground with shame in a way. Indeed, this should not be happening if imagining the core value in the powerful leadership based on my perception or my theory. On the other hand, this might be telling us that system change is urgently needed instead of blindly following the conventional leadership development.
3/ Take-away
All notions I’ve learned this week are a big challenge to me. Although I have tried to practice it and noticed the important value of system change, I would not be able to change everything at once. The only thing I can do is to accept and believe my willingness to go further into the discoveries even though I might fail again and again.
