When I interviewed Dr. Sam Walton he spoke of reflection as the heart 
of leadership… and then again this week, Heather Harris put reflection at the hub. Since reflection is the fifth entry point to MITA Brain Based Leadership… I began to wonder again what it looks like in the best leaders and how can the rest of us reflect in ways that benefit our leadership? Hal Halladay showed me the challenges and benefits of reflection in his post: Six Principles of Leadership Coaching. Thanks Hal – here I am learning again at LeaderNotes….
Your take on the Center for Creative Leadership insights opens a whole new challenge for leaders to both develop personally and help to develop coachees at the same time. It seems to me that the mutuality that is so often missing in a workplace is strengthened by reflection …. So those who hope to “establish new coaching relationships, adapt your coaching style to meet different needs and work through challenges and struggles that may arise…” will also be those who’ll develop their metacognative ability.
Why do you think?
I see six cool reflective questions woven into these six core principles… in ways similar to mechanisms for reflection integrated into the brain’s apparatus. How?
Principle 1: Create a safe and challenging environment.
Reflective Question 1 … How are you adding to your own passion and enthusiasm for quality outcomes, and adding to others’ motivation as you go?
Principle 2: Work with the coachee's agenda.
Reflective Question 2 … How do you offer suggestions that help others to organize their agenda in ways that include quality coaching time as a heartbeat to their day?
Principle 3: Facilitate and collaborate.
Reflective Question 3 … How have you showed that you cared what others think and do ...from within many worlds beyond your own?
Principle 4: Advocate self-awareness.
Reflective Question 4 … How do you question your own performance at each day’s end, by asking, Where to from here?
Principle 5: Promote learning from experience.
Reflective Question 5 … How do you value what experiences you have lived, and how do you build with us new experiences onto established roots in symbiotic links together?
Principle 6: Model what you coach.
Reflective Question 6 … What positive metaphors become your lenses to live learning, integrity and care, within images that prosper your own and the coachee’s plans for better insights?
Thanks Hal for opening my eyes again to new possibilities for reflection in leadership… and for the thought-stirring CCL article adapted from the book, The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Coaching.
Comment Preview