Each week, I will add the reflections that I send out on Friday to this list. If you want to create a journal of your reflections, which I recommend, I wanted to provide a word document that you could download and add to each week. If you prefer to use a physical journal or binder instead, do whatever feels the most comfortable to you. By keeping track of the journal and writing down your ideas and thoughts, you can help think through the different concepts and have something to come back to in moments of confusion or doubt. Feel free to add anything you want to this leadership journal, as I will not be asking for them back, though if you feel especially inspired and want to share something with the group, please feel free to email it to me and I will either add it to this guide or share it directly with the group.
October 1, 2021 Reflection
Think about a leader that you admire. This can be someone famous or someone you know. Describe some of the characteristics that you admire about them.
Once you have jotted some of those ideas down, then think about yourself. Do you have any of those characteristics? Are there any characteristics that you wish you had and that you would like to try to develop? If so, what could help you develop those characteristics?
October 8, 2021 Reflection
For this week think about and write down what values you hold most dear. To help think about those, the book stated “that leadership begins with something that grabs hold of you and won’t let go.” Page 28 Do you have any things that have grabbed you and stuck with you for most of your life or maybe during certain times or aspects of your life? Would you say these are the core of your authentic self?
Now think about if you have a leadership philosophy? If not, do you know yourself well enough to draft one? If yes, would it be different in your different roles?
October 15, 2021 Reflection
Now sticking with the focus on words, let’s talk about stories. What stories do you tell that help you lead others? Did you tell any stories this week that you felt made an impact on those you were leading? Did the story show your values or how might it have helped model the way? Have you ever had a story backfire? Looking back, do you know why it didn’t have the impact you had hoped?
Now let’s think about other people around you to see leadership around us. Did you hear any stories that had an impact on you? Would you retell that story to others? Is there anything that you saw this week that you felt was worthy of being made into a story? Are there any stories that you want share such as through our Q2 moments or even just with family?
October 22, 2021 Reflection
Thinking about feedback or advice, how often do you ask for this? As a leader it is important to gain knowledge from those around you on how you are doing. When you do ask for feedback, do you do it in a specific way or a general way? Then when you hear the feedback that you are given, how often do you reflect and change a part of yourself based on the feedback that was given?
If you can’t think of a time that you have asked for feedback, this is might an excellent opportunity to do so or to take a week and jot down times when people give you unsolicited feedback. I know that family members, especially kids, will give you feedback all the time, but coworkers and friends might also give feedback through comments or even body language, so taking a moment to ponder on what you hear and see gives you the opportunity to reflect on how you are modeling the way for others.
October 29, 2021 Reflection
Now let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the questions that you ask as a leader. Do they fall into the inspiring category? Are they open ended or can they be answered with a yes or no? Thinking about some of these questions, can you tell what your values are from how you asked them? If not, how could you reframe them to help show your values in the future?
November 5, 2021 Reflection
As a leader, do you have a vision, purpose, mission, dream, or other piece that drives you? Do you have a theme that inspires you? When you look back at your values, would they help you discover your theme?
How often do you peer into the future or try to think about what the future might hold? Have you ever thought about what the future holds from a leader’s perspective? Thinking about the analogy of the person driving on the Pacific Coast Highway (page 55), going around curves and then hitting fog, did it help you see the importance of a clear vision to the success of a leader?
November 12, 2021 Reflection
To help make the vision shared, what methods to do you use to learn what is important to those around you to make sure that the vision and story you are going to tell matches the needs, values, hopes, and dreams of those you want to follow you? If you haven’t done this before, what methods do you think would be the most effective for you to help you learn about the needs, values, hopes, and dreams of others to help build buy in?
November 19, 2021 Reflection
As a leader, do you look for the unique moments, accomplishments, tasks, or visions that will allow those who follow you to build pride? How do you show that something unique happened or help build up that pride in others? Do you do something special that helps build up your followers? If not, what might you want to start trying? Should you tailor what you do to each person or could you do something general that would build the team or group?
Now think of an organization or group that you are part of. Can you think of how that group or organization focuses on the way that it or your group is unique? Has that helped build up your pride? Has it helped unite the team through that uniqueness? Is that uniqueness part of the shared vision?
December 3, 2021 Reflection
So for this week, I thought we could reflect on a quote that I saw in an email signature that struck me as very interesting. The quote was "A good leader is one that people will follow into battle, and a bad leader is one that gets shot by friendly fire." - Anonymous student
As I sat there and thought about that quote, I realized that it could easily be applied to our inspire a shared vision topic for this month. I think that we are all hoping to be the leader that everyone will follow into battle, but sometimes we can learn the most from those moments when failure occurs.
As you think about this quote, do you think that any particular piece of inspire a vision would lead to a leader getting shot by friendly fire? The pieces that we talked about were: clarify the vision, explore the past, building buy in, listening to others, take pride in being unique, and painting the picture.
Now think about your own experiences. Have you ever been the leader that got caught in the friendly fire? What did you learn from this outcome? If it hasn’t happened to you, have you ever seen this happen when a leader went out and got caught by friendly fire? In that instance, what aspect or aspects was the leader missing that led to that outcome? Is it one of the pieces listed above or did something else cause the fail point?
December 10, 2021 Reflection
To start, think about how you handle change and adversity in your life. Do you handle it differently depending on whether it is at work or part of your family life? Do you have a natural resistance to change, does it depend on the situation, or are you always open to new experiences?
Now think about this from a leadership perspective. When have you seen something that needed to be changed and you took the initiative to do something? Was this hard to do? If you can't think of an example where you did this, can you think of an example when you saw someone take the initiative to create change? How did you or the person create success? Was it or did it seem difficult? Why or why not? Did you think what you or they did was extraordinary?
December 17, 2021 Reflection
Name one way that you look for fresh ideas. This could be for work, home life, or another aspect of your life. Is this technique working for you or would you like to learn other ways to find fresh ideas?
Have you ever asked for advice when looking for fresh ideas? Did you ask someone you trusted or did you take a risk on someone that you knew to be competent, but maybe didn’t have a strong relationship with? The book discussed how often people don’t seek advice because they don’t want to look incompetent. Has this ever happened to you? If so, would learning that research shows that seeking advice is actually considered to show you are more competent help you seek advice in the future? Would it change who you would ask?
January 7, 2022 Reflection
Thinking about your mindset, do you think that you have a fixed, mixed, or growth mindset? Are there certain places or positions where you have one over the other such as a fixed mindset at home and a growth at work? What might encourage or discourage you from having a growth mindset?
Since your mindset can change over time and even in difference situations, what can you do to try to keep a growth mindset? Also, how can you encourage others to have a growth mindset?
January 14, 2022 Reflection
To start, think about how often you ask questions. Do questions come out naturally or are you afraid to ask questions? If you do ask questions, what kind are they: open ended, closed, reflective, decisive, responsive, coercive, or leading? Are there times in your life when you are more likely to ask a question over another?
Now think about the questions that you could ask that would help challenge the process and make you a leader. What would a sample question look like? What would empower those around you to feel more confident and show that you are really listening? Can you think of a time when someone asked you a powerful question and then really listened to the answer? How did you feel and how can you take that experience and use it to ask questions in the future?
January 21, 2022 Reflection
As you think about failures in your life, think about how you react in different situations. When failure of something you tried occurs, does it discourage you, does it challenge you, or do you feel something different? Do you always feel that way or are there situations that change how you feel? If so, what is different in those situations? Is it the people, the environment, or your own mindset?
Now think about when you see failure occur. Do you blame those for the failure, do you encourage them to try again or think about what might have happened, or do you ignore the situation in the thought of not bringing attention to a situation that might be uncomfortable? Have you ever given empathy? Thinking about your own experiences of failure, what you do think would help others to build on the failure to lead to success?
January 28, 2022 Reflection
Now let’s think about your current resilience level. How do you handle stress in your job or your personal life? What coping skills do you use to help manage stress? Do you cope alone or do you have strong relationships that help you cope through difficult times?
Now think about the relationships that you have with friends or coworkers. Does the resilience level of those around you effect you? Do you see the mechanisms that those around you use to cope with stress, challenges, or failures? If not, have you ever thought about asking those you perceive to have high psychological hardiness how they do it? If yes, have you ever tried to use or adapt those methods to help you through difficult times?
February 4, 2022 Reflection
Thinking about yourself, how confident are you? Do you have the same confidence level in your abilities at work as those at home? Are there any areas that might need a boost of confidence? What could you do to boost those areas?
Now think about those around you. Can you tell who has a great deal of self-confidence versus those that might not? Are there any techniques from those that are confident that you could use to help boost your confidence? For those that are not as confident, what could you do to help them build their confidence?
February 11, 2022 Reflection
To start, think about someone that has been a mentor or coach to you. What did this person do as a mentor or coach? Was the relationship formal or informal? How did they help you in your life? How did they provide you with a positive example for your life or career? Have you continued to use this example to help others?
Now think about where you are in your life. Are you a coach or mentor to anyone in your work or personal life? If you aren’t, would you like to be and how might you try to become one? If you are, what techniques do you use to mentor or coach? How do you enable others to grow as people and/or professionals?
February 18, 2022 Reflection
Thinking about collaboration, how would you have defined it? Did you think of it as everyone working toward a shared idea or vision or has it sometimes fallen into the category of everyone working towards one person’s idea?
Now think about a project where you collaborated with others and how the process went. Were you the leader or part of the group? What made the project successful or if it wasn’t successful, what made it fail? Are there any take-a-ways from this experience that you could use in your personal life or career to help form successful collaborative teams?
February 25, 2022 Reflection
When you think of trust are there any pieces that stand out to you? Do you feel trusted when given new tasks, asked for advice, or someone is willing to give you their time for a pitch or spiel or really anything? Do you think in win/lose scenarios or do you trust that by cooperating you can do more together?
Now think of someone that makes you feel trusted. How did they accomplish this? What did they do or say that made you feel like they trusted you? Would what they did always work or was it situational? How could you apply what they did to helping other feels trusted by you?
March 4, 2022 Reflection
Thinking about feedback, how often do you give it? Do you give more praise, constructive, or critical feedback? Why do you think it is that you give this type of feedback the most? Knowing that giving no feedback is just as harmful as only giving critical feedback, will you change how often you give it or the kind that you give?
Now think about who you give feedback to. Does it matter what role that person plays in your life regarding the kind of feedback that you give? For instance, do you only give praise to some or criticism to others? Why might this be? Are there any people that you find hard to give feedback to and why? How could you change this?
March 11, 2022 Reflection
Think about a time when something amazing or positive happened to you. Did you celebrate? Why or why not? If you did how did you celebrate? Would you say that the celebration helped build your community? Would you do that same type of celebration again or would you change it?
Now think of a time that something not very positive happened to you. How did the people around you react? Did they acknowledge that something happened? Were they there to help or support? If not, what do you wish that they had done? How could you build on this information in the future when something happens to someone else in your life?
March 18, 2022 Reflection
In the different aspects of your life, how to do create a psychological safe environment, where others can be open and honest with you? Since all kinds of cues can help build or breakdown psychological safety, think about what actions, words, or even your body language might do to those around you.
Now think about how psychologically safe you feel in one of your environments. Why do you feel that way? What actions, words, or body language from others triggers your psychologically safe level? Is there anything that you can learn from your own experience that might help build a more safe environment in a different area of your life?
March 25, 2022 Reflection
Now think about a situation where you were with a group of people in your life that wasn’t very fun or pleasant. What did you or others do to get through that situation? Did anyone try to make it fun? Did you all commiserate together or did everyone just go about their work to get through it?
Thinking about future unpleasant situations, what could you do to make the situation fun? Have you seen techniques used by others that brought a smile to your face and that helped you through a rough situation that could work for you? Do you have your own style of fun making depending on the situation? For instance, is it easier to have fun in person vs through email and how might you change what you say or do to still make an impact.
April 1, 2022 Reflection
First, think about the types of praise that you receive. Think about one example of something that you would consider sincere praise and one example that might not have felt as sincere. Looking at these two examples, what makes one feel more sincere than the other? Is it the delivery? Is it the words that are used? Is it how often you hear that praise? Is it when you hear the praise? Does something else effect the way that you feel about the praise given?
Now think about how you can take what you learned from analyzing how you feel about the types of praise you receive and think about how you might deliver sincere praise to someone else. Does this change how you might deliver it? For instance, would you give praise in person, through email, over the phone, or another method? Would you change what you would normally say to a person? Are there any other pieces that you would now make sure to include or not include in the praise you give?
April 8, 2022 Reflection
Think about what you do to learn something new every day, or better yet, do you learn something new every day. Do you learn best through doing, observing, training, or coursework? Do you make a conscious effort, such as seeking out new thoughts, ideas, or training? Does your job require you to always be learning? Do you enjoy learning new things? If you aren’t learning new things every day, is that something that you would like to change? How might you change that?
Now think about what you do with that information that you learn either every day or at random intervals. Do you reflect on it? Do you share it? Do you hoard it away until the right moment strikes that you can bring it out and show it off? How do you apply it to your life?
April 15, 2022 Reflection
Think about what you consider your greatest strengths, list 4 or 5 if you can. Why do you consider them to be your strengths? Were they always strengths? How have you developed them?
Now think about your weaknesses, again list 4 or 5 if you can. Why do you consider them to be weaknesses? What could you do to improve upon them or is it necessary to improve upon? Have you ever noticed that others in your team, family or group help out in those areas where you are weak? Do you do the same for others with your own strengths? How does knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are, make you a better leader?
April 22, 2022 Reflection
So to start, think about why you have wanted to be leader. To really understand your journey, think back to some of your past leadership roles that either you had or that you attempted to gain. What inspired you to want these positions or be a leader in that role? Were you thinking about them from a power or fame standpoint? Did you like the idea of being in charge? Was money a factor in your decision? Did you come at it from a position of making changes or helping more people?
Now as we think about the 5 practices of exemplary leaders, what might inspire you now to want to lead? Is it different than in previous instances? Do the roles that you desire now look different than those you had desired before? Do you think that you need a different role or do you feel like you can lead from where you are?
April 29, 2022 Reflection
First off, do you say yes to being a leader or does leadership sometimes fall into your lap? How does the way you enter into leadership effect the way you lead? If you said no in the past or maybe even currently to leadership, why might that have been your answer? Did it depend on the role, the people you might be leading, your own experience level, level of busyness, or perhaps something else?
After going through this fellowship, do you believe that you are or can be a leader? Do you think that becoming a leader would make you more yourself?
May 6, 2022 Reflection
So as you went through the fellowship what did you learn about yourself from the reflections? Did you change anything in your work, home, or volunteer life? Did you start to do anything differently?
Now think back to before the fellowship started. Did you think that a leader needed a title? Do you still think that way or do you look for other qualities in people to see if they are leaders? Did you think you were in leader at home, at work, or in some other avenue of your life? After going through this fellowship, has your perspective changed?