In my view, a good leader is a practitioner who uses reflective thinking and inquiry through learning from failures while self-transforming.
First, a good leader answers the questions of how to experiment with new ideas when the team is not allowed to fail?
In a VUCA world, we may occasionally fail. We need to realize that we can’t get it right in advance, so we need to experiment with different ways of approaching the journey that are safe-fail in nature (Snowden, 2019). If we seek instant, perfect results, this is unlikely to occur and remain sustainable. We must experiment new ideas and need to be protected, if we fail, at the same time.
Here, we need to examine the level of trust within the team. Until we have developed a personal/ emotional connection with other team members, we just cannot have mutual support; thus, the team is probably not ready to fail yet. In this circumstance, we need to trigger and boost trust among team members. It seems that we need to unweave everything about our team apart, then put the small pieces back together. But how?
I am wondering if we should reconsider our mental models about the team. Mental models are our assumptions that we carry in our mind. They are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations that influence how we understand the world and how we take actions – Peter Senge. Understanding our mental models would help us neutralize them first, and then reshape them while we interact with other team members in an integral manner. For example, a stereotype is the “thought” and prejudice is the “feeling” resulting from that thought (Schneider, 2019). It doesn’t matter what we do to mitigate our prejudice towards others. We need to remedy our negative thought first to avoid the vicious effect. Then, it becomes easy to experiment without the fear of having or experiencing prejudice towards or from others. Further, when the team members trust one another, their strengths are complemented, and their limitations are compensated. Consequently, the team members realize the common goals to be bigger than individual goals. This, in turn, will yield supportive work environment. So, integrally re-engineering our mental models will most likely help us build trusting relationships. In positive, supportive, trusting work environment, it is safe to fail.
Second, we live in a VUCA-centered world. We must reflect and learn from our experiences. Here, we examine underlying assumptions, core beliefs, and knowledge, while drawing connections between apparently disparate pieces of information (Reeves, Torres, & Hassan, 2017). It is a purposeful and reasoned process that is aimed at using specific cognitive skills to increase the probability of a desirable outcome. Moreover, it is a very fine and deep type of critical thinking that is meant to analyze and make judgments about what has happened (University of Hawaii , 2018). There are five types of reflective thinking and inquiry (T&I) as follows:
- Reflective Creative T&I emphasizes values such as creativity, aesthetics, passion, discovery, and qualitative intelligence.
- Reflective Critical T&I examines our pass, idea-driven practice through critiquing the status quo to shape the future practice.
- Reflective Multi-perspective T&I helps in holding polarities and understanding and respecting contradictions in culture, race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status.
- Reflective Ethical T&I balances values and actions, for example.
- Reflective Political T&I recognizes local, state, national, and international political realities.
In the real life, we are faced with constraints such as time. Here, we either must make quick decisions (urgency) or to dig deep into the details (reflection). On one hand, urgency can be counterproductive and costly. If you’re too quick to react, you can end up with short-sighted decisions or superficial solutions. On the other hand, you can get caught flat-footed, if you’re too deliberative and slow to respond. Thus; we must face and manage such polarities in our life in a balanced manner using reflective urgency – the ability to bring conscious, rapid reflection to the priorities of the moment — to align our best thinking with the swiftest course of action (Sostrin, 2017). That is what I call systems thinking; recognizing the contradictions while seeing patterns and connections.
To recap this consideration, I have learned to use reflection in sense-making. Specifically, I need to grow in terms of my self-awareness to familiarize myself with my limitations that scare the heck out of me and keep me from “failing”. I want to master the art of “safe failing: even better, because taking calculated risk while failing makes me concentrate on the right priorities surrounding me.
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