MAN3121

Leadership
Week 11
Self-Awareness and Leadership
Development

Andrei Lux
Agenda

 Self-Awareness
 Reflective Learning
 Emotional Intelligence
 Break
 Personal Mastery
 Leadership Development
 Followership
What do Businesses
Expect?
International survey of managers identified

Ten Characteristics of Effective Leaders

1. Ability to think long term
2. Good communication skills
3. Self-awareness
4. Trustworthiness
5. Having vision
What do Businesses
Expect?
Ten Characteristics of Effective Leaders
6. Understanding local and
organisational culture
7. Enthusiasm
8. Integrity
9. Optimism
10. Ability to give constructive
feedback
What do Businesses
Expect?
Ten Characteristics of Effective Leaders
1. Ability to think long term
2. Good communication skills
3. Self-awareness
4. Trustworthiness
5. Having vision
Self-awareness

Understanding yourself
 Strengths, weaknesses
 Desires, motivations
 Values, priorities

Essential to effective leadership action

 Maximize advantages, avoid failures
 Attain personal/organisational goals
 Uphold values, act with integrity
Self-awareness

Lifetime Development
 Requires personal ambition
 Each action, each day
‘better than before’

Doesn’t have to be
 A dramatic improvement
 Always achieved
 The purpose is to motivate
Self-awareness

NOT your self-concept, which is made

up of ideas about yourself, such as
 General self-categorizations I am smart
 Gender identity I am a man
 Sexual identity I am straight
 Racial Identity I am white

These all answer the question

 ‘Who am I?”
Self-awareness

Clarity of your self-knowledge

 Strengths, weaknesses
 What am I good at? Struggle with?

 Desires, motivations
 What do I want? Drives me?

 Values, priorities
 What is important to me?
Self-awareness

Handout 1
 Identify
 3-5 strengths
 3-5 weaknesses
 3-5 desires/motivations

 Don’t be shy, but be honest

 Be brief – 1 sentence per point
Self-awareness and
Leadership
Effective Leaders
 Understand human interaction and the
role their behavior and actions play in
bringing about effective outcomes
 Influence others
 Are aware of how they respond to
different situations and of their
impact on others
 Are not easily influenced
themselves
Self-awareness and
Leadership
Effective Leaders
 Evaluate and understand their own
behaviors and attitudes
 Make adjustments where necessary

To improve, you need to understand

where you are now
 Self-awareness provides that insight
 We have established a baseline
Reflective Learning

 Well established theory

 Reflecting on our past words/actions
creates a learning opportunity
 Two kinds of reflective approaches

Single-loop learning
 Leader observes a negative outcome
 Thinks “oh, that’s interesting”, end
 No analysis, substantiates existing ideas
Reflective Learning

Double-loop learning (Argyris, 1991)

 Leader observes a negative outcome
 Asks, why did it turn out poorly?
 Asks, what role did I play in this?
 Asks, how could I improve the outcome?

Allows leaders to learn from setbacks

 Prevents them occurring in the future
 Contributes to personal development
Double-loop Learning
Handout 2
 Think back to a negative outcome you
experienced from a group activity
 University group assignment – bad mark
 Team sport – lost an easy game
 Work experience - underperformance
 Ask yourself
 Why did it turn out poorly?
 What role did I play in this?
 How could I improve the outcome?
 Focus on actions/behaviours
Reflective Journal

 A structured exercise approach

 Developing self-awareness by
considering our emotional
reactions to personal events

Helps us to
 Identify how we react
 Understand why we react that way
 Consider how we might change
Reflective Journal

In a reflective journal, you record

 The incident
 Your reaction
 Your reflection
 Your realisation

 Guiding framework that creates

a learning opportunity
 Most effective if kept honest
and brief
Reflective Journal

In a reflective journal, you record

 The incident
 Describe a personal experience with a
surprising or disappointing outcome
 Worksupervisor raising an issue about
your performance, or attitude
 An‘emotionally charged’ conversation,
perhaps over a sensitive topic
 Argument with a work colleague,
friend, or partner
Reflective Journal

In a reflective journal, you record

 Your reaction
 How did you react in that moment?
 Usually an emotional statement
“I felt confronted. I became angry and
defensive”
 May be difficult to admit to yourself
 Must be honest, we can only change by
first accepting who we are now
Reflective Journal
In a reflective journal, you record
 Your reflection
 Consider why you reacted that way
 Why was it so negative/positive?
 Best to be brief and as specific as
possible in your assessment
“I don’t like facing up to my time
management issues. Having them
brought up forced me to confront
something uncomfortable, making
me feel useless and ashamed.”
Reflective Journal

In a reflective journal, you record

 Your realization
 What can you learn from this incident?
 How can you improve this situation?
 What behaviour was identified?
“On reflection, I realised that I already
knew this was an issue, but wanted to
avoid it. I should try find a couple of
time-management plans to see if
they can help me do better.”
Reflective Journal
Handout 3
 Pick a past experience where you were
surprised/disappointed with the outcome
 Describe the incident, then record
 Your reaction
 Your reflection
 Your realization

 Aim for 2 sentences per section

 Above all, be honest with yourself
Emotional Intelligence

 Introduced by Daniel Goleman (1995)

 Defined as
“the ability to perceive emotion, integrate
emotion to facilitate thought, understand
emotions and to regulate emotions to
promote personal growth”
(Mayer & Salovey, 2001)

 This is the ‘ability’ view of

emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence

 Mayer and Salovey (2001) identify four

abilities
 Perceiving Emotions
 Detect and decipher emotions in faces,
pictures, voices, and communications
 Including
the ability to identify one’s
own emotions
 The foundational aspect of emotional
intelligence, makes all other abilities
possible
Emotional Intelligence

 Mayer and Salovey (2001) identify four

abilities
 Using (personal) Emotions
 Harness emotions to facilitate various
cognitive activities, such as problem
solving, creative writing, etc.
 The emotionally intelligent person can
capitalize fully upon his or her changing
moods in order to best fit the task
 Using your frustration as motivation
Emotional Intelligence

 Mayer and Salovey (2001) identify four

abilities
 Understanding Emotions
 Ability to comprehend emotion language
 Appreciate relationships among emotions
 Capable of detecting slight variations
between similar emotions, such as
‘jealousy vs. resentment’
 Ability
to recognize evolving
emotions over time
Emotional Intelligence

 Mayer and Salovey (2001) identify four

abilities
 Managing Emotions
 Ability to regulate our own emotions
 Ability to influence others’ emotions
 The emotionally intelligent person
can harness others’ emotions, even
negative ones, to help achieve
intended goals
Emotional Intelligence
Handout 4
 Rate the accuracy of each statement
(min1–7max)

 Try to be as accurate as possible

to how you actually behave, not
how you would like to behave

 Add up your score

10 – 40 – 70
Min Middle Max
Take a Break

 15 minutes

 When we come back

 Personal Mastery

 Leadership Development

 Followership
Personal Mastery

Introduced by Peter Senge (1990)

 Mastery is association with competence,
the capacity to ‘master’ a task
 Personal mastery goes beyond skills, to
apply mastery to your own life

 Goal is for it to become a discipline

(something practiced daily) of two parts
 Clarifying our personal vision
 Seeing current reality clearly
Personal Mastery

Personal Vision
 What do you want out of life?
 Most people set vague goals and do not
delve deeper
 Keep asking, why do you want that?
 Mixture between terminal values and
desires/motivations identified earlier
 Sometimes revealed in tragedy/crisis
 Evolve over time
Personal Mastery

Current Reality
 Holding a clear picture of your current
reality, where/what/who you are now
 Harder than it seems because of our biases
 Optimists overestimate their own abilities,
likelihood of a successful career, marriage,
and underestimate negative events
 Pessimists do the opposite
 Truth is somewhere in the middle
Personal Mastery
Fred Jung (movie ‘Blow’ 2001)
“Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're
bust, and when you're up, it's never as good
as it seems, and when you're down, you think
you'll never be up again”

Senge (1990) counsels us to

 See the world as it really is
 See ourselves as we really are
 The world is not ‘against you’
 Successful people are not just ‘lucky’
Personal Mastery
Creative Tension
 Exists between our personal vision and
our current reality

Current Personal
Creative Tension
Reality Vision

 This gap is a source of energy (rubber band)

 We can relieve this tension by either
 Take action – pull reality to your vision
 Lower vision – pull vision back to reality
Personal Mastery
Structural Conflict
 When striving for our vision, we are
our own worst enemies
 Two ideas in particular are to blame
 Our powerlessness
 Beliefs about our ability to succeed
I can’t, I’ve never been any good at…

 Our unworthiness
 Beliefs about what we deserve
 They’ll never notice me
Personal Mastery
Handout 5
 Think about a time when you responded
to that tension by lowering your vision,
instead of taking action
 Briefly describe the situation, what did
you want (and did not achieve)?
 How did you rationalize to yourself that
you did not really want it anyway?
 Would you handle it differently now, if
so, how? What could you do instead?
Personal Mastery
People with high level of Personal Mastery
 Have a special sense of purpose behind
their vision and goals
 See current reality as an ally, not an enemy
 Are committed to seeing current reality
more accurately
 Live in a continual ‘learning mode’
 Are aware of their ignorance, their
competence, and their growth areas
 Are personally ambitious, want to do better
 Are self-confident
Leadership Development
How do you become a (good) leader?
 Develop your leadership skills
 Self-awareness
 Personal mastery
 Emotional intelligence
 Persuasion

 Education – study, listen, read all you can

 Experience - practice, reflect, practice
 Leadership positions are often
‘extra work’ – volunteer
Followership
 Why should we care? Because…
“it only requires the good follower
to do nothing for leadership to fail”
(Grint, 2005)

 Leadership is essential, desirable

 Followership has a bad reputation
 Often considered a personal insult
 Implies you do not think independently
 Blindly follow the wishes of others
 ‘Sheep’, ‘peon’, ‘pleb’
Followership
 Gross oversimplification
 We already know that in modern business
 Followership is mostly voluntary
 Compliance is not enough, need engagement
 Work together to achieve collective vision

 Scholars consider followership to be

dynamic, constantly shifting
 Everyone is a follower at one moment
or another, including leaders
 Followers are collaborators
Followership Styles
 Kelley (1992) proposed five follower types
 Passive followers
 Conformist followers
 Alienated followers
 Pragmatic followers
 Effective followers

 Categorised along two dimensions

 Independent critical thinking, vs.
dependent uncritical thinking
 Active, vs. passive behaviour
Followership Styles
Followership Styles
Passive Followers
 Passive and dependent,
uncritical thinkers
 Are not competent, and generally blame
the world or others for their shortcomings
 Cannot think for themselves, need to be
told what and how to do everything
 They have a ‘urgh, what now?’ attitude

 Typical lazy sheep

Followership Styles
Conformist Followers
 Active, yet dependent,
uncritical thinkers
 Participate actively in the organisation,
but cannot identify/solve problems
 Happily do everything you ask of them
 Do not consider the consequences of
what they are doing
 Mainly concerned with avoiding conflict

 Typical ‘yes’ person

Followership Styles
Alienated Followers
 Passive yet independent,
critical thinkers
 Often experienced followers who have been
through setbacks, or broken promises
 Capable, but focus on the shortcomings
of the organisation and other people
 Can think independently but do not
participate in developing solutions
to the problems they see
 They have a ‘who cares’ attitude
Followership Styles
Pragmatic Followers
 Have qualities of all the four
extremes
 Use whatever style that best benefits their
own position and minimizes risk
 Typical of politicians with their own agenda
and limited time to implement it
 Have a ‘do whatever it takes’ attitude
 Disloyal, self-serving, inconsistent,
untrustworthy and lack integrity
Followership Styles
Effective/Exemplary Followers
 Both active and independent,
critical thinkers
 Behave consistently, with integrity
 Do not avoid risk/conflict, do the right thing
 Have the courage to initiate change for the
benefit of the organisation
 Capable of self-management
 Committed to achieving collective goals
 Thoughtful, effective problem-solvers
Followership

 Desirable follower characteristics

 Dependable
 Honest
 Cooperative
 Competent

 Overlap largely with desirable

leadership characteristics
 Effective leaders and followers
are collaborators
Have a Good Weekend