How to Bring Out Your Best in the New Year
As we begin this new year, I encourage you to spend some quiet time reflecting on this past year - the unforeseen challenges, the changes you made to your leadership habits, and what is most important. Critical reflection on personal experiences unlocks learnings that leads to better judgment and decision-making. It is possible the past year has left you feeling hesitant or dreadful about the future. But, it is the ability to learn through reflection and shift your mindset that will bring out your best in the new year. George Bernard Shaw said that "progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” While execution is essential, framing the opportunity for the new year moves leaders and teams out of their comfort zone and toward the best of what might be. Here is what you need to know about critical reflection and four steps to shift your mindset this new year.
Why critical reflection matters
Reflection is a powerful leadership tool. The ability to question personal and organizational assumptions and beliefs taken for granted enables leaders to learn from experiences. Effective reflection involves the ability to doubt, pause, and be curious about the ordinary.
The practice of critical reflection provides a path to deeper understanding. It enables leaders to elevate the significance of day-to-day experiences for personal and organizational growth. Critical reflection forces leaders to consider underlying causes for results.
Critical reflection can create personal discomfort and internal conflict as you wrestle with favorable self-perceptions. However, leaders risk repeating bad decisions that could prove disastrous without considering alternate viewpoints.
Biases are present in all leaders. Leadership is recognizing and leveraging the gap between stimulus and response to make a choice rather than make a knee-jerk reaction. When leaders become aware of unconscious biases, it enables them to gain various insights from seeing situations from different points of view. Reflection plays an essential role in a leader becoming aware of biases and making better choices.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Viktor Frankyl
Reflection improves critical thinking capacity. Critical thinking helps leaders navigate volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous situations common in every business. It is the ability to use cognitive skills and strategies to increase the probability of the desired outcome when problem-solving. Critical thinking for executive leadership is fundamental to businesses to growth, increased speed, and sustainability.
Here is a short video from Simon Sinek on his perspective on the value of pursuing critical self-reflection.
How to apply critical reflection
Your inner game silently controls your outer game. Behaviors determine how and what should be done and it is our values and virtues that will determine what will be done in any given situation.
In addition to the strategies for the how and what of critical reflection, it is important to consider the degree to which you demonstrate open-mindedness, responsibility, and wholeheartedness. These leadership attributes moderate the application of critical reflection.
Open-mindedness. The desire to listen to other points of view and recognize that even the most strongly held beliefs may be questioned. Open-minded leaders have very few ideas that cannot be changed.
Responsibility. The desire to pursue truth and apply it in day-to-day situations.
Wholeheartedness. A sincere attitude toward the critical evaluation of themselves and others. A resolute commitment to make necessary changes and overcome a fear of failure.
There is a saying in the military that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Here are three strategies for integrating critical reflection into your leadership habits in the new year.
Critical Reflection Strategy #1: Journal
Use a journaling app like Day One to capture your thoughts, feelings, successes, and frustrations. This approach is demonstrated to be incredibly impactful on leader-follower relationships, clarity of purpose, and improving new skills. Like building any habit, start small and tie it to an existing practice, like your routine, before you leave the office for the day.
Critical Reflection Strategy #2: Solicit Follower Feedback
Critical reflection should be a social process and is proven to be most successful when collaborative. Leaders need to understand how followers perceive their actions. Using a leadership 360 assessment is one proven tool to improve critical reflection. These assessments typically gather feedback from their leader, peers, and direct reports allowing comparisons between themselves and others. This is one leadership assessment you need to be using.
If you are not familiar with Leadership 360, you might want to sign up for my next free webinar on A Leaders Guide to 360-Degree Assessment.
Critical Reflection Strategy #3: Discover New Ideas
Books, articles, and assessments on leadership can enable leaders to examine a particular situation from a new point of view, supporting critical reflection. Thought leadership grounded in research provides leaders with proven solutions that can be applied and short cycle the learning process. If you are not a skilled speed reader, you may be surprised to know that you can learn how to read a book in an hour. Like any skill, there are tips and tricks to increase your speed and retention.
Here is a bonus link to an assembled collection of my top five personal favorite books from thought leaders on the topics of change management, coaching, culture, innovation and creativity, leadership style, servant leadership, and strategic planning.
Four steps to shift your mindset and bring out your best
What sets apart the most successful leaders you know? I suggest it is self-awareness, how they look at the world, deliberatness, and their ability to learn and persevere.
Too often, leaders and leadership teams spend too much time on the how and not enough on what. Especially as the new year begins in an attempt to avoid wasting time, its tempting to jump immediately into action planning and rely on a past understanding of 'what' is important.
While execution is essential, framing the opportunity is fundamental to bringing out your best. Here are four steps to reframe your mindset for the new year:
Mindset Shift Step #1: Discovering your strengths.
Shifting your mindset begins with focusing on the best of what is. Every leader has strengths. Unfortunately, most leaders tend to minimize their need to focus on their strengths and rely on addressing weaknesses. Having a strengths focus is not about ignoring weaknesses but prioritizing, pursuing, and leveraging strengths to bring out your best. A practical way to get started discovering your strengths is using strength-based assessments. The VIA Character Strengths Survey and the Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment are two of the most scientifically backed and relatively low-cost strength-based quantitative evaluations. These assessments can be completed online and provide development recommendations and support materials.
For more information regarding the VIA Character Strengths Survey, please go to www.viacharacter.org.
For more information regarding the CliftonStrengths Assessment, please go to www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths.
Mindset Shift Step #2: Dreaming about your future.
Spend some time considering what you want out of life and work. The following are a few appreciative questions to help you get started:
What would you wish for if you had three wishes to improve your success and significance in the new year dramatically? (and no, you cannot wish for more wishes)
Imagine it is five or ten years from today, and everything you had wished for and hoped for has come true. What would you see and hear? Describe the changes in people, work, places, etc. Describe what you have done to make these changes possible.
What if it is five or ten years from today, and you have done nothing? Describe what this kind of life is like. Compare this version with your dream version of your life and use this learning to clarify what is at stake.
As you encounter obstacles to achieving your dream, being explicit will help you make better decisions in the moment.
Mindset Shift Step #3: Design what should be.
Write it down. When you write down a dream, it turns into a description. A study by Dr. Gail Matthews found that the simple act of writing down goals and dreams significantly improved success. Take the answers to your questions in step two and create action-oriented design statements of a few sentences that focus on each key theme.
Mindset Shift Step #4: Break it down into steps.
You next need to break down your dream statements into steps. Design statements might have some overlap with actions for making the dream a reality:
Brainstorm ideas with others about the specific things that can be accomplished now and those that can be achieved soon.
Consider the various strategies and their timing. Not everything needs to happen now, and not everything should be put off until next year.
After you have the dream broken down into steps, you will want to write down targets, goals, strategies, and potential action items to achieve the different aspects of the dream.
“The hardest thing to do is leaving your comfort zone. But you have to let go of the life you’re familiar with and take the risk to live the life you dream about.” T. Arigo
Shifting our mindset allows new perspectives and presents a never-ending opportunity to grow and achieve new heights in life and work. An effective executive coach will challenge assumptions and encourage, stretch, and challenge you. If you have questions about getting started with executive coaching, let's talk.
What is your real new year challenge?
Key summary points
Critical reflection on personal experiences is proven to unlock new learnings leading to improved decision-making and better judgment.
The ability to learn through reflection and shift your mindset will bring out your best in the new year.
Critical reflection can create personal discomfort and internal conflict as you wrestle with favorable self-perceptions.
Open-mindedness, responsibility, and wholeheartedness are three good leadership attributes essential to critical reflection.
Too often, leaders and leaders and leadership teams spend too much time on the how and not enough on what.
While execution is essential, framing the opportunity determines success and significance.
References:
Densten, I. L., & Gray, J. H. (2001). Leadership development and reflection: What is the connection? International Journal of Educational Management, 15(3), 119-124.
Doolittle, J. (2023). Life-Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit, and Purpose. Organizational Talent Consulting.
Gardner, S. & Albee, D. (2015). Study focuses on strategies for achieving goals,
resolutions. Dominican University of California.
Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup Press.
