Introduction
Being able to engage in reflective practice has significant meaning when it comes to management and leadership. If the importance of this decision-making tool is underestimated, specialists in managerial and leadership positions become less likely to learn from their mistakes and reevaluate their experiences. This essay is devoted to some barriers to becoming a reflective manager, including the development of proper underlying beliefs, self-criticism, dysfunctional attitudes to business, fears, and reliance on subjective judgments.
Reflective Management and Its Significance to Organizational Life
The leader’s inability to evaluate his or her progress or potential weaknesses and inspire engagement can lead to a variety of problems. The lack of self-reflection and critical analysis prevents individuals in managerial and leadership positions from building trust-based and effective relationships with followers. In their turn, such problems contribute to people’s resistance to external control, thus acting as a barrier to well-coordinated teamwork (Prasad and Prasad 387). Taking into account that competition in various industries and markets continues to become more intense, the members of managerial staff are expected to stay informed of the most effective way of dealing with people at work.
Moreover, due to workforce globalization and the freedom of expression, modern teams usually include people who are diverse in terms of culture, habits, values, and beliefs about work and collaboration. Thus, to be effective, managers should be good at dealing with different individuals, and, if possible, learning from them. A person who takes his or her viewpoint and personal experience as fundamental truths that do not need to be reevaluated are likely to face challenges when trying to win the team’s trust.
Thus, reflective managerial practices that involve critical thinking, readiness to accept feedback, and engaging in continuous learning are of the utmost importance when it comes to the leader’s professional suitability (Heath and Lee 1112). Given the listed competencies’ ability to improve organizational life by establishing trusting relationships between employees and leaders, their development is worth the effort.
Topic in Professional Literature and Practical Suggestions
The practical potential of reflective management skills and particular approaches to their development is widely discussed in professional literature for managers and leaders. It is important to note that, apart from changing one’s way of performing duties, it is pivotal to develop beliefs that would make the process of improvement more goal-oriented. As modern researchers suggest, resistance towards the idea of leadership is a barrier to positive change.
For instance, according to Palmer, excessive modesty limits people’s ability to recognize themselves as leaders, whereas the mistakes of prominent businesspeople fuel cynicism towards leadership as a mission (688). The external things, modern authors highlight, do not always define people with accuracy, but the inner life and consideration given to it contribute to the formation of stable beliefs (Palmer 688; Quinn 706). Thus, the first prerequisite to becoming a reflective leader is paying enough attention to one’s internal life and the origins of beliefs.
Success in developing a reflective mindset requires a lot of practice and effort. Among other things, it involves recognizing one’s internal “monsters” or dysfunctional beliefs, as well as becoming good at multi-tasking to learn and act simultaneously (Palmer 699; Quinn 709). Striking the right balance between being active and reflective can be challenging and risky at times. However, this goal can be achieved by making reflections related to the causes and outcomes of actions, self-image, and similar things a routine (Quinn 709).
At the same time, efforts needed to become a reflective leader always prove to be worthwhile and advantageous when it comes to business results and the team’s ability to achieve some mission. In particular, the regular use of self-reflective exercises, such as analyzing one’s purpose in business, can prevent leaders and entire teams from losing focus and doing insignificant things (Batstone 721). Therefore, despite some difficulties that surround the development of new habits and routines, the benefits of reflective practice in management and leadership are thoroughly studied.
Another difficulty that may arise when engaging in reflective practice is the need to recognize and overcome some personality traits or habits that are incompatible with it. Particular examples of such difficulties include the presence of narcissistic tendencies that are quite common in people who fulfill high positions (Godkin and Allcorn 560). If narcissism is within the normal range, an individual is capable of using empathy to manage and improve interpersonal relationships (Godkin and Allcorn 560).
At the same time, healthy narcissism enables a person to stay self-aware and control his or her own “thoughts, feelings, experiences, and impulses” (Godkin and Allcorn 560). Therefore, to become reflective managers, specialists are recommended to focus on their personality traits and analyze their impact on relationships, work outcomes, and the level of self-awareness.
Being responsible for one’s own inner life is productive and increases an individual’s chances to achieve success in reflective practice. However, managers should understand that the sense of responsibility sometimes becomes inadequate and destructive, leading to the rise of “functional atheism” – one of Palmer’s “monsters” (700). Contrary to assumptions that may seem to be correct, hyper-responsibility and the willingness to be the only ones to initiate all meaningful changes do not add to self-reflection and success in leading others (Palmer 700). Instead, such personality traits can be described as a trap that causes the ineffective use of energy, thus leading to job burnout, helplessness, despair, or problems in leader-employee collaboration.
Continuing on the existing barriers to becoming a reflective leader, it is critical to pay attention to the role of fears in this regard. Based on Palmer’s discussion of dysfunctional beliefs that hinder people’s ability to analyze and consider their spiritual needs, the perception of the world as a battleground can be harmful to leaders (699). To some extent, such attitudes to organizational life can contribute to the fear of conflicts between team members and lead to conflict avoidance.
At the same time, when facing difficult situations and work-related challenges, people in leadership positions get new opportunities to reflect on their past experiences and make use of their bundle of knowledge. For instance, in their study devoted to the potential of conflicts for leaders’ development, Fotohabadi and Kelly discuss the features of the reflective approach to conflict management (70). According to them, reflective practice makes the resolution of organizational conflicts practice-oriented, allows making disputes more constructive, and is compatible with the principles of authentic leadership (Fotohabadi and Kelly 74). Thus, overcoming one’s fears is a significant task that increases people’s chances to become reflective leaders.
Another practical suggestion for people willing to become reflective leaders is to evaluate the quality and accuracy of their knowledge as often as possible. Despite its widely recognized advantages, learning with the help of reflective practice does not always involve coming to accurate and practically relevant conclusions. Judging from some critical notes peculiar to this approach to leading, learning with the help of reflective practice is not a guarantee of success since such knowledge is not verifiable in all cases (Finlayson 89). More precisely, the potential limitations of the practice in question include its being “highly subjective” and based on one person’s experiences (Finlayson 89). Since the leader is responsible for the entire team’s performance, the subjectivity of knowledge is often among things to be avoided.
Reducing the mentioned drawbacks’ impact on the outcomes of reflective practice is particularly important. To deal with this barrier, managers can be recommended to combine knowledge coming from different sources and check their preliminary conclusions (Finlayson 90). As an example, when looking back in order to make use of previous experiences, it is not enough to use one’s memories and emotions as the sources of information.
Instead, to combine knowledge, a person can try to look at some situation from different perspectives by asking other people to express their opinions or referring to relevant historical information (Finlayson 90). To put it in other words, one can use knowledge sharing as a valuable tool that allows reducing the impact that subjectivity has on the process of reflection. Taking that into consideration, being critical towards the reliability of one’s perceptions helps to overcome barriers to becoming an effective reflective manager.
Conclusion
To sum it up, the proper use of self-reflection in leadership is inextricably connected to multiple difficulties that significantly impact its practical results. Such challenges are related to both personality traits and readiness to change one’s attitudes to certain practices and things. In general, prior to engaging in reflective practice, managers and leaders are advised to recognize the existing barriers and assess themselves to exclude the presence of harmful beliefs and habits.
Works Cited
Batstone, David. “From Success to Significance.” Management Skills: A Jossey-Bass Reader, edited by Tamara Keller and Rob Brandt, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2005, pp. 721-725.
Finlayson, Alexander. “Developing a Reflective Practice Model for Engineering Leadership.” Reflective Practice, vol. 17, no. 2, 2016, pp. 87-99.
Fotohabadi, Mark, and Louise Kelly. “Making Conflict Work: Authentic Leadership and Reactive and Reflective Management Styles.” Journal of General Management, vol. 43, no. 2, 2018, pp. 70-78.
Godkin, Lynn, and Seth Allcorn. “Organizational Resistance to Destructive Narcissistic Behavior.” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 104, no. 4, 2011, pp. 559-570.
Heath, Robert L., and Jaesub Lee. “Chemical Manufacturing and Refining Industry Legitimacy: Reflective Management, Trust, Precrisis Communication to Achieve Community Efficacy.” Risk Analysis, vol. 36, no. 6, 2016, pp. 1108-1124.
Palmer, Parker J. “Leading from Within.” Management Skills: A Jossey-Bass Reader, edited by Tamara Keller and Rob Brandt, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2005, pp. 687-704.
Prasad, Pushkala, and Anshuman Prasad. “Stretching the Iron Cage: The Constitution and Implications of Routine Workplace Resistance.” Organization Science, vol. 11, no. 4, 2000, pp. 387-403.
Quinn, Robert E. “Reflective Action.” Management Skills: A Jossey-Bass Reader, edited by Tamara Keller and Rob Brandt, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2005, pp. 705-720.