Assignment
Reflection:
1- Summarise in a single line, why you felt that this was your worst leadership experience.
2- Analyse the feedback that you received from the group. Has their analysis informed your own viewpoint? Irrespective of whether they agree with your views, is their viewpoint reasonable? Have they thrown up something you have not considered before? Is there a pattern to the feedback? Is the analysis logical? (Incorporate their analysis (see below) in the appendix)
3- Here are some trigger questions to start your analysis and reflection: What conclusions can you draw about your worst leadership experience? Did you engage in dialectical thinking? What about dialogical thinking? What was the basis for the WLE? To what extent did you contribute to it, if at all? How are you at sensemaking? What can you say about your theories in use and espoused theories? Do you have ‘default' modes of thinking/behaving? What about the organisation? Why? Is your current strategy effective? Assess the governing variables that came into play in the WLE. Note that I DO NOT expect self-flagellation in this reflection: I am bad at sensemaking, I am bad at relating, I am bad at inventing, I am bad at visioning ...
4- It is not enough to say, for example, that the WLE was due to a desire to avoid conflict. Recognising this is good but it fundamentally begs the question why the desire to avoid conflict existed in the first place. This is important as avoiding conflict may be motivated by: a Fear of being rejected? or Fear of being wrong? or Fear of being in disagreement with a popular peer/superior. It is important that the individual emerge from this process understanding the motivations behind the action leading to the WLE.
The purpose of this exercise is to provide an alternative lens through which you can view the event. Is there another way to interpret your perception of your leadership experience? This is an opportunity to look at cues that contributed to the occurrence, such as faulty sensemaking, single loop learning, treating an adaptive situation as a technical challenge, making inferences, being a lightning rod, not getting on the balcony and other concepts covered in this course. As an example, people often judge negative experiences as being "My fault" or "Your fault". This exercise is an opportunity to move beyond finger pointing and looking for systemic causes.