In which a friend’s accident with a horse stimulates me to reflect on the place of reflection in leadership practice.
I was talking today to a friend who came to visit, walking with a crutch. It turned out that although he is a very experienced and skilled horseman, he had been kicked in the leg recently by a horse. Very painful. I asked him how it happened.
He had been getting on the mare using in the usual way, and for some reason the rein was looser than usual and she had moved unexpectedly, swinging him off balance. Then, when he fell, the horse had instinctively kicked out prior to attempting to run away, which is apparently what horses do – their instinct is to kick and run.
It was most interesting talking to the horseman to hear him then say, that, with hindsight, he could see that the mare was distracted, her attention was on something else and in fact if he’d been noticing properly, he would not have got on her at that point but would have settled her a bit more before trying to get on.
What piqued my interest was his comment about hindsight, and I realised that he’d been reflecting at length on what had occurred. Attempting a move (i.e. mounting) he had undertaken many times before with many horses, including that particular mare, he got a response that was quite unexpected, and was caught unprepared.
Looking back, he could see that the horse was not ready. He actually said that it was his own fault. What it amounts to is that his own need to get on the horse at a particular moment overrode his observation of whether or not the horse was ready.
I suspect that he will always in future notice when he is getting on with horses so that his perception of what is going on with the horse he is working with, is enhanced. He will see not only his own need to get on the horse now, but also he will observe his horse’s readiness in a more finely nuanced way.
This, I think is part of the tremendous value of reflecting on leadership situations. Reflection helps you to review situations in which you have been highly involved, and this reflection allows you to bring some detachment to your view of the situation. The detachment potentially available from the process of reflection can allow you to notice more of what is going on around you rather than just your own intentions obscuring a fuller view of what is happening.
In other words, you can notice more of the intentions of others, not just your own intention. The horseman I met today was, at the time of the accident, heavily involved in his need to get on the horse right now. The detachment available from his reflection allowed him to realise the horse was actually not in the right state, rather than being focused only on his need to get on the horse at that moment.
The greater your ability to notice the nuances of what is going on around you right now, the greater your ability to adjust your response according to subtle shifts of power and need, and the more effective your actions as a leader will be.
Great article on reflection – having just started my own blog title Reflective Expression, my purpose is to do just this and reflect on my experiences to improve the roundedness of my approaches, views and to ensure that I am always looking to improve. Being in a leadership type role I find I am doing less specific leading and more harnessing of energy within my workplace – a bit like a taxi cab driver, the more energy as a fare, the further the journey and the more gained through the experience.
I look forward to sifting through some of your articles.
Comment by Jason Scott — July 8, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
Hi Stephen,
I have been reflecting on your reflection of your friend’s reflection!
You make the argument well for leaders to adopt a stance of detached involvement in their day-to-day interactions with others. Paying attention to the subtle shifts in conversational patterns and power relationships, whilst at the same time actively participating in this dynamic web of interactions, is one of the central challenges of effective leadership.
As you (and Jason) suggest, the lessons learnt make for more rounded leadership practice. Yet, as you have said on many other occasions, if this leadership is to be truly effective it must, paradoxically, remain spontaneous and ‘in the moment’.
Many of the problems that stifle people in organizations stem from the well-intentioned imposition of rules, processes and procedures that aim to capture and apply the lessons learnt from the formal ‘reflection’ on past incidents. If your horse-riding friend were in future compelled to carry out a formal risk assessment each time before mounting his horse, to avoid the risk of future injury based on the lessons learnt from his accident, I guess that his appetite for horse riding would diminish significantly. Yet this is what happens day-in-day-out in organizations.
So this is where the challenge lies for those of us who see organizations as complex social (or responsive) processes of people in interaction. Leadership ‘lessons learnt’ through reflection cannot be distilled into an n-step process, set of rules or magic formula that will guarantee future success – or avoid future incidents. It is much more about personal awareness-raising and responsibility-taking. Sadly, much of conventional management practice (and, increasingly in the UK, socio-economic policy) is based on the assumption that lessons can be codified into rules, regulations and codes of practice – and that therefore these must!
Comment by Chris Rodgers — July 8, 2009 @ 11:25 pm
Jason, I think that reflection is a great thing to do and I wish you all the best with your new blog. I am writing in my next posts about leadership, including harnessing energy. Go well.
Comment by Stephen — July 8, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
Hi Chris, As usual you have stimulated me to think further about this topic. It didn’t occur to me that my exhortations about reflection could also be taken to mean codifying or directly applying in a ‘best practice’ way, but of course they can.
You made me smile in agreement that my friend would quickly lose interest in riding horses if he had to do the formal risk assessment each time he hops on.
Your comment made me ponder on what it is that I then think we should do with our reflection. Certainly not codify it and try and apply it directly in the next situation.
I wonder if somehow the reflection becomes part of your experience of the situation. So that your experience is then enriched by the subsequent reflection. In which case, what is an unreflected experience? Well, we are always reflecting in some way, each situation becomes part of our experience and habitual ways of responding. I wonder if it’s about having sufficient reflection so that next time we do not respond in our habitual way, or perhaps whether it’s about the reflection enabling us to notice more effectively the subtleties and nuances of the situation so that we can respond in the moment in a a skilled spontaneous manner.
It is not a rational thing though, and so resists attempts to document, codify and analyse risk.
Thanks for a very stimulating comment.
Comment by Stephen — July 8, 2009 @ 11:49 pm