Leadership: Why empathy and adaptability are not enough

CEOs need to reflect on their mistakes as well as their successes.

Take time out to reflect on your work and your life.

Empathy, communication, adaptability, emotional intelligence, compassion. These are all skills you need to thrive in the workplace and become a great leader. One competency that is often less talked about is reflection. Research shows the habit of reflection can separate extraordinary professionals from mediocre ones. We would go so far as to argue that it’s the foundation that all other soft skills grow from. The practice itself is all about learning, looking back on the day (without bias or regret) to contemplate your behaviour and its consequences. It requires sitting with yourself, taking an honest moment to think about what transpired, what worked, what didn’t, what can be done, and what can’t. Reflection requires courage. It’s thoughtful and deliberate. To get its full benefits, you must make reflection a habit. But it’s not simple. Generic questions like “What am I grateful for today? What did I learn? What could I have done better?” are often too general to be helpful.

So, what should you reflect upon? At least 1000 things happen during the course of the week. How do you sort which experiences are most significant for your development? Simply put, which of the myriad things that flew across your life are worthy of scrutiny?

WHAT OUR RESEARCH SAYS

To answer these questions, we asked 442 executives to reflect on which experiences most advanced their professional development and had the greatest impact on making them better leaders. Their responses were genuine. They revealed embarrassing stories, abject fiascos, thoughtless gaffes, youthful mistakes and careless decisions – but also smart decisions, soaring accomplishments, and meaningful interactions. By and large, the reflections were self-effacing and deeply felt.

Three distinct themes arose through our analysis: surprise, frustration and failure. Reflections that involved one or more or of these sentiments proved to be the most valuable in helping our leaders learn and grow in their careers. What did it mean to be surprised, to be frustrated, or to fail in this context?

SURPRISE

Many things can surprise us, but in our study most leaders were moved by moments that greatly derailed their expectations. Their experiences reflected this fundamental truth: as humans, we tend to naively hypothesise about what will happen next based on what has already occurred. As a part of our cognitive nature, we use logic and reason to “describe, explain, predict and control” in order to project some semblance of power over what goes on in our lives. When we are mistaken, we are surprised – and mistakes, lapses in judgment and wrongful ­assumptions merit our reflection.

FAILURE

While surprise can be processed internally, failure is often associated with making a mistake visible to others. One leader shared a memory of how being too involved in “organisational politics” led a program he was leading to fail. He lamented: “I messed up, big. I focused on the idea, but not the details. I had to own it. It was painful, but I never made that mistake again.” Mistakes provide raw evidence of what we should not do in the ­future. Mistakes allow us to learn by negative example otherwise known as “errorful learning”. Much has been written about the value of failure as a learning experience because it’s temporary. Naturally, we can’t learn if we don’t take the time to stop and intentionally reflect.

FRUSTRATION

Frustration occurs when our thoughtful analysis is criticised. Or someone parks in our space, our flight is delayed, we get stuck in traffic, or our loved one is late picking us up.

The leaders we studied conveyed frustration with things such as internal delays that threatened product launches, ­budget inequities, and corporate offices that didn’t seem to understand field realities.

It’s important to understand that at the root of frustration lies our goals, the objects of our ambitions and efforts. Goals reflect our values, and our values make up the compass that keeps us connected to our higher purpose in life and at work. We’re frustrated when our goals are thwarted and we’re not able to get what we want, but pushing through that frustration and finding other ways to cope and move forward results in our growth.

BUILDING A WEEKLY PRACTICE

Surprise, frustration, and failure. Cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Head, heart, and hands. These parts of you are constantly in motion and if you don’t give them time to rest, they will surely fatigue. Like a muscle, your mind needs reflection to re-energise and grow stronger.

Here are a few simple practices to get you started on building a regular habit of reflection.

1) KEEP A JOURNAL

Whenever you are surprised, frustrated or fail, pause and note the feeling. As soon as you are able, jot down what happened in enough detail to recall the instance with as much accuracy as possible. Note the feelings in your body – a sour stomach, a hothead, an impulse to cry – as well as any immediate thoughts that may be racing through your mind.

Try to identify the “why” behind the emotion. What about the event that triggered these feelings? Were your expectations derailed? Did things not go your way? Did you make a mistake?

2) SET ASIDE AN HOUR EACH WEEK TO REVIEW YOUR NOTES

Don’t skip it. Block out the time on your calendar in order to avoid other disturbances.

You can prepare yourself for this review by setting realistic expectations: it’s going to be rigorous and honest; it may even be painful to examine your shortcomings – but you can’t get better until you know what to get better at.

3) DON’T JUST REREAD YOUR JOURNAL ENTRY

Add to it. In retrospect, are there things about the situation that you are able to see differently? Press yourself. What went wrong? Were your initial observations correct or do they reveal something else that may have been going on, something you couldn’t see in the heat of the moment? Try to think of yourself as a neutral observer.

Now the question becomes: how can I make sure this doesn’t happen again? In the case of failure, you may find there is a mistake you can learn from. In the case of surprise, you may discover that you need to recalibrate unrealistic expectations. In the case of frustration, you may figure out that you need to get better at adapting to the unexpected.

If you, as a young professional, want to ascend, then do what those who are successful do. Reflect on surprise, frustration and failure. Make it part of your life. It will pay off.

James R. Bailey is a professor and Hochberg Fellow of Leadership at George Washington University, where Scheherazade Rehman is professor and Dean’s Professorial Fellow of International Finance.

Copyright 2022 Harvard Business Review/ Distributed by NYTimes Syndicate.