3.3.1

Self-Reflection, Making Mistakes & Humility

Test yourself

Self-Reflection, Mistakes & Showing Humility

It is important as a leader to be highly reflective, to handle mistakes productively and to be humble with your approach to leading. This humility has to be both authentic and felt.

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Making mini-decisions

  • Every single day you will make hundreds of mini-decisions.
  • It is really important that you compartmentalise these but equally important that you take time to reflect, for a few minutes a day at most, on what you did, why you did it and how you can be better tomorrow.
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Making mistakes

  • If you do make mistakes, which you will, do not allow the mistakes to win, to take over, to consume you.
  • If you make a mistake then acknowledge it, accept it and move on. You cannot change it and beating yourself up over it will do you little to no good.
  • The issue with a mistake is that you are your own worst self-critic. The war with the mistake really is between you, the mistake and your brain.
  • Most people won’t care or will be too busy and preoccupied to notice your faux pas.
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Humility

  • If you are putting on a sense of humility as a front then you are, by very virtue of your approach, being disingenuous.
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It's OK to be wrong

  • Avoid being the person who wants to always be right, whether that be because you are too proud to admit you may be wrong or because you see it as a sign of weakness.
  • Adapting to new information, new ideas or a constructive critique is a sign of strength.
  • It shows that you are reflective, attentive, capable of listening.
  • If you stick resolutely to YOUR plan, you may well find that you lose the respect of your staff or your team. This is the beginning of the end.
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Avoid 'know-it-alls'

  • ‘Know-it alls' often know very little and are usually full of bravado, suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect (when people think their cognitive ability is greater than what it actually is).
  • We have all encountered people who are convinced that they know everything and want to convince you that they know everything.
  • Be cautious of these people. These people will become a drain on you.

Jump to other topics

1Introduction

1.1Misconceptions & Key Principles

2Good Leadership Style

3Analysing Yourself

3.1Understanding Yourself

3.2Your Values & Dealing with Others

3.3Personal Qualities: Being Reflective & Humble

4Building a Team

4.1Important Principles for Building a Team

5Decision-Making

5.1The Key to Making Decisions Effectively

6Recap

6.15 Key Principles for Leading

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