Reflect to Create
This text examines the habits of leaders and how they use the process of reflection to create conditions that foster growth in people and the collective well-being of the organization.
3. Reflection as a transformational way of being and leading
3.2. The four core conditions for "Reflect to Create"
The four core pillars or environmental conditions for reflection to flourish are creating relationships and cultures built on: trust, safety, support and challenge.
The four pillars are mutually dependent and interdependent reinforcing each other to create thriving learning cultures where leaders can continually apply, deepen and test their capacities for transformational leadership in the real world of work.
The conditions weave together for the following reasons:
- Trust because leadership is relational, and without trust there is no relationship.
- Safety because leaders and their teams need to feel that they are being safely held in their experimentation and risk taking.
- Challenge because questioning and feedback are critical to innovation, exploration, accountability and staying on track.
- Support because working is this way is demanding, lonely, exciting and exhausting, and leaders need to be continually resourced for the long haul.
These conditions hold the work as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8. Four conditions for "Reflect to Create".