The Dispatch
Reflection with purpose
Have you recognised the ‘spots of time’ that have made you who you are?
By Niamh Ollerton
Have you ever taken a step back to reflect on your life? Are you able to observe the people and environment around you for what they truly are? Have you recognised the ‘spots of time’ that have made you who you are?
Coined by William Wordsworth, known as the greatest British poet on self and self-reflection, ‘spots of time’ is a concept used to describe special moments and experiences in life that are particularly memorable and influential.
These pivotal moments that helped shape us made us the people we are today. But how can we channel these experiences for our own betterment as leaders, team members and humans in general?
The art of self-reflection can be challenging, but lessons learned from Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude demonstrate the positive power of memory, and how identifying key moments can offer re-energising and transformative benefits.
“It’s hard to identify moments in life that affect us, but there will be lots of influences who feed into who we are in our career and outside of it."
Embedding employability into the curriculum
Renovating. Nourishing. Repairing; that’s what Wordsworth believed the act of reflection and spots of time can do for humans - and according to Henry Mintzberg, co-founder of the International Master’s Programme for Managers (IMPM), managers learn best when they reflect on their own experience.
The IMPM is for senior leaders who want to be effective global leaders of their organisations, understanding the connection between all disciplines, and how by integrating disciplines under ‘mindsets’ they can better address the complexity of most of the decisions senior leaders have to make.
Featuring five modules held at different business schools across the world, each of the IMPM’s modules focusses on an individual mindset organisational leaders need, with the first module, Managing Self: The Reflective Mindset held at Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster and the Lake District, Cumbria, UK.
Participants then undertake: Managing Organisations: The Analytic Mindset, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Canada; Managing Context: The Worldly Mindset, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore; Managing Relationships: The Collaborative Mindset, Yokohama National University, Japan; Managing Change: The Action Mindset, EBAPE/FGV, Brazil.
Experiential learning is at the heart of the programme, encouraging participants to immerse themselves in active learning through modular activities - including canoeing, hiking and rock climbing to reflect on their spots of time in the darkness of a cave - as well as the culture of the country they find themselves in, further deepening global understanding and cohesion.
Reading and theory will always play a part in executive education, but leadership is active. People learn by coming up against complex situations, figuring out the best way through them for their organisation.
A study by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) found that experiential learning can lead to a 90 percent increase in the retention of knowledge compared to traditional learning methods, demonstrating its value for learners.
Experiential learning is about encountering a new challenge or experience, dealing with it as best you can, reflecting on what happened and coming away from the experience with new knowledge and insights to apply them in future situations.
These learnings stay with participants, meaning an accelerated learning curve, the application and injection of fresh, new ideas into the workforce and a quicker and better return on investment for organisations.
And according to Wordsworth, personal experience is essential, but without reflection it is meaningless.
Moments in our past can be a force for good if we reflect on them, which is what the IMPM modules hope to achieve for participants, to create ‘spots of time’ they can look back on to continue to implement new ideas, perceptions and ways of tackling challenges from peer-to-peer learning from counterparts across the globe.
To paraphrase Wordsworth, we are like a river; always the same, but always changing. It’s hard to identify moments in life that affect us, but there will be lots of influences who feed into who we are in our career and outside of it.
The importance of observation
The IMPM teaches participants the importance of observation, by being present and in the moment - a necessary skill set in our professional and personal lives when tackling challenges, overcoming obstacles or tending to the needs of others.
Dr Chris Saunders of Lancaster University says the observation exercise - whereby participants choose a spot in nature to observe for 10 minutes - is to drown out the noise, and focus on one thing.
The importance of the exercise is that often, as humans, we do not acknowledge what is in front of us; meaning, are we ever truly present in our day-to-day lives?
After the exercise, Purvesh Shah, Director of V.S. International Pvt. Ltd. says: “I noticed how quickly the climate changes - similar to our professional lives.
“The water of Lake Coniston could signify, unless you take the plunge, how will you ever truly know? The mountains signify the mystery of the unknown and how it shouldn’t scare you to take the path. How flora and fauna coexist - it’s good to coexist across boundaries, religions etc. In the long-run, co-existing is profound.”
With 25 participants from 16 countries, the makeup of the classroom is not too dissimilar from the international workforces many EMBA students find themselves in.
Dr Martin Brigham notes how individual participants observed the world around them in different ways. “Imagine the multiplicity of observations of humans in your organisation,” he adds.
Willy Azarcoya, Founder of Posiiible says: “The observation exercise was like a window to help us understand ourselves. We are projecting what we already have. As minutes passed, we moved from an analytical to emotional way of thinking.”
The observation exercise took influence from the life work of English writer and philosopher John Ruskin, with Professor Andrew Tate of Lancaster University demonstrating the importance of self-contradiction.
“John Ruskin would keep changing and adapting his observations and writing. There is so much value in different viewpoints and opinions,” he says.
But it is woodshedding, the process of continuous correction and learning from mistakes through withdrawal, reflection and returning to the act that makes us better leaders according to Dr Saunders.
He adds that leaders have to make mistakes to grow, pulling influence from Peter Jarvis’s 2009 framework for adult learning whereby we become leaders through the continuous resolution of moments of disjuncture.
Complexity theory and the role it plays
Complexity theory is a way of trying to understand the flow of the world. Professor Robert Geyer of Lancaster University says: “Your life is a series of moments of shifts that will affect the trajectory. We constantly walk through key moments that will shift the reality.”
This in turn can affect the role managers play. How can managers address complexity in a series of problems? “Complexity recognises the reality of systems - that it’s not a magic solution but recognising what you’re working with,” Professor Geyer says.
He notes that of the trillions of decisions that could create a desired outcome, leaders can never be truly certain of what is to come, but it is the complex adaptive decisions in complex situations that can keep organisations and teams ticking over.
“Who is the quantitative orderly person? Who is the political actor with soft skills that is best suited to dealing with people?” Leaders need to be able to reflect on and observe their surroundings to create the best business outcomes; they need to handle ambiguity and be resilient, or else their business won’t work.
During the final activity of the reflection module, Aya Tsujibayashi, Deputy General Manager at Mitsui & Co. observes: “The future of the world depends on our future capacity. When we are faced with problems, we need to unzoom to see all the connecting areas, to see the connection to the problem and reflect on that.”
Azarcoya believes complexity should be the number 1 skill taught now and that good managers should be leading with complex systems in mind: “That’s the connection. The complexity of our organisations - the IMPM course combining reflection and observation.
“Observing what is going on with people. Reflecting on things that may not be apparent yet. Thinking forward to what could happen.”
Reflection is crucial for enhanced leadership effectiveness, personal growth and better decision-making; building self-awareness, as well as helping leaders consider their actions and decisions, assess strengths, weaknesses, values, vision and leadership style and evaluate their impact on others in the workforce.
Experiential learning will continue to be held in high regard by EMBA students seeking programmes that offer them unique challenges to overcome - and the International Master’s Programme for Managers is one such programme aiming to do this, one continent at a time.