writing a reflective essay on leadership

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My Experience In Leadership Styles: Reflective Essay

Leadership., description: what happened, feelings: what were you thinking or feeling, evaluation: what was good and bad about the experience, analysis: what sense can you make of the situation, conclusion: what else could you have done, action plan: if it arose again, what would you do.

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Cherry, K. 2017, August 4, 2017-last update, Leadership Styles: 5 Major Styles of Leadership [Homepage of Explore Psychology], [Online]. Available: https://www.explorepsychology.com/leadership-styles/ [2019, Accessed, December/14].
Cope, V. & Murray, M. 2017, Leadership styles in nursing., First edn, Nursing Standard, Australia.
Cummings, J. 2014, Leadership: What's in a Word? First edn, NHS England, United Kingdom.
Frandsen, B. 2013, Nursing Leadership, Management and Leadership Styles, American Association of Nurse Assessment Coordination, United States.
Gaille, B. 2018, June 25, 2018-last update, 11 Autocratic Leadership Advantages and Disadvantages [Homepage of Brandon Gaille], [Online]. Available: https://brandongaille.com/11-autocratic-leadership-advantages-and-disadvantages/ [2019, Accessed, November/18].
Kendra, C. 2020. Autocratic Leadership Key Characteristics, Strengths, and Weaknesses of Autocratic Leadership [Homepage of Very Well Mind], [Online]. Available: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-autocratic-leadership-2795314#characteristics-of-autocratic-leadership [2019, Accessed, December/20].
Leadership 2019, 10/08/2019-last update [Homepage of Royal College of Nursing], [Online]. Available: https://www.rcn.org.uk/clinical-topics/clinical-governance/leadership [2019, Accessed, November 14].
Lockwood, W. 2019, Clinical Supervision: Leadership Styles, RN.org, United States.
Monahan, B.P., Ferguson, C.L. & Killeavy, E.S. 1990, Torsade’s de Pointes Occurring in Association with Terfenadine Use, First edn, JAMA, United States.
Norwich University 2017, December 4, 2017-last update, 5 Leadership Styles for Clinical Nurse Leaders. [Homepage of Norwich University Online], [Online]. Available: https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/5-leadership-styles-for-clinical-nurse-leaders [2019, Accessed, November/25].
Royal College of Nursing 2020. Leadership skills. [Homepage of Royal College of Nursing], [Online]. Available: https://www.rcn.org.uk/professional-development/your-career/nurse/leadership-skills [Accessed, 2019, Accessed, December/10].
Steinhauer, R. 2016, October 20, 2016-last update, When ‘bad’ is good: A time and place for autocratic leadership. [Homepage of Reflections on Nursing Leadership], [Online]. Available: https://www.reflectionsonnursingleadership.org/features/more-features/Vol42_4_when-bad-is-good-a-time-and-place-for-autocratic-leadership [2019, Accessed, December 18].
Stephenson, J. 2014, 23 April 2014-last update, Exclusive: ‘6Cs’ nursing values to be rolled out to all NHS staff. [Homepage of The Nursing Times], [Online]. Available: https://www.nursingtimes.net/roles/nurse-managers/exclusive-6cs-nursing-values-to-be-rolled-out-to-all-nhs-staff-23-04-2014/ [2019, Accessed, November/20].
Storey, J. & Holti, R. 2013, Towards a New Model of Leadership for the NHS, First edn, NHS Leadership Academy, United Kingdom.
The Kings Fund 2015, 25 February 2015-last update, Leadership and leadership development in health care: The evidence base. [Homepage of The Kings Fund], [Online]. Available: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/leadership-and-leadership-development-health-care [2019, Accessed, November/20].
Top Nursing 2020. Leadership Styles in Nursing for Improved Quality of Care [Homepage of Top Nursing], [Online]. Available: https://www.topnursing.org/leadership-styles-in-nursing/ [2019, Accessed, December/16].

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A Reflection on Leadership based on my experience with the LEADER Project

Nov 2, 2012

Leadership is a quality that's innate in me. Whether it was in the playground at pre-school, the soccer-field growing up, student council in high school or various teams I am involved in at Ivey, a common theme has been my desire and willingness to lead. For a long time I thought this was because I enjoyed being in a position of control, a position of influence where I could shape the direction of a particular project or initiative. To some extent, this was the case; but I only recently realized that it was the desire to have an impact that I love most about being a leader. In fact, the ability to make an impact is how I would define leadership. Often times, leadership is seen as a title, a position that one is chosen for or given to make decisions and lead a group of people. These individuals are leaders, of course, as they're able to make significant impact on a large group of people; but we forget that leaders are everywhere in our society and more often than not they are leaders in an unorthodox sense. Whether they are artists, teachers, or musicians, many of them make an impact on their communities and those who choose to do so intentionally are leaders in their own right.

This is not to say that everyone can be a leader. I believe there are certain personality traits, skillsets and motivations that need to be present for effective leadership to take place. However, I believe leadership is a means to generating impact and I believe there are numerous individuals out there who do this on a daily basis who we would never consider as being leaders in the traditional sense of the word.

My LEADER experience has been paramount to me redefining my definition of leadership. I have personally been very fortunate to have had formal opportunities to develop my leadership skills and be provided with opportunities to exhibit it as well. This has given me tremendous exposure to new opportunities and only accelerated my growth as a leader. However, after visiting Russia I realized that such opportunities are unheard of in their communities. They don't have student councils, leadership institutes, summer enrichment programs or entrepreneurship incubators. These were all formal institutions that allowed me to practice and develop my leadership skills. This begged the question: is there a lack of leaders in Russia? Absolutely not. Many of the students I had a chance to work with were budding entrepreneurs with ambitious goals for solving critical problems in their communities. Several of them had already pursued various community service projects and some even had international experiences which they sought out on their own.

One student in our class, Julia, was particularly inspirational. She came from a very low-income family and was financing her tuition by founding an adventure sports startup. Specifically, she had partnered with a hot-air balloon pilot and began offering excursions to individuals in the nearby city of Samara. This was a brand new offering unbeknownst to a region that attracted little to no tourists. Despite this seemingly massive hurdle, Julia persevered with her vision and successfully ran this business over the course of the last two years. Since then, she has expanded their offerings to include mountain biking and hiking tours as well. This just goes to show the determination and commitment she made to her education and creating a service that genuinely added value in a unique way for her community. Julia didn't have mentors, venture capitalists or incubators to help guide her through this process. She did her own research, invested the little capital that she could afford and courage to take on this enormous challenge. Julia is a true leader.

Despite a lack of formal infrastructure in place to foster leaders in the traditional sense, many students were still forging their own ways of making an impact. This is what leadership is all about. I'm extremely fortunate and grateful for having the opportunity to experience this first hand. It inspires me to know that youth all around the world embody a passion for change, a desire to lead and a commitment to making an impact. LEADER is a phenomenal initiative that is supporting this dream and opening doors that otherwise may never have opened - for our students, the entrepreneurs, and for us, the LEADERites.

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The Importance of Reflective Leadership in Business

Business leader speaking to three members of their team, who are seated at a table with laptops

05 Sep 2023

Effective leadership is essential to business success. As an organizational leader , you not only guide decision-making but create your company’s culture, retain its talent, and move it toward bigger, better things.

Your leadership style —the behavioral patterns consistent across your decision-making—influences your impact on your organization and team. One of the most beneficial styles to adopt is reflective leadership.

If you want to learn more about reflective leadership’s role in business, here’s an overview of its components, why it’s effective, and how to become a reflective leader.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Reflective Leadership?

Reflective leadership involves self-awareness, introspection, and continuous learning and growth to make better decisions, enhance leadership skills , and improve team performance .

“Reflective leadership requires the continuous practice of reflection over time,” says Harvard Business School Professor Nien-hê Hsieh in the online course Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “This allows you to regularly examine and re-evaluate your decisions and responsibilities to practice, broaden, and deepen your skills, and to apply this knowledge when analyzing present situations.”

Reflective leadership also enables you to help your team grow.

“Reflective leadership is about helping others on your team or in your organization,” Hsieh says. “It’s about helping them develop their own skills in awareness, judgment, and action.”

In Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , Hsieh delves into the reflective leadership model , a framework for conceptualizing your responsibilities as an ethical leader.

The model has four components:

Awareness: Recognize your legal, economic, and ethical responsibilities to stakeholders.
Judgment: Consider biases and shared concepts that influence your decision-making.
Action: Act on your decisions in an accountable, consistent way.
Reflection: Reflect on all three components throughout the process to learn from past experiences.

“The reflective leadership model involves not only reflection on business decisions but also continuous reflection on your own personal beliefs, goals, and commitments,” Hsieh says in the course. “These aspects of self are often significant influences on your decisions and internal guides when navigating difficult situations.”

The Importance of Reflective Leadership

Before diving into the importance of reflective leadership, it’s critical to note the pitfalls of being an inadequate leader.

According to recruitment services company Zippia , 79 percent of employees leave their companies because they don’t feel appreciated by leaders, and upwards of 69 percent believe they’d work harder if recognized. In addition, only 33 percent report feeling engaged in the workplace.

Companies also lack focus on leadership development. Zippia reports that 77 percent struggle to find and develop leaders, and only five percent implement leadership development at all levels.

Since reflective leadership focuses on continuously improving and developing, it’s one of the more effective leadership styles. By regularly reflecting on your beliefs and values and incorporating them into your actions, you can make ethical decisions and enable your company to be more purpose-driven .

“Along with responsibility, leadership brings opportunities,” Hsieh explains in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “These include opportunities to make ethical decisions where someone else wouldn’t, to influence others to do the right thing, and to make a positive impact on the world.”

Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability | Develop a toolkit for making tough leadership decisions| Learn More

Reflective leadership also helps you build authentic, supportive relationships with team members and create a workplace of ethics and accountability .

If you want to adopt a reflective leadership style, here are the competencies to develop.

How to Become a Reflective Leader

Be self-reflective.

Self-reflection is at reflective leadership’s core. According to Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , you can practice self-reflection by:

Reviewing, analyzing, and evaluating your decisions—in the moment and over time.
Continuously deepening your awareness and self-knowledge.
Developing a general framework for judgment.
Improving your capacity for action and leadership.

Leading with self-reflection won’t just help you learn from past experiences but also encourage and enable your team members to adopt reflective mentalities.

Identify Your Commitments

Knowing your commitments is also essential to effective leadership.

“It’s important to identify and define your own commitments,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , “both to set a baseline for what you will and won’t do and to evaluate and clarify your thoughts, opinions, and feelings when making decisions.”

To create that baseline, Hsieh recommends asking the following questions:

What’s core to my identity?
What lines or boundaries won’t I cross?
What kind of life do I want to live?
What kind of leader do I want to be?

By identifying your commitments, you can better guide yourself and your team.

Consider Your Accountability

Becoming a reflective leader also requires accountability to successfully execute on your values and implement them into action plans.

This refers to the reflective leadership model’s “action” step—putting your decisions into practice in a way that’s accountable and consistent with your responsibilities.

“When leading reflectively, straightforward action planning may not be enough,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “An accountable leader will go beyond just answering ‘How will we do it?’ to ask ‘How can I do it accountably?’”

How to Become a More Effective Leader | Access Your Free E-Book | Download Now

Reflective Leadership Training for Businesses

By incorporating your values into your leadership style, you can learn from your experiences on a deeper level and develop into a better leader.

One way to gain the skills and frameworks to succeed long term is by taking an online course, such as Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . Through a dynamic, interactive learning experience, the course provides the opportunity to apply the reflective leadership model to real-world business ethics challenges.

Are you ready to become a reflective leader? Enroll in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability —one of our online leadership and management courses —and download our free e-book on effective leadership.

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Reflecting on the Leadership Journey

Leadership skills are among the most critical competencies for both MBA students and executives to master. As a business professor with a background in experimental social psychology, I believe leadership requires people to carefully explore their own beliefs as well as to communicate those beliefs to others. Therefore, my approach to teaching leadership is based on encouraging students to come to an understanding of their own personal values and goals.

When I teach leadership, the first assignment I give is called “This I Believe.” In a 350- to 500-word essay, students must describe the content and significance of their personal credos. This assignment draws from the National Public Radio series of the same name that ran from 2005 to 2009, which was based on the 1950s radio program hosted by Edward R. Murrow. Murrow specifically wanted to broadcast personal philosophies “simply and sincerely spoken” so that they might “stimulate and help” those who hear them. Each essay starts with the words, “I believe.”

Once students have articulated their beliefs, I introduce them to a series of activities designed to enable them to reflect, explore ideas, and enhance their self-understanding.

Enabling Reflection

Building leadership capacity is essentially a process of self-discovery. I help my students uncover, articulate, and understand their own definitions of leading, managing, and following. Through the process of tackling perceptive questions, they grow their leadership capital and their ability to choose the behavior appropriate to the current situation. Here are a few examples of perceptive questions:

What is your earliest leadership story? This exercise helps students uncover when and how they have demonstrated leadership behaviors. I encourage them to go beyond answers such as becoming class president or organizing a book club. Their stories reveal how they have already taken steps into the unknowable future. Later in the course, I ask them to write their most recent leadership stories and look for the common threads between the earlier and later examples.

Students uncover and articulate their own definitions of leading.

What leadership myths do you believe—and which ones might be untrue? As part of leadership development, I believe it’s important for students to examine stereotypical assumptions, such as “leaders have charisma.” I ask students to juxtapose concepts of “leader” and “manager.” What underlying meanings do they automatically ascribe to one or the other—or both? How valid are these impressions? As students begin to question their longstanding ideas, they find themselves coming up with new ideas and ways to change the way they behave in the future.

What makes you an effective follower? We tend to think of followers as being passive and uncritical—“sheep,” as Carnegie Mellon’s Robert Kelley calls them. He helps us turn this thinking on its head and realize that good followers are actively engaged in critical thinking about the tasks at hand. With that in mind, I ask students to consider three questions. Under what conditions are you actively engaged and thinking critically? How can you create conditions in which the people who report to you or work with you are more actively engaged and thinking more critically? What does it mean to contribute?

Elaborating on Ideas

When I was an assistant professor, Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer taught me about the importance of managing meaning. Among the most important ways we do this, I learned, is through the use of symbols.

One of my favorite symbols is a green pen, which I like because it’s practical and useful. I give one to all of my students. I chose a pen because I believe that if you don’t write something down, it doesn’t exist; it’s a figment of your imagination. The pen reminds them to collect the data of their experiences in writing. I chose green because, according to poet Pablo Neruda, green is the color of hope. I hope my students will become “wiser, younger”—that is, that they will develop wisdom in the present moment, because they will never be younger than they are right now.

Even faculty who don’t hand out green pens can give students assignments that require collecting data. One assignment might be to have students write their definitions of leadership, making sure they eliminate more stereotypical notions. They should start with a zero draft—that is, a draft that is more of a brainstorming session than a writing exercise. Over time, they can revisit this exercise to see how their definitions have evolved. By the end of the course, they should have gained a better understanding of themselves and the ways and the times they have had the courage to introduce change.

Enhancing Self-Understanding

When students reflect on themselves and capture the data of their own experiences, they create the capacity to make better and more thoughtful behavioral choices. They are essentially learning how to coach themselves.

The first step in enhancing self-understanding is learning to capture the “gist,” or the essence of a situation. It’s that sweet spot that’s neither concrete nor abstract—above the level of the muck and details, while solidly below the clouds. For example, when students capture the gist of a painting, they are able to figure out what it means to them and to capture its core meaning succinctly. When they capture the gist of their own histories, they are able to articulate their leadership journeys.

The first step in enhancing self-understanding is capturing the essence of a situation.

In addition to learning from their own experiences, students can gain understanding by observing other people. Once my students have practiced finding the gist of their own experiences, I have them apply the exercise to the experiences of others. One approach is through this three-step assignment:

First, I have them consider people and behaviors they admire, and explain why. I tell them to identify someone they know or can gain access to who exhibits the behaviors they respect.
Next, they must schedule an interview to find out more about that person and why he or she thinks a certain way or has made certain choices. They must identify the gist of the interview and write it down.
Finally, they begin creating what I call Vicarious Learning Frameworks. They figure out a way that works for them to collect, organize, and process observations—that becomes their framework. Then they analyze the knowledge they’ve gained vicariously, and add it to the wisdom they’ve gained from their own experiences.

Putting It All Together

As students gain self-understanding, they also gain confidence. They’ve articulated their own definitions of leading, managing, and following; they’ve developed their own points of view about themes that matter to them. Because they are “wiser, younger,” they realize they know how to lead. I call this leadership capital.

When students grow their leadership capital, they become stronger from within. In this respect, I equate mastering leadership to constructing a skyscraper. Architects and engineers understand that if they are building from a solid core rather than relying on exterior, load-bearing walls, their buildings can soar to the sky. When people realize that structural integrity comes from within, they can reach amazing heights.

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Essay Samples on Leadership

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Leadership — Reflective Essay On Being A Leader

Reflective Essay on Being a Leader

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A complete guide to writing a reflective essay

(Last updated: 3 June 2024)

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“The overwhelming burden of writing my first ever reflective essay loomed over me as I sat as still as a statue, as my fingers nervously poised over the intimidating buttons on my laptop keyboard. Where would I begin? Where would I end? Nerve wracking thoughts filled my mind as I fretted over the seemingly impossible journey on which I was about to embark.”

Reflective essays may seem simple on the surface, but they can be a real stumbling block if you're not quite sure how to go about them. In simple terms, reflective essays constitute a critical examination of a life experience and, with the right guidance, they're not too challenging to put together. A reflective essay is similar to other essays in that it needs to be easily understood and well structured, but the content is more akin to something personal like a diary entry.

In this guide, we explore in detail how to write a great reflective essay , including what makes a good structure and some advice on the writing process. We’ve even thrown in an example reflective essay to inspire you too, making this the ultimate guide for anyone needing reflective essay help.

Types of Reflection Papers

There are several types of reflective papers, each serving a unique purpose. Educational reflection papers focus on your learning experiences, such as a course or a lecture, and how they have impacted your understanding. Professional reflection papers often relate to work experiences, discussing what you have learned in a professional setting and how it has shaped your skills and perspectives. Personal reflection papers delve into personal experiences and their influence on your personal growth and development.

Each of these requires a slightly different approach, but all aim to provide insight into your thoughts and experiences, demonstrating your ability to analyse and learn from them. Understanding the specific requirements of each type can help you tailor your writing to effectively convey your reflections.

Reflective Essay Format

In a reflective essay, a writer primarily examines his or her life experiences, hence the term ‘reflective’. The purpose of writing a reflective essay is to provide a platform for the author to not only recount a particular life experience, but to also explore how he or she has changed or learned from those experiences. Reflective writing can be presented in various formats, but you’ll most often see it in a learning log format or diary entry. Diary entries in particular are used to convey how the author’s thoughts have developed and evolved over the course of a particular period.

The format of a reflective essay may change depending on the target audience. Reflective essays can be academic, or may feature more broadly as a part of a general piece of writing for a magazine, for instance. For class assignments, while the presentation format can vary, the purpose generally remains the same: tutors aim to inspire students to think deeply and critically about a particular learning experience or set of experiences. Here are some typical examples of reflective essay formats that you may have to write:

A focus on personal growth:

A type of reflective essay often used by tutors as a strategy for helping students to learn how to analyse their personal life experiences to promote emotional growth and development. The essay gives the student a better understanding of both themselves and their behaviours.

A focus on the literature:

This kind of essay requires students to provide a summary of the literature, after which it is applied to the student’s own life experiences.

Pre-Writing Tips: How to Start Writing the Reflection Essay?

As you go about deciding on the content of your essay, you need to keep in mind that a reflective essay is highly personal and aimed at engaging the reader or target audience. And there’s much more to a reflective essay than just recounting a story. You need to be able to reflect (more on this later) on your experience by showing how it influenced your subsequent behaviours and how your life has been particularly changed as a result.

As a starting point, you might want to think about some important experiences in your life that have really impacted you, either positively, negatively, or both. Some typical reflection essay topics include: a real-life experience, an imagined experience, a special object or place, a person who had an influence on you, or something you have watched or read. If you are writing a reflective essay as part of an academic exercise, chances are your tutor will ask you to focus on a particular episode – such as a time when you had to make an important decision – and reflect on what the outcomes were. Note also, that the aftermath of the experience is especially important in a reflective essay; miss this out and you will simply be storytelling.

What Do You Mean By Reflection Essay?

It sounds obvious, but the reflective process forms the core of writing this type of essay, so it’s important you get it right from the outset. You need to really think about how the personal experience you have chosen to focus on impacted or changed you. Use your memories and feelings of the experience to determine the implications for you on a personal level.

Once you’ve chosen the topic of your essay, it’s really important you study it thoroughly and spend a lot of time trying to think about it vividly. Write down everything you can remember about it, describing it as clearly and fully as you can. Keep your five senses in mind as you do this, and be sure to use adjectives to describe your experience. At this stage, you can simply make notes using short phrases, but you need to ensure that you’re recording your responses, perceptions, and your experience of the event(s).

Once you’ve successfully emptied the contents of your memory, you need to start reflecting. A great way to do this is to pick out some reflection questions which will help you think deeper about the impact and lasting effects of your experience. Here are some useful questions that you can consider:

What have you learned about yourself as a result of the experience?
Have you developed because of it? How?
Did it have any positive or negative bearing on your life?
Looking back, what would you have done differently?
Why do you think you made the particular choices that you did? Do you think these were the right choices?
What are your thoughts on the experience in general? Was it a useful learning experience? What specific skills or perspectives did you acquire as a result?

These signpost questions should help kick-start your reflective process. Remember, asking yourself lots of questions is key to ensuring that you think deeply and critically about your experiences – a skill that is at the heart of writing a great reflective essay.

Consider using models of reflection (like the Gibbs or Kolb cycles) before, during, and after the learning process to ensure that you maintain a high standard of analysis. For example, before you really get stuck into the process, consider questions such as: what might happen (regarding the experience)? Are there any possible challenges to keep in mind? What knowledge is needed to be best prepared to approach the experience? Then, as you’re planning and writing, these questions may be useful: what is happening within the learning process? Is the process working out as expected? Am I dealing with the accompanying challenges successfully? Is there anything that needs to be done additionally to ensure that the learning process is successful? What am I learning from this? By adopting such a framework, you’ll be ensuring that you are keeping tabs on the reflective process that should underpin your work.

How to Strategically Plan Out the Reflective Essay Structure?

Here’s a very useful tip: although you may feel well prepared with all that time spent reflecting in your arsenal, do not, start writing your essay until you have worked out a comprehensive, well-rounded plan . Your writing will be so much more coherent, your ideas conveyed with structure and clarity, and your essay will likely achieve higher marks.

This is an especially important step when you’re tackling a reflective essay – there can be a tendency for people to get a little ‘lost’ or disorganised as they recount their life experiences in an erratic and often unsystematic manner as it is a topic so close to their hearts. But if you develop a thorough outline (this is the same as a ‘plan’) and ensure you stick to it like Christopher Columbus to a map, you should do just fine as you embark on the ultimate step of writing your essay. If you need further convincing on how important planning is, we’ve summarised the key benefits of creating a detailed essay outline below:

Now you’re familiar with the benefits of using an outline for your reflective essay, it is essential that you know how to craft one. It can be considerably different from other typical essay outlines, mostly because of the varying subjects. But what remains the same, is that you need to start your outline by drafting the introduction, body and conclusion. More on this below.

Introduction

As is the case with all essays, your reflective essay must begin within an introduction that contains both a hook and a thesis statement. The point of having a ‘hook’ is to grab the attention of your audience or reader from the very beginning. You must portray the exciting aspects of your story in the initial paragraph so that you stand the best chances of holding your reader’s interest. Refer back to the opening quote of this article – did it grab your attention and encourage you to read more? The thesis statement is a brief summary of the focus of the essay, which in this case is a particular experience that influenced you significantly. Remember to give a quick overview of your experience – don’t give too much information away or you risk your reader becoming disinterested.

Next up is planning the body of your essay. This can be the hardest part of the entire paper; it’s easy to waffle and repeat yourself both in the plan and in the actual writing. Have you ever tried recounting a story to a friend only for them to tell you to ‘cut the long story short’? They key here is to put plenty of time and effort into planning the body, and you can draw on the following tips to help you do this well:

Try adopting a chronological approach. This means working through everything you want to touch upon as it happened in time. This kind of approach will ensure that your work is systematic and coherent. Keep in mind that a reflective essay doesn’t necessarily have to be linear, but working chronologically will prevent you from providing a haphazard recollection of your experience. Lay out the important elements of your experience in a timeline – this will then help you clearly see how to piece your narrative together.

Ensure the body of your reflective essay is well focused and contains appropriate critique and reflection. The body should not only summarise your experience, it should explore the impact that the experience has had on your life, as well as the lessons that you have learned as a result. The emphasis should generally be on reflection as opposed to summation. A reflective posture will not only provide readers with insight on your experience, it’ll highlight your personality and your ability to deal with or adapt to particular situations.

In the conclusion of your reflective essay, you should focus on bringing your piece together by providing a summary of both the points made throughout, and what you have learned as a result. Try to include a few points on why and how your attitudes and behaviours have been changed. Consider also how your character and skills have been affected, for example: what conclusions can be drawn about your problem-solving skills? What can be concluded about your approach to specific situations? What might you do differently in similar situations in the future? What steps have you taken to consolidate everything that you have learned from your experience? Keep in mind that your tutor will be looking out for evidence of reflection at a very high standard.

Congratulations – you now have the tools to create a thorough and accurate plan which should put you in good stead for the ultimate phase indeed of any essay, the writing process.

Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Your Reflective Essay

As with all written assignments, sitting down to put pen to paper (or more likely fingers to keyboard) can be daunting. But if you have put in the time and effort fleshing out a thorough plan, you should be well prepared, which will make the writing process as smooth as possible. The following points should also help ease the writing process:

To get a feel for the tone and format in which your writing should be, read other typically reflective pieces in magazines and newspapers, for instance.
Don’t think too much about how to start your first sentence or paragraph; just start writing and you can always come back later to edit anything you’re not keen on. Your first draft won’t necessarily be your best essay writing work but it’s important to remember that the earlier you start writing, the more time you will have to keep reworking your paper until it’s perfect. Don’t shy away from using a free-flow method, writing and recording your thoughts and feelings on your experiences as and when they come to mind. But make sure you stick to your plan. Your plan is your roadmap which will ensure your writing doesn’t meander too far off course.
For every point you make about an experience or event, support it by describing how you were directly impacted, using specific as opposed to vague words to convey exactly how you felt.
Write using the first-person narrative, ensuring that the tone of your essay is very personal and reflective of your character.
If you need to, refer back to our notes earlier on creating an outline. As you work through your essay, present your thoughts systematically, remembering to focus on your key learning outcomes.
Consider starting your introduction with a short anecdote or quote to grasp your readers’ attention, or other engaging techniques such as flashbacks.
Choose your vocabulary carefully to properly convey your feelings and emotions. Remember that reflective writing has a descriptive component and so must have a wide range of adjectives to draw from. Avoid vague adjectives such as ‘okay’ or ‘nice’ as they don’t really offer much insight into your feelings and personality. Be more specific – this will make your writing more engaging.
Be honest with your feelings and opinions. Remember that this is a reflective task, and is the one place you can freely admit – without any repercussions – that you failed at a particular task. When assessing your essay, your tutor will expect a deep level of reflection, not a simple review of your experiences and emotion. Showing deep reflection requires you to move beyond the descriptive. Be extremely critical about your experience and your response to it. In your evaluation and analysis, ensure that you make value judgements, incorporating ideas from outside the experience you had to guide your analysis. Remember that you can be honest about your feelings without writing in a direct way. Use words that work for you and are aligned with your personality.
Once you’ve finished learning about and reflecting on your experience, consider asking yourself these questions: what did I particularly value from the experience and why? Looking back, how successful has the process been? Think about your opinions immediately after the experience and how they differ now, so that you can evaluate the difference between your immediate and current perceptions. Asking yourself such questions will help you achieve reflective writing effectively and efficiently.
Don’t shy away from using a variety of punctuation. It helps keeps your writing dynamic! Doesn’t it?
If you really want to awaken your reader’s imagination, you can use imagery to create a vivid picture of your experiences.
Ensure that you highlight your turning point, or what we like to call your “Aha!” moment. Without this moment, your resulting feelings and thoughts aren’t as valid and your argument not as strong.
Don’t forget to keep reiterating the lessons you have learned from your experience.

Bonus Tip - Using Wider Sources

Although a reflective piece of writing is focused on personal experience, it’s important you draw on other sources to demonstrate your understanding of your experience from a theoretical perspective. It’ll show a level of analysis – and a standard of reliability in what you’re claiming – if you’re also able to validate your work against other perspectives that you find. Think about possible sources, like newspapers, surveys, books and even journal articles. Generally, the additional sources you decide to include in your work are highly dependent on your field of study. Analysing a wide range of sources, will show that you have read widely on your subject area, that you have nuanced insight into the available literature on the subject of your essay, and that you have considered the broader implications of the literature for your essay. The incorporation of other sources into your essay also helps to show that you are aware of the multi-dimensional nature of both the learning and problem-solving process.

Reflective Essay Example

If you want some inspiration for writing, take a look at our example of a short reflective essay , which can serve as a useful starting point for you when you set out to write your own.

Some Final Notes to Remember

To recap, the key to writing a reflective essay is demonstrating what lessons you have taken away from your experiences, and why and how you have been shaped by these lessons.

The reflective thinking process begins with you – you must consciously make an effort to identify and examine your own thoughts in relation to a particular experience. Don’t hesitate to explore any prior knowledge or experience of the topic, which will help you identify why you have formed certain opinions on the subject. Remember that central to reflective essay writing is the examination of your attitudes, assumptions and values, so be upfront about how you feel. Reflective writing can be quite therapeutic, helping you identify and clarify your strengths and weaknesses, particularly in terms of any knowledge gaps that you may have. It’s a pretty good way of improving your critical thinking skills, too. It enables you to adopt an introspective posture in analysing your experiences and how you learn/make sense of them.

If you are still having difficulties with starting the writing process, why not try mind-mapping which will help you to structure your thinking and ideas, enabling you to produce a coherent piece. Creating a mind map will ensure that your argument is written in a very systematic way that will be easy for your tutor to follow. Here’s a recap of the contents of this article, which also serves as a way to create a mind map:

1. Identify the topic you will be writing on.

2. Note down any ideas that are related to the topic and if you want to, try drawing a diagram to link together any topics, theories, and ideas.

3. Allow your ideas to flow freely, knowing that you will always have time to edit your reflective essay .

4. Consider how your ideas are connected to each other, then begin the writing process.

And finally, keep in mind that although there are descriptive elements in a reflective essay, we can’t emphasise enough how crucial it is that your work is critical, analytical, and adopts a reflective posture in terms of your experience and the lessons you have learned from it.

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Reflective Essay

Learning tips, tricks and hints

Writing A Reflective Essay On Leadership

When writing a reflective essay about leadership and management, share your views and thoughts on leadership by reflecting on your experiences in a leadership position. Projects are an integral part of the academic life of an undergraduate student.

It’s no doubt that the academic life of any student involves assignments. It’s no doubt that all students, irrespective of their level of educational attainment are incomplete without assignments. In a single day, every student must make an average of eight to ten assignments. An average student can complete between twelve and fourteen assignments in a single day.

An assignment is both enjoyable and educational at the same time. The joy of getting an assignment done and the gratification of accomplishing a project or an assignment helps a student to develop a sense of accomplishment. However, it is also important for the student to get a sense of completion. Getting an assignment done means getting something completed. Getting something completed means achieving something.

Writing a reflection about your work in a single day can be exhausting. It also requires time, energy, and mental focus. It is important for a student to take time to reflect on his or her projects and assignments before he or she gets to them. A reflection gives a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment when a student takes time to reflect on his or her projects and assignments. It also helps a student to become more organized. It is important for a student to write down every assignment and project he or she has worked on at some point.

Reflections are important to the student because they help students reflect on his or her actions, words, and deeds. Reflecting can also help the student understand where he or she is going wrong and what he or she needs to do to improve. It also allows the student to create a personal vision of the future. It helps the student to determine where he or she would like to go within his or her career path.

It is important for a reflection to be comprehensive, not too general or too in depth. A comprehensive reflection should include all aspects of a project. It should also include a discussion of strengths and weaknesses of each component of the project.

After a reflection, it is important to read and digest the reflection. This will enable the student to understand the meaning of what he or she has read. Writing a reflection is like taking time to really think.

Writing reflective essays is a great way to learn how to communicate effectively. If a student takes time out to reflect, learns to take a deep breath, and reads the reflections carefully, he or she will be able to speak clearly and express the thoughts clearly.

It is important for the student to be honest and sincere. The teacher and the student should work together to make sure that the student’s reflection is accurate.

A reflective essay on leadership is an important way to learn how to be a leader. There are many leadership positions such as president of a company, school trustee, corporate executive, manager of a department, or volunteer leader.

A reflection should not just be about the current leadership situation at the moment. The reflection must be about what a person wants to achieve for the future.

A reflective essay on leadership is an opportunity to take responsibility for one’s actions and the actions that are taken. for the good of the organization.

Writing a reflective essay on leadership should allow the student to create a vision of the future. This vision is important because it will guide and motivate the student during the reflection process.

A reflective essay on leadership requires the student to look at what has happened so far and what could happen in the future. The reflection also involves the student thinking about the problems that people in the past had. He or she should look for similarities between what he or she has learned from the past and what people from his or her own past had to say. This is a vital part of the reflection.

This is the most important part of writing a reflective essay. It involves the student communicating ideas to other people. He or she must communicate the important points with confidence. the understanding that others know what the student is trying to say and understand his or her message.

Reflective Practice in Leadership Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Self –examination through exchange and interaction, outcomes of reflexivity and internal processes of learning, leadership, strategic learning and change interventions, strategic and experiential learning, personal meanings and mental models, diagnostic work and critical feedback from others, action plan.

Reflective practice is an essential part of human personality that enables a person to self-discover his inner qualities. This concept is meaningful to my professional and career destiny because it enables me to understand my talents and abilities. Therefore, I have gained insights my behavioural instincts and how they either favour or weaken my ability to excel in various leadership roles. More importantly, the reflective process allows me to use my intellect to set higher standards for myself in different engagements I am pursuing (Mackoff & Wenet 2001, p. 96).

As an aspiring leader, the reflective practice models I have been exposed to have made me understand the importance of behavioural as well as situational factors that make me a better professional. Moreover, I have acquired beneficial traits that allow me to motivate myself and other people I work with to enable them to actualise their true potential.

Experiential learning models have helped me to familiarise myself with relevant tools that provide benchmarks for leadership success and performance in various organisational environments. Therefore, through reflective practice, I am able to understand values which are meaningful to people that I am required to lead and how I need to adapt to make a positive impact (Donaldson 2008, p. 312).

Reflective practice allows a leader to use critical thinking skills to make a positive impression on people that work under him to encourage them to change their attitudes towards work processes. I have also learnt that organisational culture influences roles and relationships between various stakeholders in a firm. Moreover, the prevailing organisational culture in a firm directly determines the quality of performance a firm achieves from different processes. As an aspiring leader, the reflective process I have undertaken has made me realise that major organisational functions are directly influenced by a leader’s vision.

Exchange and interaction are important factors that influence the manner in which a leader executes his responsibilities in a particular organisation. I have examined my personal behaviour and attitudes and realised that I do not share my thought and opinions with other people. According to Bass’ theory, behavioural and environmental factors allow a leader to exhibit positive qualities that inspire people working under him to register good performance.

He insists that personal traits make some people natural leaders and they are able to stand out in the way they organise different functions and resources in organisations they lead (Jones 2001, p. 56). In addition, he insists that other people exhibit leadership qualities during times of crisis. Lastly, he insists that people may choose to become leaders after acquiring different skills that make them capable of executing their responsibilities.

I believe that the transformational leadership theory applies to my personal as well as professional character and I intend to utilise it in my interactions with other workers I am required to lead. Janssen and Yperen (2004, p. 368) insist that employees’ goals influence the relationship they have with their superiors in an organisation. The leader-member exchange theory asserts that perceptions of an employee towards his superiors are influenced by benefits he gets out of the relationship.

This model has made me understand that I need to orient myself to the organisational culture and values cherished by my subordinates to enable me to have beneficial exchanges with my subordinates. Consequently, this will allow me to have better relationships with employees I work with because I will undertake various actions at the workplace which will increase their job satisfaction.

My own process of leadership will focus on mutual benefits that can be obtained from exchanges and interactions I have with my subordinates. This approach will allow me to come up with more effective strategies that improve employees’ competence to make them more effective in their duties.

I will use both mastery and performance orientation parameters to ensure all employees are responsible for their own performance using flexible work procedures (Bauer & Green 1996, p.1548). This will serve as an incentive offered to employees to make them more willing to take on more challenging tasks that help them increase their knowledge and capabilities. Therefore, employees will be able to cope with different challenges they face in their duties easily to help them succeed.

Reflexivity and internal processes of learning enable a leader to understand his inner qualities easily. I believe that having an open mind will prove crucial to my understanding because I will be able to learn about various factors in the environment I am working in to understand how they impact on performance. I have realised that I need to understand dynamics that directly influence organisational functioning to set higher performance standards without antagonising workers.

A participative approach will make it possible for workers to accept gradual changes in the organisation. I now understand that a leader needs to consult important stakeholders before effecting operational changes to make it easy for them to adapt. Therefore, in my personal reflections, I found out that interpersonal collaborations will be one of the main methods I will use to achieve positive results (Podsakoff & MacKenzie 1996, p. 265).

Internal processes of learning have allowed me to think more clearly about the goals I intend to achieve and their long term benefits to my career. They have made me understand the importance of setting different types of personal and professional priorities which guide me whenever I undertake different activities. The functional leadership theory has made me understand how to build and strengthen relationships with employees that I am working with (Zaccaro, Rittman & Marks 2001, p. 457).

This theory reveals the value of team management and collaboration and these concepts enable an organisation to achieve positive outcomes. As a leader, understand that my main responsibility is to assign employees’ tasks that allow them to use their creative instincts to enable them to discover their inner talents and skills. Therefore, this approach will encourage me to nurture and utilise the talents of various employees working under me to improve overall results.

A leadership approach that encourages interaction, exchange and learning creates a cohesive organisational culture that motivates people to work harder to improve their personal as well organisational performance. As a result, I understand that a leader needs to share his vision with all employees to influence them positively as they perform roles assigned to them.

More importantly, I have also learnt about the four main processes of team effectiveness which include; cognitive, motivational, affective and coordination functions. I have a better understanding on different workplace factors that impact on team performance. As a result, I know how to exercise leadership authority positively by planning specific outcomes that can be achieved through team work (Tesluk & Mathieu 1999, p. 210).

I have come to appreciate that for a person to become an effective leader, he needs to have followers that share the vision he seeks to execute. Since leadership is a concept that has multiple paradigms, I have realised that it is important to rely on evidence based practices to make important decisions. Evidence based practices help me to design and implement appropriate programs that are responsive to organisational needs. In effect, it has become important for me as a leader to take note of different stakeholders’ interests in the organisation and how they are likely to impact on long term performance. Yukl (2006, p. 207) insists that a leader needs to have self awareness by understanding how his skills and weaknesses either benefit him or weaken his abilities to lead.

Strategic learning processes allow a leader to take note of environmental factors that directly impact on performance in the organisation. In my reflective practices, it is important for me to process the information I receive more analytically using various meta-cognitive processes. Therefore, this has made me to realise the importance of organisational planning, coaching and problem solving to strengthen organisational performance.

Therefore, I have managed to encourage the employees I work with to use more than one approach to solve problems they are facing in their work stations to attain good outcomes. A participative approach makes it possible for all employees to propose generate new ideas which guide actions they are ready to undertake to attain good performance (Riggio 2002, p. 67).

The research I have done has made me realise that employees and other stakeholders are likely to resist change in a situation where they do not have adequate information about the vision and objectives a leader wants to achieve. I have realised that I need to constantly monitor all crucial organisational functions that need to change to bring about a strategic restructuring of all working systems to achieve better results.

Using the path-goal theory, I have realised a leader needs to set an environment where performance excellence is appreciated to ensure employees satisfy high expectations as they perform their duties in their respective workstations (Northouse 2004, p. 130). Consequently, this has made me understand that effective organisational change should focus more on people and not processes to encourage all stakeholders to align their personal goals to collective goals set by the organisation.

Strategic learning processes that I have learnt about focus more on creative problem solving and critical thinking. By reflecting on creative problem solving tools, I have realised that leadership entails empowering subordinates to enable them see the advantage of working with their colleague to attain positive performance. More importantly, creative problem solving techniques should focus on people’s personalities, duties they perform and specific outcomes they are expected to achieve.

In my own assessments, I have discovered that creative problem solving works well in an environment where work support systems are well defined. This encourages all stakeholders to engage in positive thinking. Carnelli, Gelbard and Reiter –Palmon (2013, p. 102) insist that leaders should encourage their employees to share knowledge and information to enable them attain good performance in their workstations.

Organisational complexities require a leader to come up with more elaborate strategies which are appropriate for the environment an organisation operates in. Critical thinking skills combine theoretical and practical skills which are used to improve the performance of a particular organisation. In my own reflective assessments, I have been able to think about how critical thinking equips me with the skills I need to execute strategies I have set.

Therefore, it has made me think more about myself in relation to people and systems that surround me. Using the thinking skills model, I now understand the importance of formulating strategies, understanding challenges and exploring practical solutions to solve various personal and professional challenges I am facing (Puccio, Mance & Muddock 2010, p. 47). More importantly, the thinking skills model asserts that openness to new ideas allows a leader to explore alternative actions that can be used to attain positive outcomes.

Creative problem solving and critical thinking skills make a leader understand the need to assess a situation more accurately before making any conclusions. I know that a leader must take time to understand how change interventions proposed in an organisation will transform behavioural and operational systems that exist (Korsgaard, Schweiger & Sapienza1995, p. 71).

Additionally, my reflective assessments have made me realise that change processes work more effectively in an environment where workers are equipped with appropriate technical and analytical skills. These skills allow them to think use their creative instincts to analyse various situations they are facing in their workstations. Therefore, an effective strategic learning and change intervention model encourages all stakeholders in an organisation to use consultative techniques to solve different types of problems they face.

The reflection processes I have undertaken have made me to appreciate the benefits of critical thinking, creative problem solving, strategic learning and external support systems in leadership. These personal meanings have given me better insights on various leadership models and how they equip leaders with vital skills they need to execute their duties more effectively.

However at times, I have realised that creative thinking processes without a clear action plan make it difficult for a leader to attain the desired goals and objectives. A leader needs to influence those who work under him to share the same vision he has to enable them to attain positive results in the long run (Danzig 2000, p. 73). In some instances, establishing joint meaning out of various factors that impact on organisational stability is problematic.

Additionally, I have realised that managing personal and organisational dilemmas is a very challenging issue for many leaders. Using the five step dialectical solutions method, I have been able to acquire a clearer insight on how to come up with proactive solutions that address different types of challenges I might face in my work. This has helped to improve my analytical skills because I am able to prioritise specific actions I need to undertake to achieve positive results.

In essence, I now know that organisational systems may either support or hinder change management initiatives that a leader introduces (Jain 2005, p. 57). Therefore, I have developed a mental model that allows me to see various problems as potential opportunities which need to be harnessed to guarantee good results and outcomes in the organisation.

In my constant reflections, I have found out that a positive approach allows a leader to understand specific processes that encourage his subordinates to be open to change. More importantly, I have understood that people need to be challenged to take initiative for their own performance because this leads to self-discovery. It is important for a leader to use resources at his disposal more efficiently to organise various tasks for workers to perform.

All processes in an organisation should be designed in a manner that allows leaders to coordinate performance in different departments (Salas & Fiore 2004, p. 56). Ultimately, I have understood that open channels of communication serve as a crucial factor that encourages employees to propose innovative ideas to a leader which in turn improves organisational performance.

As a leader, diagnostic work allows me to find out factors and situations that need to be addressed to improve overall organisational performance. Lazzarini, Islam and Mesquita (2012, p. 211) insist that managerial attitudes have an impact on organisational performance. The diagnostic reflective process I have undertaken has given me an insight on managers’ self-interest and how this affects employees’ dedication in the workplace.

Therefore, this has made me to conclude that micro-management techniques have a negative impact in improving long term performance in the organisation. Leaders who fail to delegate responsibilities waste a lot of time on processes that are not beneficial to the long term stability of their organisations. In effect, this denies their employees a chance to exploit their talents in their workstations and this leads to negative results out of various tasks they are performing.

Strategic learning requires a leader to observe keenly various internal and external factors that are likely to impact on performance. Open and constant interactions between a leader and his subordinates encourage both parties to improve their understanding about wage structures, incentives and work systems. As a result, a leader can establish how these factors motivate employees to perform their duties.

Additionally, leaders need to listen more to the concerns of those working under them to find out various issues that affect organisational performance. Moreover, leaders need to rely on information they have collected from workers and other stakeholders to make good decisions that bring about positive performance in the long run (Western 2013, p. 76). Therefore, information sharing and open channels of communication make it possible for a leader to acquire new insights into various functions to find out how they benefit his organisation.

Another critical area that needs more understanding is integrity and ethical responsibility by leaders. Through feedback and establishing closer collaborations with subordinates, I have found out that leaders need to be more flexible to eliminate different barriers that hinder organisational success.

Additionally, I have realised that a corporate culture that emphasises on honesty, integrity and ethical behaviour establishes high standards of excellence which all workers are expected to abide by. As a result, a leader needs to encourage high standards of practice at work by motivating all employees to do more to achieve positive outcomes in their duties (Smith 2000, p. 122). This ensures that a leader removes all barriers that hinder an organisation from developing its strengths to enable it to take advantage of various opportunities in the industry.

My action plan focuses mostly on personal as well as professional factors that are likely to impact on learning. Therefore, I need to reflect on my personal goals to understand if they are closely aligned with broad organisational objectives (Densten & Grey 2001, p. 120). This approach will allow me to consider the interests of other stakeholders by responding to their needs to make them feel that the organisation values them. More importantly, I have realised that processes of interaction and exchange allow a leader to deal with various challenges that impact on organisational performance. This enables a leader to set priorities that define how various organisational functions will be performed.

I have also understood how to rely on creative problem solving and critical thinking skills to come up with proactive measures that address different challenges I am facing. Through knowledge sharing and team collaborations, I have discovered that as a leader, I need to inspire those working under me by encouraging them to share ideas so that they are more responsible for their own success. Moreover, I have also discovered that I need to understand how to assign appropriate responsibilities to employees who are directly under my supervision.

This approach allows employees to exploit their talents fully so that they register positive results in their duties. All these processes can only succeed in an environment that places stronger emphasis on learning, integrity and discipline to bring about positive changes (Phillips & Gully 2011, p. 81). Therefore, this reflective task has made understand the benefits of change processes in an organisation and how they encourage managers and employees to change their attitudes towards each other.

Bauer, TN & Green, SG 1996, ‘Development of leader-member exchange: a longitudinal test’, Academy of Management Journal , vol. 39 no.6, pp.1538-1567.

Carmeli, A, Gelbard, R, Reiter-Palmon, R 2013, ‘Leadership, creative problem-solving capacity, and creative performance: the importance of knowledge sharing’, Human Resource Management, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 95-121.

Danzig, RJ 2000, The leader within you , Frederick Fell, Miami.

Densten, I & Grey, J 2001, ‘Leadership development and reflection: what is the connection?’, International Journal of Educational Management , vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 119- 125.

Donaldson, L 2008, ‘Ethics problems and problems with ethics: toward a pro-management theory’, Journal of Business Ethics , vol. 78 no.3, pp.299-311.

Jain, NK 2005, Organizational behavior, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New York.

Janssen, O & Van Yperen, NW 2004, ‘Employees’ goal orientations, the quality of leader-member exchange, and the outcomes of job performance and job satisfaction’, Academy of Management Journal , vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 368–384.

Jones, GR 2001, Organizational theory: text and cases . Addison-Wesley, Reading.

Korsgaard, MA, Schweiger, DM & Sapienza, HJ 1995, ‘Building commitment, attachment, and trust in strategic decision-making teams: the role of procedural justice’, Academy of Management Journal , vol. 38, pp. 60-85.

Lazzarini, S, Islam, G & Mesquita, L 2012, ‘Bad for practice?: reconciling alternative views on managerial attitudes and their impact on organizational performance’, Management Research: The Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management , vol. 10, no. 3, pp.208 – 225.

Mackoff, B & Wenet, G 2001, The inner work of leaders: leadership as a habit of mind , Amacom, New York.

Northouse, P 2004, Leadership: theory and practice, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Phillips, J & Gully, S 2011, Organizational behavior: tools for success , Cengage Learning, Mason.

Puccio, GJ, Mance, M & Muddock, M 2010, Creative leadership: skills that drive change , Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Podsakoff, PM & MacKenzie, SB 1996, ‘Transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership as determinants of employee satisfaction, commitment, trust, and organizational citizenship behaviors’, Journal of Management, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 259-298.

Riggio, R 2002, Multiple intelligences and leadership , Lawrence Erlbaum, Washington, DC.

Salas, E & Fiore, SM 2004, Team cognition , American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

Smith, D 2000, The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in practice , Arena, Aldershot.

Tesluk, PE & Mathieu, JE 1999, ‘Overcoming roadblocks to effectiveness: incorporating management of performance barriers into models of work group effectiveness’, Journal of Applied Psychology , vol. 84, pp. 200–217.

Western, S 2013, Leadership: a critical text, Sage, London.

Yukl, G 2006, Leadership in organizations, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Zaccaro, SJ, Rittman, AL & Marks, MA 2001, ‘Team leadership’, The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 12, pp. 451–483.

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Reflective leadership

Reflective leadership is something relatively new to me as a formal concept, I have over the years thought about my own personal leadership skills so maybe in hindsight I was being reflective? One of the best ways of describing reflective leadership is from a web article I discovered whilst researching this narrative.

“ Reflective leadership is a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one’s life with presence and personal mastery. Learning to be present, to be aware and attentive to our experience with people throughout the day is the focus of reflective leadership .” (Sara Horton-Deutsch, 2013)

It struck me that taking a personal leadership journey, one of self-awareness and self-challenge adds a whole new dimension to the way in which I have reflected on my leadership and engagement with colleagues in the past. I was reminded of situations where I had adopted a more direct approach where, on reflection, it required more collaboration; a bitter pill to swallow in many respects.

What interests me about being a reflective leader is it moves you from an “action bias” to a more reflective and collaborative approach one where you are constantly in a cycle of learning; effective leaders reflect on their past experiences and search for relevant, different insights before the decision making process. (Goker & Bozkus, 2017) Some of the questions you might ask yourself:

What have I learnt?
What were my feelings and thoughts as it was happening?
How could I explain my experience?
How could I make use of learning for my future actions?
What is your opinion of way I felt and acted?
How have I reacted and behaved?

“Reflective leadership can be considered as a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one’s life with presence and personal mastery . In other words, it requires learning to be present, to be aware and attentive to our experience with people in our daily life, and it regards leadership from the standpoint of human experience.” (Goker & Bozkus, 2017)

So the journey has to start with a series of self- assessments, in my own personal experience I often look forward, look back and ask myself, is where I am where I want to be? If the answer is yes then great you must be a great leader…but I suspect, as is with my journey the answer and reflection meant I needed to improve.

The question remains: how is being a reflective leader linked to engagement? I think the short answer is it’s a critical part of the whole process. One model sticks out for me developed by (Taggart GL, 2005). ‘One of the first steps to reflective thinking involves identifying a problem, challenge, or dilemma. Next, step back from the problem and look at the situation from a third person perspective in order to frame or reframe the problem. Ask yourself: How might an outsider view this situation? This second step involves observation, data gathering, reflection, and consideration of moral principles. These aspects help to provide a mental picture of your thinking in an attempt to define the context of the situation.’

Reflective leadership coveys a sense and practical application of collaboration, it involves listening and learning from the experience and from others.

“As a reflective leader, share your reflective thoughts with others and invite them to consider things as well. Enter into relationships with others without presenting a front or pretense, but instead being self-aware, this type of real and genuine approach supports an even playing field and conveys that I value other persons and their contributions.” (Sara Horton-Deutsch, 2013)

I believe that engagement must start with reflection simply so that both parties or at the very least the leader in the conversation has the presence of mind to understand the discussion as a whole and listens without judgement or predetermination; mindful of their responses and open to the process whilst active and fully present in the moment. By considering your experience, their experience and reflecting before a decision, you help to build a collaborative environment and nurture mutual respect in that’s instance and hopefully, as you become a more reflective leader, those future opportunities to engage with your people.

Written by: Richard Louw, Senior Officer, Border Force and Virtual Content Team Volunteer

Would you like to join our Virtual Content Team ? Email [email protected] to find out more!

Goker, S. D., & Bozkus, K. (2017). Reflective Leadership: Learning to Manage and Lead Human Organizations, Contemporary Leadership Challenges,. In Aida Alvinius (Ed.)Ph.D., Contemporary Leadership Challenges (p. Chapter 2). https://www.intechopen.com/books/contemporary-leadership-challenges/reflective-leadership-learning-to-manage-and-lead-human-organizations.

Sara Horton-Deutsch, P. C. (2013, February). Thinking it through: The path to reflective leadership. American Nurse Today, Vol 8 no 2. Retrieved from American Nurse TOday.

Taggart GL, W. A. (2005). Promoting Reflective Thinking in Teachers. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

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How to write a reflective essay

Published September 27, 2020. Updated May 19, 2022.

Reflective Essay Definition

A reflective essay is a type of writing that examines an experience from the past by looking through the lens of the present.

Overview of reflective Essay

The purpose of a reflective essay is to explore an impression you had, looking into the reasons for that impression. A reflective essay is not writing about an experience. It is writing about your reaction to that experience. A reflective essay is not learning from doing. It is about learning from thinking about what you did. A reflective essay is not about trying to influence anyone of anything. It is about drawing the meaning from your own experience. A reflective essay is not about being correct. It is about being honest. A reflective essay is actually designed to help you improve how you think and learn.

Key takeaways

A reflective essay examines an experience from the past looking through the lens of the present.
The purpose of a reflective essay is to explore an impression you had, looking into reasons for that impression.
A reflective essay is very personal: the topic isn’t so much the experience but how YOU felt ABOUT the experience.

What is a reflective essay?

Sometimes it’s easier to explain what something is NOT.

A reflective essay is not writing about an experience. It’s writing about your reaction to that experience.
A reflective essay is not learning from doing. It’s about learning from thinking about what you did.
A reflective essay is not about trying to convince anyone of anything. It’s about drawing meaning from your own experience.
A reflective essay is not about being correct. It’s about being honest.

Think about the word “reflection.” What you see in the mirror is not you; it is a reflection of you.

Do you realize that you can never really see yourself? You can only see a reflection of yourself.

Every life experience is like that. You never really see the experience as it’s happening. You only see it and learn from it when you see it through reflection.

Also, you cannot see your reflection if you are too close to the mirror. You need to step back in order to see yourself clearly.

Reflective writing is like that.

A reflective essay is a way of writing where you, as the writer, take a step back from your experience and write about it with some distance.

It is a way of writing about the past from the perspective of the present.

You are no longer going through an experience. Rather, you are reflecting on it to see it more clearly.

Worried about your writing? Submit your paper for a Chegg Writing essay check , or for an Expert Check proofreading . Both can help you find and fix potential writing issues.

Purpose of a reflective essay

Regardless of how you feel about writing essays, most essays are designed to help you improve how you write. A reflective essay is actually designed to help you improve how you think and learn.

The reflective essay can be very helpful because writing it helps you process whatever you are writing about. That act of processing leads to deeper understanding.

John Dewey, an American scholar, said: “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

Difference between a personal essay and a reflective essay

More than other essays, a reflection is about YOU. Unlike a personal essay, however, a reflective essay requires you to take a step back from an experience and write about it from a distance.

Where a personal essay might say, “Here is something I did,” a reflective essay would try to answer, “Why did I do what I did?”

A reflective essay is a good place to explore questions like, “How did I feel before and after I did that?”, “If I encountered a similar experience, would I do the same thing again?”, and “What did I learn from this experience?”

As you can see, all of the questions are personal: they are not asking about the experience itself, they are asking how YOU felt ABOUT the experience.

Don’t worry about finding the “right” answer. There is no such thing. Every person’s experience and interpretation is unique, and you are writing about your own. You don’t need to compare it to anyone else’s.

Make sure you write the essay in the first person.

Possible topics for a reflective essay

When choosing your topic for a reflective essay, think about whether it caused an impression on you. Remember that the topic you write about isn’t the focus – the focus is your interpretation of it.

A teacher who believed in you
A friend who betrayed you
A family member
A place in nature where you feel most comfortable
The house you grew up in
A place you visited for the first time, that felt “familiar”
Going somewhere very foreign
A new experience
Failing or succeeding at something
Learning something new
Something you’ve done before, but this time something was different

Questions to ask about your topic

Since you want to go deeper with your understanding of the topic, the questions that you ask yourself as you write are important.

How did I feel, and why did I feel this way?
How did I react, and why did I react like this?
Did this change me? Why or why not?
Would I do something differently next time?
Was this experience positive or negative for me?
What does this mean in my life?
What did I learn from this experience?

Parts of an essay

Every essay you write, including reflective essays, should have three parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The reflective essay should have those parts as well.

However, the way a reflective essay is organized might be a little different.

Let’s go through each of those parts for a reflective essay. Each part will include a sample.

Introduction

You want to begin your essay with a hook. A hook is an interesting opening that “catches” your readers and makes them want to read more. Your hook is usually the first sentence.

After you’ve hooked the readers, you want to give some context, or background information. In a reflective essay, use the introduction to mention the experience that you will be writing about. Think of each sentence in your intro as a stepping point. Each sentence brings you closer to your thesis statement.

Once you’ve given some context, write a thesis statement, which tells the readers exactly what they’re going to read about. For a reflective essay, the thesis statement should give the readers an idea of the impression the experience made on you. Think of it like a map to the rest of your essay.

Sample introduction

Can you identify the hook, background information, and thesis statement in this sample?

I had seen pictures of the Mona Lisa my whole life. Last summer, I went to Paris and got to see the original painting in the Louvre Museum. As I stood looking at the Mona Lisa, I really was seeing her for the first time. What I found surprising is that I felt the woman in the painting was seeing me as well. I actually felt a connection to the painting.

A typical essay will have from one to three body paragraphs, though you can write as many as you need (or as many as your teacher assigns you). Regardless of how many body paragraphs you have, they will all be organized in a similar manner.

Start with a topic sentence to show your reader what is coming up. This is a general sentence that gives an overview of that paragraph. Since your thesis statement should be about the impression your experience made on you, each topic sentence should be a reason for that impression.

The body paragraph should explain the reason for your impression in depth.

End a body paragraph with a sentence that summarizes what you wrote or that leads into the next paragraph.

Sample body paragraphs

Can you identify the topic sentences? Do the body paragraphs discuss the reasons in depth

I first felt a connection because of the Mona Lisa’s expression. Her face looks calm and seems to give nothing away. Every time I had seen the picture before, I felt like her expression was empty, with nothing behind it. As if the subject was a rich, carefree woman who was just sitting to have her portrait painted. When I stood in front of the original masterpiece, though, her expression opened up. At the time, all I knew was that I was seeing something I hadn’t seen before. Now I know that I saw a woman trying to get through life while feeling like she didn’t know what she was doing. I have often felt the same way. I may look calm to the outside world, but I am trying to hide anxiety. Now I recognize that the Mona Lisa was doing the same thing.

The second reason I felt a connection was because of the Mona Lisa’s posture. The subject looks like she’s sitting in a chair. Her body is facing to the left, but her face is looking at the viewer. It seems as if she wants to go in one direction but is forced to face another. I have felt that way. Like when my parents suggest which future would be better for me. Like when my friends want to do something I’m not comfortable doing. Like when I want to stay home and read but my boyfriend wants us to go to a party. Which way should I go?

Lastly, I felt a connection to the background in the painting. Behind the Mona Lisa is a natural vista with a road and mountains and a lake. The landscape itself seems improbable. Why is there a road when there is no other sign of life? There are no buildings or people in the background. Having the Mona Lisa placed in such a strange background adds to the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. Again, it seems like the Mona Lisa is talking to me: “Do you ever feel like you don’t know where you are? Or where you belong?” Yes, I feel that way a lot.

Before you turn in that paper, don’t forget to cite your sources in APA format , MLA format , or a style of your choice.

This is how your essay ends and includes the last impression your reader takes away.

In a reflective essay, you may use your conclusion to give closure to the experience you’re writing about.

Add any insights to explain your reasons for your impression.

Finally, remember that a reflection is a way to write about the past from the perspective of the present. Make a clear connection from the past to the present.

Sample conclusion

Does this conclusion give a sense of closure? Does it add any insights? Does it make a connection between past and present?

That summer in Paris was supposed to be an exciting trip for me, but it was actually a difficult time in my life. I was trying to decide what university to go to, what major I should choose, and whether my boyfriend and I should break up or try a long-distance relationship. I had questions brewing in my head and it was difficult to appreciate the beauty of Paris. Seeing the Mona Lisa at that time in my life made me feel at peace. Now I understand what I saw in her that made me feel connected: I saw someone else with doubt and uncertainty, but I knew she would be okay in the end, and so will I.

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Home > Books > Contemporary Leadership Challenges

Reflective Leadership: Learning to Manage and Lead Human Organizations

Submitted: 02 July 2016 Reviewed: 20 July 2016 Published: 01 February 2017

DOI: 10.5772/64968

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This chapter mainly focuses on the concept of reflection as a process, both individual and collaborative, involving experience and uncertainty under the theme of reflective leadership. This type of leadership basically means learning to manage and lead human organizations. It originates from the concept of reflection defining leadership roles and responsibilities in all types of organizations. Focusing on reflection for learning in an effort to create reflective learning communities for all stakeholders taking part in both administrative and executive positions in organizations, this chapter is expected to contribute to leadership theories, to link theory and practice in concrete terms describing new leadership roles and responsibilities under the reflective thought considering its unique impact on organizational functioning.

reflective practice
organizations
reflective learning

Author Information

Süleyman davut göker *.

Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education, Artvin Çoruh University, Turkey

Kıvanç Bozkuş

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

In the literature, leadership is defined by many theories that try to explain what leadership is, in terms of different standpoints. However, the real world is very complicated that cannot be prescribed in some given patterns. This is the very first fact that leaders realize once they enter into professional practice. This is when prescribed theories do not meet the requirements of real practice. How can leaders be effective in an environment that is so distinct from those portrayed on paper? The answer is the grail that many if not all practising leaders had committed him-/herself to following of it. Reflective leadership goes to bat for anyone in the realm of leadership which is not mapped yet.

We start to explore reflective leadership by discussing what reflection is and then its role in creating reflective learning communities in organizations. The route to leadership through reflective thinking is the next topic we will address. Finally, we conclude with reflective practice which is the essence of reflective leadership and its models of implementation.

2. Reflection

Reflection is not only a personal process but also a collaborative one, which involves uncertainty along with experience, and consists of specifying inquiries and essential components of a thing that came out as important, later taking a person’s thoughts into dialogue with himself or herself and with other people. Individuals evaluate insights developed from that process in regard to additional perspectives, values, experiences, beliefs and the larger context within which the questions are raised. Through reflection, new-found clarity to base changes in action or disposition is achieved. New questions naturally arise, and the process spirals onwards [ 1 ].

Within this context, we argue that reflection is a vital component of leaders’ daily life, not a detached or disconnected action but primal, promoted by the culture and structures of an organization, which affects choices, policies and decisions together with the emotions and politics related to them. Considered from this angle, to be reflective should not be considered as a method, which has been acquired and occasionally used, but an inherent component of what to manage or lead means.

2.1. Dewey: father of reflection

Thinking includes all of these steps, - the sense of a problem, the observation of conditions, the formation and rational elaboration of a suggested conclusion, and the active experimental testing. [ 2 ]

For him, reflection is a deliberate and cognitive process triggered by a state of doubt, mental difficulty and hesitation. He sees reflection as a process of researching, clarifying and finding the right way that eliminates the doubt and difficulties. The mental process of reflection is activated by a problem, unstructured ideas and complicated situations to find a solution.

Forestalling something of the spirit of the progresses we maintain in this chapter, Dewey conceptualized this aspect of learning as more important than a problem-solving process. Dewey’s vision was of an educational process which had reflection and action linked at its core and was the means by which individuals gained ‘a personal interest in social relationships and control’—a platform for social change to a more democratic social order and preparation for membership of it [ 2 ].

2.2. Schön: reflection in action

Schön sees reflection as closely related to action and personal experience. The reflective practitioner engages in thinking along with the effect of action. Thus, Schön classified reflection into two types: reflection in action and reflection on action. Reflection in action is conscious thinking and modification while on the job [ 3 ]. The reflective practitioner immediately reflects on the action upon confronting it. Reflection on action is the reflection done after experiencing the action. The practitioner evaluates to understand whether the activity was successful or not by making judgements.

On-the-spot surfacing, criticizing, restructuring, and testing of intuitive understanding of experienced phenomena; often it takes the form of a reflective conversation with the situation. [ 4 ]

… on the feeling for a situation which has led him to adopt a particular course of action, on the way he has framed the problem he is trying to solve, or on the role he has constructed for himself within a larger institutional ‘context.’ [ 4 ]

As discussed above, this included ‘reflection on action’ and ‘reflection in action’ in practical terms. Human beings always tend to take shelter in experienced and accustomed forms of working and in practised processes or similar methods. That is to say, all endeavours to see the unknown in everyday life let people confront routines and connections and to alter those sides of working thought and practice taken for granted. For example, the capacity to make use of certain images, emotions, metaphors, to engage both rationally and aesthetically and to look at relational dynamics considering settings allows for the production of discrete styles of practising and thinking.

2.3. Reflection for learning: creating reflective learning communities in organizations

Ultimately, the outcome of reflection is learning [ 6 ]. It widens our perspective on a problem (broadens knowledge). It helps us develop strategies for dealing with it (develop skills). It helps us acquire new insights into our behaviour (changes attitudes).

Learning is not an individual behavioural attribute or capability but a ‘double-loop’ cognitive learning process that can be shared, and if everyone can participate in shared learning, then, in principle, everyone is capable of leading [ 7 ]. Within this context, the learning organization assures whatever the classical human-centred view about learning treasured at all times that commitment to learning will rescue us from obedience in blind authority in the end.

Even though learning itself as an action could seem self-evident, it is concerned with many issues in determining in what ways learning individually could be ‘effective’ or ‘rational’ against ‘self-deception’ and ‘defence reasoning’ [ 8 ]. As the difference between reflexivity and learning is hard to understand, in all attempts to understand that difference, reflexivity in the organizational development tradition has often been problematic [ 4 , 9 , 10 ]. The question is so clear: is it a neutral and instrumental expression of expert knowledge and control, or is it a methodology of feedback and diagnostic practice that pursues to develop really inclusive forms of distributed knowledge and learning [ 11 ]. The former position treats self-reflection as ‘I think’, whereas the latter tends to treat it as an expression of ‘I do’ [ 12 – 14 ]. What can be said here is that these two conflicting positions usually finish up as remedial approaches to learning. Learning could be thought as a deliberate way of ‘reflexive thinking’, allowing us to keep our distance from existent actions or behaviours and alter them. In contrast, learning as doing is bound by pre-reflective practices, so it is difficult to retrospectively translate or transmit learning or knowing in practice into intentional actions designed to change behaviour [ 13 ].

Leading for learning is an essential aim in creating reflective learning communities, which aim to create strong and fair opportunities of learning for all in an organization and encourage them to benefit from these opportunities. Leaders can accomplish this by committing themselves to the following areas of action: establishing a focus on learning, building professional communities that value learning, engaging external environments that matter for learning, acting strategically and creating coherence [ 15 , 16 ]. The perception suggested centres on supplying each learner, no matter what problems they confront, the ways to overcome intriguing skills and to advance habits of mind for additional and autonomous learning.

‘Let’s try it out and see how it works’ is an active learner’s phrase; ‘Let’s think it through first’ is the reflective learner’s response in a reflective learning community [ 17 ]. Leaders’ learning incorporates skills, the knowledge and standpoints, which they obtain while getting ready for and regenerating their practice. Interacting with other professionals who offer moral support, critique, ideas and inspiration for the renewal process will also promote opportunities for effective professional development.

Nearly all managers wish to create more powerful and equitable learning opportunities when they are given time to reflect. Nevertheless, their abilities depend on how they perceive the existent and prospective links between learning and leading in their own context. Managers can use reflective tools like optimizing video as a self-assessment tool, strengthening electronic portfolios with reflective journal writing, making use of associated resources on the Internet, taking advantage of on-line peer mentoring and stimulating reflection via learning communities as part of professional development.

Creating such a reflective learning community requires building professional communities that value learning, acting strategically and sharing leadership and engaging external environments that matter for learning. This type of reflective learning also fosters system learning, in which opportunities come up by means of evaluation of policies, programmes and resource use, strategic planning endeavours, action research focused on system-wide issues and application of indicators to measure progress towards goals defined. Leaders will be able to support system learning through inquiry into how an organization performs.

2.4. The route to leadership through reflective thinking

Reflective thinking is not only an internal process but an external one promoting improved critical thinking skills together with self-understanding as an essential way of inner work which emerges in the energy for employing in outer work. This type of thinking is required for understanding what it means to be significant for oneself and in one’s organization or practice. Being aware of one’s thinking is essential to make informed and logical decisions while working with others. In other words, taking to heart the feelings, thoughts and behaviours of other people also eases improvement in accomplishing organizational and professional objectives. In this chapter, we keep focusing on becoming a reflective thinker as a means to becoming a reflective leader. Therefore, we believe that managers can raise their awareness on their potential capacity for leadership.

Reflective leaders regard learning as a lifelong process, and they tend to equilibrate the practice ‘telling’ with ‘asking’ and frequently depend on the collective intelligence capacity of the teams formed in their organizations. Rather than being ‘in judgement’, these leaders ‘use judgement’ in handing down significant decisions. They regularly tend to step out of their routine and accustomed settings to think, explore and learn. Because the business environment has grown more complex, volatile and fast paced, leaders are more and more willing to adopt a ‘bias for action’, but effective leaders reflect on their past experiences and search for relevant, different insights before decision-making process.

What have I learnt?

What were my feelings and thoughts as it was happening?

How could I explain my experience?

How could I make use of learning for my future actions?

What is your opinion of way I felt and acted?

How have I reacted and behaved?

Based on the answers to the questions asked above, reflective leadership can be considered as a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one’s life with presence and personal mastery. In other words, it requires learning to be present, to be aware and attentive to our experience with people in our daily life, and it regards leadership from the standpoint of human experience. Taking the science of phenomenology into consideration, self-awareness and reflection on one’s own experience together with the experience of other people are the starting point for the process of reflective leadership, which ultimately aim to achieve improved communication changing leadership practice.

We have developed further questions and possible responses to encourage managers to become reflective leaders. Through these six questions and responses, we aim to create awareness on how to become a reflective leader in practice:

2.4.1. In what ways can reflection evoke my self-interests?

People’s self-interests can be met if they reflect on how their work has affected their learning and lives. These effects entail their progress and apprehension in some fields like career search, development of leadership, social justice, civic responsibility and consciousness, intellectual interests and self-actualization. People tend to concentrate on self-learning on particular occasions. They also consider issues related to career search when they finish university. For example, people remember their civic responsibilities only when they vote. The forms of reflection we have been discussing are drawn up to link people’s work experiences to personal development.

2.4.2. How should I proceed to be a reflective thinker?

A reflective thinking model illustrating the process of reflective thinking was developed by Taggart and Wilson [ 18 ]. To identify a problem, dilemma or challenge could be one of the initial efforts. As the next step, you should draw back from the problem concerned for a while and use an outsider perspective to re-evaluate that problem. Within this process you can employ ways of observation, data collection and reflection. They will help you obtain a cognitive picture about the way you think for the sake of defining the setting of that circumstance. This position may be integrated with a similar event in the past to lead you to get probable ways to attempt to solve the problem. You should ask a question at this stage: How have I dealt with the almost identical situation in the past and what makes the present situation different from the one in the past? You will naturally remember your experiences and make predictions and create different approaches. Doing so, you will also have tested the approaches used systematically. Finally, you will review the actions you have taken together with the consequences, and that process will provide you with a new opportunity to reframe the situation concerned.

2.4.3. What do I understand by reflective leadership?

As discussed earlier, a dedication to the continuous process of maintained critical self-awareness and development is essential in reflective leadership. How can you do that? If you are determined to become a reflective leader, you should exchange reflective thoughts of yours with those of others establishing new relationships and ask them to see the situation. We tend to make use of feelings that we highly value, let ourselves experience them and pass along them whenever available. This sort of approach, which is genuine, will certainly give us a space where we will be able to value the contributions of others. This is how we support other people by means of our own reflective practice.

Learning from others basically requires listening to them within the framework of reflective leadership, which will require receptivity to other people. Listening attentively is both an art and a skill to be practised. Effective leaders must listen to cases and stories from all workers to reflect on in what ways they could enrich and change practices. Within this context, those stories providing data about what does work or what does not will tell us to look for significance. Any discussion and reflection on those stories will enrich, change and provide us with opportunities to install any possible changes into practice.

2.4.4. What types of strategies, resources and tools do I need to be more reflective and self-aware?

Awareness is created through communication. To achieve a high level of communication, awareness on what you have been thinking is necessary. In other words, it will enable you a tool to discover yourself and become more self-aware. To do so, any sort of conflict should be seen as an opportunity to understand more of your true self as well as other people. The questions and answers to what you are sensing, thinking, feeling and willing or not willing to do will take time to get. So, you should go on asking them till you could past strong emotions like resentment and anger, because those emotions play a key role in guiding you to what you have been thinking. After reflecting on genuine answers, you can share them with other people directly. Whatever language you use in answering to those questions will encourage ownership, thus enhancing connection. Through this process, you could get a tool to monitor your awareness, expand your opinions and listen to others attentively to resolve problem.

Another efficient approach to work with other people effectively is to be aware of your natural talents. This is something to do with exploration of your strengths. Identifying your talents will naturally provide you with many strategies to build them into your strengths. Knowing what gifts and talents you possess will help you see your weaknesses and align your goals and job with your own talents.

2.4.5. In what ways do reflective leaders affect leadership practice positively and create reflective leaders to be?

Reflective thinking lets you both share your concerns and reveal the concealed issues for you and other people concerned. This process will create an opportunity for you and other people to reflect on your and their point of view, thus providing a sort of catharsis. Doing so will help you develop a wider viewpoint, a new appreciation for everybody and deeper understanding.

As reflective practice is seen as a transformative process, you and the other people around could proceed in a more interconnected way. So, you could define common objectives and goals together with guidelines to avoid possible conflicts in the future. In creating open channels of communication, this environment will bring informal and regular meetings to allow reflective practices supporting reflective leadership. These types of meetings are highly valued by reflective leaders as they see them as productive environments to provide collaborative work supporting the greater sense of collegiality.

Being open and letting testing of propositions and inquiring about one’s strength are another significant task for reflective leaders. It could be necessary for you to face problems like defensiveness of yours and that of other people and the inefficiency of your team for the sake of ensuring the impact of approach you use. So, a reflective learning community, in which reflection is an ideal way of support and learning, should be created by reflective leaders. In such a community, you provide a safe environment for self-expression, identify objectives, give feedback and stimulate self-observation. In defining the strengths of the individuals, you offer other people optional approaches to be successful in their work.

2.4.6. Which leadership processes enhance reflective leaders’ powers and achieve success in other people?

First of all, peer reflection, which helps question assumptions, is one of the main means for reflective leaders to carry out with other reflective leaders. Peers are of paramount importance in clarifying our values. This process helps us build our and peers’ strengths, compensate weaknesses and search for better problem-solving approaches [ 19 ].

To be able to achieve the task, effective leaders should form and maintain the teams in developing individuals. The aspirations can best be achieved if leaders can function in a collegial and collaborative ways by means of reflective practices, which initiate the process of perspective transformation. In other words, reflective leadership is considered to be transformative as long as it builds success in other people by reducing barriers while implementing leadership behaviours. Barriers, to a certain extent, are determined by means of reflection. They are regarded to be intrinsic to our human ego—strivings to achieve, to manage our situation and to compensate for our lack of confidence. The barriers can be reduced by deliberately reacting to what challenges us as a leader under different circumstances. Reflective leaders do that by having a deeper awareness of what sort of leader he/she wished to be, what sort human being is required and what sort of legacy is left by them. These choices direct leaders in how they take up daily leadership. That is to say that the way how leaders go about their day will determine ultimately whether they feel successful and rest with integrity and peace of mind or not.

The rapid rate of changes in our age seems to be one of the biggest demands for leaders. The other striking demand is the need for new frameworks for leadership skills. Leaders can cope with those challenges as long as they can bring each individual to the table to model the future with strong collective dialogues and cooperative actions. Among the other reflective leadership skills, they should be able to manage conflicts, model an adaptive capacity and be efficient in establishing and maintaining relationships. As they are expected to be the cocreators of change, they should accept that any individual or circumstance cannot move out their individual peace or competency. Viewed in this light, they should be able to communicate those feelings to other people in a way that will encourage and enable them to clasp the future and partake in its formation. Ultimately, they should be able to act as a model for other people in their exploration of the value and meaning of whatever they do. They can exhibit behaviours of personal growth and self-awareness if they have a commitment to the ongoing reflective practice.

To conclude, being a reflective leader is initiated through reflective practice. You can begin by being more fully present in every task in your daily life. This requires attending to verbal and nonverbal communication in your interaction with others, often inquiring and clearing up worries and being an attentive listener. You should further take your own experience into consideration together with the experience of other people and each assumption before making decisions. Only after these reflective practices can you establish a sense of mutual respect and sound relationships and see that other people are drawn to you and search for your compassionate consideration about any problem encountered. This transformative process followed will make advance on the way to becoming a reflective leader.

3. Reflective practice

Managers and leaders focus upon events through an intellectual exercise in order to determine in what ways individual assumptions and beliefs together with their experiences and background impact organizational functioning. This is what we call reflective practice that inculcates the intellectual discipline needed to discern ‘what is’ in practice episodes as well as to engage in the self-growth necessary if one is to manage and lead others.

The success of reflective practice depends on learning. For reflective leaders, doing immerses learning. Being aware of what we have been doing does not always create learning as it is a purposeful endeavour. Approached from this angle, realizing the required role of reflection in taking out learning from experience and being aware of the essential principles of a reflective practice will let leaders begin to act on the conception that knowledge is planted in their experience and understand the significance of that knowledge in fostering their practice.

Through learning from experience, reflective practice aims to create a structure, habit or routine. So, a reflective practice can differentiate with regard to how much, how often and why reflection is carried out. Carrying out a reflective practice requires not only clearing the aims it needs to serve but also creating opportunities to install reflection into our activity that are down to earth and yet come about at the right intervals and with adequate depth to be meaningful. However, it is structured; sustaining a reflective practice will transform the probability of learning from our practice into an actuality.

Sergiovanni [ 20 ] classifies three distinct knowledge of leadership conceptions regarding the relationship between theory and practice: (1) there is no relation, (2) theory is superordinate to practice, and (3) practice is superordinate to theory (p. 7). People who adopt the first conception believe that professional practice in leadership relies solely on intuitive feelings disconnected from theory and research. People who put special emphasis on theory feel that leadership is an ‘applied science’ which can be prescribed by theoretical concepts, strategies and depictions. Believers of the last conception see leadership as a ‘craft-like science’ consisting of reflective practice not prescribed but informed by theory.

Since the first conception claims no relation between theory and practice, implication of leadership as no science makes no sense to many, and thus it did not find enough grounds to permeate. Unlikely, the theory-oriented conception of leadership as an applied science pervades throughout the literature on leadership. Its clear-cut linear fashion simplifies every decision to be made into steps and processes predefined in literature. When one has to end organizational conflicts, then there are models of conflict management. When some important decisions have to be made, there are decision-making processes that explain every step in detail. This tool-based approach to leadership has long lived for its feasibility, but when it was realized that the real life is more complicated that it cannot be predetermined to a degree which enables theory to make tools for every situation in leadership, then reflective practice seemed a more realistic way of generating professional knowledge that is different from scientific knowledge. It is different because professionals create it by crafting their intuitions once they encounter situations not defined by scientific knowledge unlike ones in applied science conception. Thus, the craft-like science conception distinguishes professional knowledge from scientific knowledge; the former is created on demand, while the latter is predetermined as a contingency. Reflective practice is about professional knowledge creation by ‘deciding what to do. What purposes should be pursued? What strategies and practice should be used? What should be emphasized and when? In what ways should resources be deployed? How will we know we are on track, and so on’ [ 20 ].

Another distinction implicit in our understanding is that scientific knowledge is prescribed by theory, while professional knowledge is informed by theory. It is informed by interacting elements of reflective practice: practice episodes, theories of practice and antecedents (p. 15). Practice episodes consist of intentions, actions and realities. Leader’s priorities, preferences, strategies and decisions determine his or her intentions that impel actions in the form of leadership and management tactics and behaviours. After actions are performed, realities occur as results, outcomes and consequences. The realities further affect intentions and then actions in a loop which never ends ( Figure 1 ). This infinite loop of practice episodes affects and is affected by theories of practice and leadership antecedents. Theories of practice are mental scenes of a leader’s beliefs and assumptions about how things work in the real world. These are greatly affected by leadership antecedents especially by the theoretical knowledge antecedent. These mental images perform as mindscapes that govern leadership actions both consciously and unconsciously. ‘A reflective mindscape is a perspective in which purposeful activity…is always subject to disciplined examination and re-examination using whatever resources are helpful’ [ 21 ]. Theories of practice may arise from social interactions between leader and others or even from myths on how organizations work. ‘The bundles of beliefs and assumptions about how organizations work, the role of power, authority, management, and leadership, the organization’s purposes, the role of competition, and the nature of human nature’ may evolve into theories [ 20 ]. Workplace is where leaders can best learn about their theories of practice. Therefore, a detailed explanation of these implicit theories cannot be made.

Figure 1.

Elements of reflective practice [ 20 ].

At this point, we will focus on five key leadership antecedents, which play an essential key role in understanding the reflective practice. They are cultural milieu, theoretical knowledge, craft knowledge, self-knowledge and critical knowledge.

3.1. Cultural milieu

As reflective practice is expected to be contextualized in work, it should not be considered separately from the cultural milieu together with the setting and purposes of organization. The cultural milieu includes the elements of educational background, social background, religious background, economic background and historical background, which plays a key role in shaping in what ways a person sees and interprets the outer world. This means that reflective practices will differentiate from individual to individual and from organization to organization and that companies will form different reflective practices that emerge from and further inform their backgrounds mentioned above.

On the other hand, reflective practice can occur through a visioning process or a bigger process of culture change or organizational change. Tucker and Russell [ 22 ] concluded that transformational leaders can have a major influence on organizational culture and change. As culture is a medium by means of which leadership travels and affects performance of the organization, reflective leaders play a key role in transmitting the culture that they believe will most augment organizational functioning.

3.2. Theoretical knowledge

The second antecedent of leadership is the theoretical knowledge, which consists of technical, cognitive and rational knowledge. It means that theoretical knowledge is factual in nature, based in scientific rationality. Reflective approach to leadership is important to the integration of theoretical knowledge, skill development and individualized contexts. The learning organization was often based on a systems theory that handled practice as a result of theoretical knowledge [ 23 ]. Professional learning communities, the name given to leaders’ collaborative professional learning, have become so overused that the term’s meaning is often lost. Only when leaders reflect on their practice based on their theoretical knowledge, consider the impact leadership has on workers and implement insights gained from a meeting to improve their leadership performance can this process be called a professional learning community.

3.3. Craft knowledge

Craft knowledge is believed to be implicit in practitioner; it provides the ‘feel for’ what one does [ 24 ] and manifests itself in the refined ability to interpret what is and to discern what ought to be and what one should do to get there. According to Kluge [ 25 ], knowledge management shows unique leadership challenges. ‘From a leadership perspective, knowledge management has been viewed more like a craft and less like a science. Because of the very nature of knowledge, it is difficult for managers to predict what measures can really improve performance, and how to encourage and guide knowledge flows within an organization’ [ 25 ]. The leaders, according to them, should presume the function of advancing leadership and knowledge in the organization. They should set the tone for the organization and demonstrate that knowledge together with its administration are carefully taken into consideration.

Leaders, from this standpoint of view, should signal a shift in tone when they ask their team to reflect on their learning. Reflective leaders help them realize that they can now look back rather than move forwards. They will take a break from what they have been doing, step away from their work and ask themselves, ‘What have I (or we) learned from doing this activity?’ Some leaders could use music to signal the change in thinking.

In the reflective settings, leaders could invite the teams to learn from their experiences orally or in written form. They ask them to reflect on their learning, to evaluate their metacognitive strategies, to compare intended with actual outcomes, to analyze and draw causal relationships and to synthesize meanings and use their learning in different and future events. Members of the team realize that they will not ‘fail’ or make a ‘mistake’, because these terms are broadly described. Nonetheless, reflective teams realize that they can learn from all their experiences and develop personal insight.

3.4. Self-knowledge

Self-knowledge, even though it is often neglected, enables a vital lens through which leaders could better understand, realize and interpret organizational reality and their position in it. It mainly includes self-awareness, self-understanding and self-management. Without self-knowledge, it is hard for the leaders to understand their weakness and strengths together with their super powers. It lets the best business builders walk the tightrope of leadership: projecting conviction while at the same time staying humble enough to be open to different ideas and opposite thoughts since it is an essential element for organizational functioning. To improve self-knowledge, we highly recommend reflective leaders to (1) observe yourself to learn, (2) keep testing and knowing yourself better and (3) be conscious of other people as well.

While building a team, self-knowledge is also a crucial factor as being aware of one’s weaknesses together with strengths makes them a better recruiter and allocator of talent. In the meantime, you should also be an acute observer of others’ weaknesses and strengths. Reflective teams consist of people who both understand and complement each other. Whenever you notice people developing a common goal by pursuing different ways, there is an implied feedback loop based on peers and systemic learning in that observation itself. Should you have the right complement of people as well as a supportive learning organization, it lets you look at yourself and other people.

That is called the leash of self-awareness: know, improve and complement thyself. They are the common sense principles even though they are not generally practised. In other words, people do not often commit to stand in the face of truth. Rigorous commitment, intellectual honesty and active truth seeking are sine qua non to any process of self-awareness.

3.5. Critical knowledge

The final antecedent of reflective practice is critical knowledge, which includes assumptions, beliefs and values. In other words, critical knowledge (sometimes called ‘philosophical’ or ‘ethical’ knowledge) is a conscious awareness of that which is of transcendent or ultimate value and which perjures beyond the individual. Reflective practice creates an opportunity for development for people holding leadership positions. If you want to manage a team, you should have a clear balance between technical expertise and people skills because this type of role is hard to play. Reflective practice gives an opportunity to leaders to re-evaluate what has been achieved and what improvements could be made.

As discussed earlier, reflection is the conscious and intentional examination of one’s behaviour. Through this process, new understandings and appreciations may be acquired. Leaders should be an active reflector keeping their personal journals. When a difficult event takes place, they can often scribble in their journal to decanter their emotions and thoughts. Schön [ 4 ] described three processes to reflection—awareness of uncomfortable feelings or thoughts, followed by a critical analysis of experience, leading to the development of new perspectives. The phases are not necessarily linear and can involve both looking forwards and looking back.

Asking open and curious questions: let yourself practise asking genius-level questions, which only other people can answer, and about which you should not have any possible theory. For example, you could ask your colleagues about what they are genuinely excited in their work or what their biggest worries are.

Reflecting on the iceberg: doing so takes us back from repairing symptoms and being sensitive to what is going on around us. For example, you can think of a certain event and detail whatever you saw at the level of any event or action. You can then note the different patterns of behaviour seeming to contribute to that action. Detail on different organizational structures and cultural milieu, which created those behaviours.

Using visual art: this is basically a practice for shifting out of words. You could use newsprint or flipchart material with large coloured magic markers and start scrawling, drawing, scribbling or sketching whatever you think. Do not use any words till you feel that you are tired and leave the ‘artwork’ overnight. Look at it for a few minutes, give a name and date it the following day.

Journal writing: to give a chance to what our own inner wisdom says and listen. Doing so, you could learn from your own lives. This sort of practice helps create a greater awareness of your processes of thought. Give yourself some time every day to write in a free way with no prejudice. This process of writing might reflect the sense you possess about tomorrow or what now breaks for you about yesterday.

Role models: without any prejudice, you could observe a leader having a different approach different from that of ours. This practice will help you identify leaders whom you admire. To shadow those leaders, give yourself a day and observe them. Try to have a short interview with any of them asking how they think about leadership and handle the change.

Tackling creative endeavour: spend some time each day for some creative capacity such as writing poems, cooking, playing music, painting or sketching. These can rest our mind placing you in a flow state and enable significant perspectives to understand the world in different ways.

Reaching physical wisdom: to have a better reflection, you should devote to attempt in processes creating different understanding in your body. You may spend some time for some activities like playing golf, jogging, taking up skiing, woodworking or gardening courses.

Discovering people who draw the best out of you: identify who in your life draws your best energies and in whose presence you are the one who you would like to be. Also identify what you have in common. Spend more time with those people who give you best energies.

Through these processes, it will be much easier to learn from colleagues; write downshifts in your awareness and in your sense of purpose. Ask yourself whether you are aware of things you have not noticed earlier, by virtue of any of these processes or practices. The possible responses you will have will contribute to your effectiveness as a leader; increase the capacity to lead change. When people are asked about the most effective leaders, they will talk about the extraordinary capacity of leader to listen. Listening is an essential cognitive skill for a leader. One might conclude from this that reflective practice begins within yourself, and it is a significant transformational leadership skill, which will help you notice and change the profound processes of thought.

3.6. The models of reflective practice

To make reflective practice more concrete, there are some models offered to leaders. A useful model that explains reflective practice is the ALACT model of Korthagen [ 26 ]. The model has continuous phases of action, looking back on the action, awareness of essential aspects, creating alternative methods of action and trial ( Figure 2 ). A leader or manager does an action; judges how well he or she did the action; considers elements that attributed to success of the action or prevented the action to be successful, based on that judgement develops better ways of doing action; and finally tries the action in a better way. Note that the first and the last phases are the same. A sample implementation of this approach would be like this one [ 26 ]:

A: A mathematics lesson was given.

L: This lesson went fine. They were a bit noisier than usual, but I could control them all the same.

A: Ronnie was not present; that may have been a cause of the extra noise. In my opinion he is a kind of ‘leader’, and because he was always cooperative, the others cooperated too. Now that he wasn’t there, the others didn’t know how to behave. Yet they all worked well. Another cause may be that we started at 8:30, which is earlier than usual. The children hadn’t blown off steam yet, but I wanted to start quickly all the same, for I had only 1 h.

Figure 2.

The ALACT model of reflection [ 26 ].

C: The next time I will take more time.

Reflective questioning is another way of performing reflective practice. This model offers questions to be asked by reflective practitioners in three levels of reflective practice, which are descriptive, that is, theory-building, knowledge-building and action-oriented levels of reflection ( Table 1 ). The levels are a type of reflection in action. Reflective leaders first describe the situation they are in and then move to scrutinize the situation to construct knowledge to be used in the action-oriented level of reflection. In this final level, questions to improve the consequences of the action are asked by the reflective leaders.

Descriptive level of reflection	Theory and knowledge building level of reflection	Action-orientated level of reflection
… have I been trying to achieve? … has been the response of my learners? … was good or bad about the experience?	… does this tell me about myself and my way of working? … other knowledge am I now able to bring to my role? is my new understanding of the role?	… do I need to do in order to further improve? … broader issues do I need to consider if this action is to be successful? … might be the consequences of this further action?

Table 1.

Reflective questioning [ 27 ].

Gibbs’ model of reflective cycle takes feelings into account when reflecting on and learning from experience. It starts with a brief description of an event and then feelings about the event are expressed ( Figure 3 ). In the evaluation stage, value judgements are made for further analysis in the next stage to draw a personal understanding of the event. In the conclusion stage, insights into how behaviour affected the outcome of the event are developed. Finally, an action plan is developed to be used when encountered the same or similar event. The plan should constitute learned intuition of what a leader would do differently in the next time. This model is a type of reflection on action. A very good example reflection done by a leader using Gibbs’ model can be read at [ 29 ]. Instructions about how to implement each stage are further detailed in Table 2 .

Figure 3.

Reflective cycle [ 28 ].

Description	What happened? Don’t make judgements yet or try to draw conclusions; simply describe
Feelings	What were your reactions and feelings? Again don’t move on to analyzing these yet
Evaluation	What was good or bad about the experience? Make value judgements
Analysis	What sense can you make of the situation? Bring in ideas from outside the experience to help you. What was really going on? Were different people’s experiences similar or different in important ways?
Conclusions (general)	What can be concluded, in a general sense, from these experiences and the analyses you have undertaken?
Conclusions (specific)	What can be concluded about your own specific, unique, personal situation or way of working?
Personal action plans	What are you going to do differently in this type of situation next time? What steps are you going to take on the basis of what you have learnt?

Table 2.

Stages of reflective cycle [ 28 ].

Kolb’s reflective model presents another circular approach to reflective practice ( Figure 4 ). New knowledge is generated upon experience building on prior experiences and knowledge. The cycle starts with a concrete experience in which a person is actively involved. In the reflective observation stage, reviewing of what has been done and experienced takes place. The next stage is called abstract conceptualization that involves making sense of what happened by interpreting relations between events. The final stage of active experimentation is about testing implications of concepts, which are developed in the previous stage, in new situations.

Figure 4.

Kolb’s reflective model [ 30 ].

Experience needs to be seen as constructed, shaped and contained by social power relations.

Complex and unequal relations around knowledge are constructed between people as an integral part of the learning process.

There is a need to focus on the here-and-now experience and the mirroring process between the people within the education environment and the organizations they represent.

Finding ways of working with underlying and unconscious processes, particularly defence mechanisms, is necessary.

Second-order or metaprocesses relating to each aspect of the cycle are included.

4. Conclusions

Leadership is so complex that everything about it cannot be written in a handbook nor can be prescribed in the literature on leadership. So, how can new knowledge about leadership be generated when it is needed but not available at hand? Reflective leadership fills the gap between theory and practice by enabling leaders to construct their own theories of practice during, after and even before their actions. It teaches leaders how to catch fish instead of giving them fishes. It is a self-development tool and requires little mastery to use. We believe that this chapter is a good starting point for all leaders to acquire this mastery that paves the way for growing as reflective leaders who are self-efficient in creating and updating their own practice of leadership.

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Writing and Leadership: Reflecting on the Page

Insights from

Lili Powell

Most of us know that writing is a technology invented several millennia ago to aid memory, but few consider how much writing — especially reflective writing — can aid creative and critical thinking, particularly when leading organizational change. For anyone who is about to embark on organizational change, has the responsibility to lead it or needs to help others make sense of it, reflective writing can enhance and deepen your leadership practice.

The process of writing, and particularly reflective writing, has an extraordinary capacity to aid creative and critical thinking and deal with complex emotions. Keep in mind that writers not only benefit from the products of writing — messages that can be archived or transported — but also from its practice. Experientially, writing slows down thinking, which can be especially valuable to anyone under the stress of organizational change. Jumbled thoughts, images, impressions and feelings, when ordered on a page as words, sentences and paragraphs, begin to make more sense; incrementally, they become stories that explain cause and effect, arguments that discover logic in the midst of chaos and analyses that provide for clearer judgment. [1]

Further, as the writer becomes reader, thoughts appear at a critical distance. Toggling back and forth from reader to writer — from objective to subjective interpretation — one becomes freer to reflect on and refine thoughts, stumble upon unexpected discoveries, invent new ideas and meanings, and solve problems creatively. [2] Taken to yet another level, reading your own writing opens up the possibility of also examining how you think in the context of change, putting you in a better position to make adjustments as needed. Overall, writing to reflect can transition a leader’s mind from the whirr and buzz of daily reactive thinking and communicating to a mindfulness that welcomes the creativity and fresh thinking you need to lead change. [3]

Getting Started With Reflective Writing

Most people who regularly practice reflective writing develop habits and rituals that keep them going. At first, finding a time and space that work for you may seem the biggest challenge. The good news is that you don’t need a lot of time at one sitting. Writing in 10- to 15-minute increments can actually be quite productive. It does help, however, to give your full attention to the task, so help yourself concentrate by closing your office door, turning off your cell phone, going out to a coffee shop, sitting in the park or using a little idle time on the train. If possible, take your writing time-out at the same time each day. Some people enjoy writing in the morning when they feel rejuvenated from a good night’s sleep. Others prefer to write before going to bed to clear their minds so they can fall asleep.

Many people prefer to keep a journal rather than use a computer. Writing in longhand slows your thinking and stimulates the brain differently than typing does. If fancy journals are intimidating, use an ordinary spiral notebook. Conversely, if a fancy journal inspires you or helps you take the task more seriously, by all means, use the fancy one. [4] If your thinking is coming in bursts, and unspooling thoughts sequentially seems to interrupt your flow, try jotting ideas on index cards or sticky notes first. Spatially arranging these bits of thought later may help you transition into prose as you feel ready.

If you’ve never tried reflective writing before, just the thought of it might give you writer’s block. To counter inhibiting thoughts, decide to turn off your internal editor. Instead, practice free writing, a technique in which you write nonstop for several minutes without any interruptions. Concentrate only on the thoughts that come up in the present moment and ignore or suspend that internal editorial voice that may plant seeds of doubt. This technique can be good training for more formal writing, too, because it encourages you to separate the creative process of drafting from the critical process of editing.

Make the Most of Your Reflective Writing

While writing to reflect has many virtues, there are a few caveats. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but the over-examined life isn’t worth living either. As you write, be mindful of what you are doing and why. Recognize when you have reached a point of diminishing returns; walk away from your writing if you find yourself over-analyzing a situation, fixating on a detail or obsessing about how you have been wronged.

Ultimately, as a souvenir from your time spent writing to reflect, bring the pearls of wisdom you discover back into the world to help you lead change. Now that you have some thoughts on paper, call on “the muse of the second draft” and translate your personal writing into communications with others: conversations, memos, emails, presentations, meetings and so on. Completing this step will help you realize the real world value of your investment in writing to reflect.

Leading change is hard enough. But if you can’t focus because you are overwhelmed with information and the tumult of change, you will have a hard time focusing other people’s attention, too. So take some time out, write to reflect, and clarify for yourself and others what you want to communicate and accomplish.

This post is excerpted from Darden Professor Lili Powell’s technical note Writing to Reflect: Mindful Leadership in the Face of Change (Darden Business Publishing). Please see its companion piece, “ Writing and Leadership: Applying Reflective Writing to Leading Change ” for actionable ideas to begin the reflective writing process.

Professor Powell teaches in the Executive Education program Leading Mindfully , which draws from neuroscience, psychology, management research, yoga and acting methods to teach skillful self-management so that participants may lead others more effectively.

[1] For research on the mind-body benefits of reflective writing, see James W. Pennebaker, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions (New York: Guilford, 1997) and Stephen J. Lepore and Joshua M. Smyth, eds., The Writing Cure: How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002).

[2] For more on critical thinking, see Richard Paul and Linda Elder, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2002).

[3] For more on mindfulness, see Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (New York: Hyperion, 1994).

[4] For a leather-bound guided journal aimed specifically at reflective writing for executives, see Peter Drucker and Joseph Maciariello, The Effective Executive in Action: A Journal for Getting the Right Things Done (New York: Collins, 2006).

Julie Logan Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business; Kluge-Schakat Professor, UVA School of Nursing; Director, Compassionate Care Initiative, UVA School of Nursing

Powell’s current academic interests are mindful communication and leadership presence. She also has expertise in leadership and management communication, corporate reputation and diversity. In addition to her roles as professor at the UVA Darden School of Business and UVA School of Nursing, she also serves as director at the University's Compassionate Care Initiative .

Powell has authored numerous cases and is co-author of Women in Business: The Changing Face of Leadership . She is currently working on a new book — Present: Leadership as Wise Practice . She has presented her work at the Academy of Management, the Association for Business Communication, the Management Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the Reputation Institute’s Conference on Reputation, Image, Identity, and Competitiveness conferences.

Powell has been a consultant, facilitator, instructor and coach to a number of individuals and organizations. Her clients have included the Council for Public Relations Firms, Federal Bureau of Investigation, KPMG, Lagos (Nigeria) Public Schools, National Industries for the Blind, Premier, Providian Corporation, United Technologies, University of Virginia School of Medicine and World Bank. She has taught internationally and worked with Executive MBA students from IAE Business School (Argentina), IBMEC Sao Paulo (Brazil) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden).

B.A., M.A., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Northwestern University

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Essay Papers Writing Online

A journey of self-discovery through the written word.

In the realm of writing, reflection is a powerful tool that allows writers to delve deep into their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Reflective essays serve as a platform for introspection and self-discovery, enabling individuals to explore their innermost feelings and perspectives on a particular topic or event. Through the art of reflection, writers can examine their past actions, analyze their growth, and gain valuable insights that contribute to personal and professional development.

The process of writing a reflective essay involves more than just recounting events; it requires a thoughtful examination of one’s thoughts and feelings surrounding those events. By articulating their thoughts in a structured and coherent manner, writers can gain clarity, insight, and understanding of their experiences. This introspective exercise not only enhances self-awareness but also encourages critical thinking, empathy, and emotional intelligence.

As writers navigate the intricate terrain of reflection, they embark on a journey of self-exploration and self-expression. Through the written word, individuals can articulate their innermost thoughts, fears, joys, and struggles, creating a narrative that is both personal and universal. By sharing their reflections with others, writers foster dialogue, connection, and understanding, creating a unique space for empathy, growth, and solidarity.

Understanding Reflective Writing

Reflective writing is a form of writing that allows individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It involves looking back on past events or situations and analyzing them to gain insight and understanding. Reflective writing is often used in academic settings to encourage students to think critically and reflect on their learning process.

When engaging in reflective writing, it is important to be honest and open about your experiences. You should consider how you felt at the time, what you learned from the experience, and how it has influenced your thinking or behavior. Reflective writing can help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your personal growth.

What is Reflective Writing?

Reflective writing is a form of personal, introspective writing that explores and analyzes thoughts, experiences, and emotions. It involves looking back on a particular event or experience, reflecting on how it affected you, and considering what you’ve learned or gained from it. Reflective writing often involves a deep level of self-awareness and critical thinking.

Through reflective writing, individuals can gain insight into themselves, their actions, and their relationships. It can be a powerful tool for personal growth, self-discovery, and learning. Reflective writing can be therapeutic, helping individuals make sense of their experiences and emotions.

Benefits of Reflective Essay

A reflective essay offers numerous benefits for writers and readers alike. Here are some key advantages of writing a reflective essay:

Self-awareness: Reflective essays encourage introspection and self-reflection, leading to a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s experiences.
Critical thinking: Writing reflectively requires critical analysis of events and ideas, fostering critical thinking skills.
Empathy: Reflective essays often involve exploring emotions and perspectives, enhancing empathy and understanding towards others.
Personal growth: By reflecting on past experiences, individuals can identify areas for personal growth and development.
Improved writing skills: Engaging in reflective writing helps writers enhance their storytelling and communication abilities.
Enhanced problem-solving: Reflective essays can help individuals identify patterns and lessons learned, aiding in problem-solving and decision-making.

Overall, the act of writing a reflective essay can lead to increased self-awareness, personal growth, and improved communication skills.

Personal Growth and Development

Reflective writing allows for personal growth and development by providing a space for self-exploration and introspection. Through the process of reflecting on our experiences, thoughts, and emotions, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

By engaging in reflective writing, we can identify patterns in our behavior, uncover hidden motivations, and gain insights into our strengths and weaknesses. This self-awareness is essential for personal growth, as it enables us to make informed choices and take intentional action towards our goals.

Moreover, reflective writing encourages us to learn from our experiences and mistakes, fostering a growth mindset that embraces challenges and setbacks as opportunities for learning and development. It helps us develop resilience, adaptability, and emotional intelligence, all of which are crucial for personal growth and success.

In conclusion, personal growth and development are central to the practice of reflective writing, as it allows us to cultivate self-awareness, learn from our experiences, and navigate life’s challenges with wisdom and resilience.

Steps to Writing a Reflective Essay

Step 1: Select a Topic

Choose a topic that reflects on your personal experiences or emotions that you wish to explore and reflect upon.

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

Reflect on the topic and jot down key points, memories, and emotions that you want to include in your essay.

Step 3: Create an Outline

Organize your thoughts and ideas into an outline to structure your essay. Include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Step 4: Write the Introduction

Start with an engaging introduction that captures the reader’s attention and introduces the topic of your reflection.

Step 5: Develop the Body Paragraphs

Elaborate on the key points and experiences in the body paragraphs. Include concrete examples and details to support your reflections.

Step 6: Reflect on the Experience

Reflect on the significance of your experiences and emotions. Analyze how they have impacted you and what you have learned from them.

Step 7: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your reflections and insights in the conclusion. Reflect on how the experience has shaped your thoughts and actions.

Step 8: Revise and Edit

Review your reflective essay, revise for clarity and coherence, and edit for grammar and punctuation errors.

Step 9: Seek Feedback

Share your reflective essay with peers, instructors, or mentors for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Step 10: Finalize Your Essay

Make final revisions based on feedback and polish your reflective essay for a compelling and insightful piece of writing.

Choosing a Topic and Brainstorming

When starting a reflective essay, the first step is to choose a topic that resonates with you and allows for introspection. Consider events, experiences, or emotions that have had a significant impact on you. Reflect on moments of growth, challenges overcome, or lessons learned.

Once you have selected a topic, start brainstorming to generate ideas for your essay. Jot down key points, memories, and thoughts related to your chosen topic. Consider how the experience made you feel, what you learned from it, and how it shaped your perspective.

Brainstorming allows you to explore different angles and details of your chosen topic, helping you to delve deeper into your reflections and craft a well-rounded essay that captures the essence of your thoughts and emotions.

Structuring a Reflective Essay

When structuring a reflective essay, it is important to carefully outline the different components to ensure a clear and cohesive piece of writing. Here are some key elements to consider:

1. Introduction: Begin your essay with an engaging introduction that sets the stage for your reflection. Provide some context for the experience or event you will be reflecting on.

2. Body: The body of your essay should include detailed reflections on the experience. Share your thoughts, feelings, and insights on the situation, and provide examples to support your reflections.

3. Analysis: After sharing your reflections, take some time to analyze the experience. Consider what you have learned, how it has impacted you, and what changes it has brought about in your thinking or behavior.

4. Conclusion: Conclude your essay by summarizing your key reflections and insights. Reflect on the significance of the experience and any lessons you have learned. Leave the reader with a final thought or reflection.

By following these guidelines, you can create a structured and thought-provoking reflective essay that effectively communicates your reflections and insights.

Reflective Essay Examples

Here are some examples of reflective essays:

Example 1: Reflecting on my first year of college and the lessons I’ve learned
Example 2: Exploring the impact of a personal challenge on my growth and development
Example 3: Reflecting on a life-changing experience that shaped my perspective

These examples provide insight into the reflective essay process and can inspire you to explore your own experiences through writing.

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Revealed: Harvard Business School’s New MBA Essays For Applicants

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Harvard Business School’s Baker Library.

With just 10 weeks before its first application deadline on Sept. 4th, Harvard Business School today (June 25) revealed a newly revised application for MBA candidates, including a new set of three short essays along with a refresh on how it will evaluate applicants for future classes.

The new prompts?

Business-Minded Essay : Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)

Leadership-Focused Essay : What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)

Growth-Oriented Essay : Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

NEW HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL ESSAYS PUT THROUGH BY NEW MBA ADMISSIONS CHIEF

Eagerly awaited by thousands of prospective students and admission consultants, you can bet that the admissions pages of the HBS website were continually refreshed all morning for a glimpse at the new essay. The Harvard Business School essay prompt for the Class of 2027 was posted at 10:30 a.m. with the opening of the 2024-2025 application online.

This year’s change was put through by Rupal Gadhia , who joined the school as managing director of admissions and financial aid last October. A 2004 Harvard MBA, Gadhia came to the school with no previous admissions experience, having been the global head of marketing for SharkNinja robots.

In explaining the change in a blog post , Gadhia noted that “we have refreshed the criteria on which we evaluate candidates. We are looking for applicants who are business-minded, leadership-focused, and growth-oriented…This is your opportunity to discuss meaningful or formative experiences that are important to you that you haven’t had a chance to fully explore elsewhere in your application…Be authentic, be yourself.”

WHAT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL IS REALLY LOOKING FOR IN THE NEW ESSAYS

The school added some context to its new criteria for admission, more clearly defining what it means by business-minded, leadership-focused, and growth-oriented.

Business-Minded

We are looking for individuals who are passionate about using business as a force for good – who strive to improve and transform companies, industries, and the world. We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking. Being business-minded is about the interest to help organizations succeed, whether in the private, public, or non-profit sector. This business inclination can be found in individuals with a variety of professional and educational experiences, not just those who come from traditional business backgrounds.

In Your Application: We will look for evidence of your interpersonal skills, quantitative abilities, and the ways in which you plan to create impact through business in the future.

Leadership-Focused

We are looking for individuals who aspire to lead others toward making a difference in the world, and those who recognize that to build and sustain successful organizations, they must develop and nurture diverse teams. Leadership takes many forms in many contexts – you do not have to have a formal leadership role to make a difference. We deliberately create a class that includes different kinds of leaders, from the front-line manager to the startup founder to the behind-the-scenes thought leader.

In Your Application: Your leadership impact may be most evident in extracurriculars, community initiatives, or your professional work.

Growth-Oriented

We are looking for individuals who desire to broaden their perspectives through creative problem solving, active listening, and lively discussion. At HBS you will be surrounded by future leaders from around the world who will make you think more expansively about what impact you might have. Our case and field-based learning methods depend on the active participation of curious students who are excited to listen and learn from faculty and classmates, as well as contribute their own ideas and perspectives.

In Your Application: We will look for the ways in which you have grown, developed, and how you engage with the world around you.

TIGHTER TIMEFRAME FOR ROUND ONE APPLICANTS

The new essay prompts come nearly two months after candidates to the school’s MBA program would more typically know what was expected of them. Some admission consultants say the delay over the prompt’s release, along with nearly a month’s slow down in releasing application deadlines, is “wildly insensitive” to applicants who will have less time than normal to prepare for the round one deadline of Sept. 4th.

That’s especially true because the most successful applicants to HBS have highly demanding jobs that consume the vast majority of their time. Many candidates go through multiple drafts of their essays to get them as close to perfection as humanly possible. MBA admission consultants are expecting a lot of up-to-the-deadline work this year to help prep candidates for Harvard and other top business schools.

The new application still preserves the post-interview reflection for applicants who are invited to a 30-minute admissions interview. Within 24 hours of the interview, candidates are required to submit a written reflection through the school’s online application system.

REACTION TO THE NEW CHANGE IS MIXED

Early reaction to the change suggests the likelihood of mixed reviews. “This is an uninspired and odd set of questions,” says Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com and an MBA admissions consultant who closely reads the tea leaves of Harvard’s admissions process. “I don’t know how it’s different from what else do you want us to know about you, frankly,” he adds in a reference to last year’s single essay prompt.

“HBS has certainly moved from the abstract to the concrete,” believes Jeremy Shinewald, founder and CEO of mbaMission, a leading MBA admissions consulting firm. “Some applicants previously felt like they didn’t know where to start and some weren’t sure if they had answered the question, even when they were done. Now, the questions are quite straightforward and all have a cause and effect relationship — one where the applicant discusses the past to reveal the present or future. Smart applicants will understand how to share their experiences and, more importantly, how to relay their values. Some will mistakenly try to whack HBS over the head with stories of their epic feats, but the key isn’t to brag or embellish – the key is to simply create a clear relationship, via narrative, between past experience and true motivations.”

Shinewald found it astonishing that Harvard could not have made the change earlier. “It is, of course, surprising that HBS left applicants on edge until the last minute, all to create very traditional essays,” he adds. “As applicants learn in MBA classrooms, change can be hard and take time. The bottom line here is that these essays are somewhat of an applicant’s dream – they allow the savvy applicant to play to their strengths and draw on their best anecdotes and experiences to create a complete story. Some applicants will lament the absence of a ‘Why HBS?’ prompt, but my guess is that the admissions committee recognized that they would get an almost homogenous collection of essays touting the case method and other well known features. HBS gets some kudos for keeping the focus on the applicant.”

Adds Petia Whitmore of My MBA Path: “I think they reflect one of the traits of this new generation of candidates which is that they don’t handle ambiguity well. So it seems like Harvard had to spell out what they’re looking for way more prescriptively than in the past.”

Some, however, find the new essays a return to the past. “To me, the prompts feel quite regressive, and a return to the more formulaic approach that pervaded MBA applications two decades ago,” believes Justin Marshall, a New York-based MBA admissions consultant. “Because the previous prompt was so open ended, it forced applicants to be introspective and self-aware. You couldn’t just ramble for 900 words; you had to identify themes in your life to show how your personal experiences shaped your values, your leadership style, and your goals. Comparatively, these new prompts are much more paint-by-numbers. Applicants will likely cover the same ground in terms of topic, but there’s very little room for nuance and self-expression. I think it will be harder for applicants with less conventional backgrounds and experiences to differentiate themselves. I’m sure HBS grew tired of reading so many painfully earnest ‘life story’ essays, but I suspect they’ll soon find themselves yearning for essays that have a heartbeat and personality. 250 words just doesn’t allow for that unless you’re a very crafty writer.”

Whatever the case, getting into Harvard’s MBA program is still a daunting exercise. Last year, 1,076 of the 8,264 candidates who applied for admission to Harvard Business School gained admission, an acceptance rate of 13.2%, making HBS the second most selective prestige MBA program in the country after Stanford Graduate School of Business which had an admit rate of 8.4%. Harvard saw a 15.4% drop in MBA applications from the 9,773 it received a year-earlier.

Joint degree applicants for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School must provide an additional essay: How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (up to 400 words)

BIGGEST CHANGE IN HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL ESSAY IN NEARLY A DECADE

Joint degree applicants for the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences must provide an additional essay: The MS/MBA Engineering Sciences program is focused on entrepreneurship, design, and innovation. Describe your past experiences in these areas and your reasons for pursuing a program with this focus. (recommended length: 500 words). Applicants will also be able to respond to an optional essay.

In any case, it’s the biggest change in Harvard Business School’s application in nearly a decade. The last time HBS made a major switch, moving to the essay prompt it just eliminated, was in 2016. That change to just one essay with no word limit and a post-interview reflection was made by then admissions chief Dee Leopold.

When Leopold applied to Harvard as an MBA candidate in 1978, she had to write eight essays. Over her years as managing director of admissions, she first cut the essays down to four and then one, making it optional, and finally the one last prompt with a post-interview reflection, saying that applying to HBS should not be a writing contest .

OUR BUSINESS CASUAL PODCAST: The New HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MBA Application: Fortuna Admissions’ Caroline Diarte-Edwards and ApplicantLab’s Maria Wich-Vila join P&Q’s John A. Byrne to offer applicant advice on how to answer the new HBS essay prompts

DON’T MISS: 2024-2024 MBA APPLICATION DEADLINES or HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL WILL NOW UPDATE ITS MBA ESSAY

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Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Elaina Plott Calabro

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with Elaina Plott Calabro. Listen wherever you get your podcasts .

Transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

Is Kamala Harris Underrated?

The political journalist elaina plott calabro traces the political trajectory of the vice president — and why her 2016 image might be just right for 2024..

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

If Joe Biden steps aside, which is still a very big if, the favorite to replace him is Vice President Kamala Harris. She is quite literally next in line.

There are reasons that are obvious for this and reasons that are a little bit more subtle. Like, here’s one. She would make the transfer of money a lot easier. A Harris-led ticket could use all the money that the Biden-Harris campaign has raised, whereas because of how campaign finance law works, if anyone else is a Democratic nominee, that money has to be transferred to the D.N.C. or to a PAC, which would make coordination a whole lot harder.

But there’s been this longstanding belief in Democratic circles that Harris is a lot weaker than Joe Biden, that he can win the election and she can’t. The big evidence for this used to be that she polled beneath him. That’s no longer true. I was looking at the FiveThirtyEight polling averages, and she has a very slightly higher approval rating and a significantly lower disapproval rating. There’s a new CNN poll that found Biden losing to Trump by six points, Harris losing by only two points. Other internal Democratic polling has been leaked, including by a group called Open Labs. Looks there, too, like Harris is now outperforming Biden against Donald Trump. In polls before now, she’s performed similarly, sometimes a point or two worse.

So far, the conventional wisdom has held that Biden may be weak, but Harris is also too weak. But why?

There are ways in which Harris seems perfectly suited for this moment. She’s a former prosecutor who would be running against a convicted criminal. She’s the administration’s best messenger on abortion by far, running in the aftermath of Dobbs. She’s a Black woman with a tough on crime background, running at a moment when crime and disorder have been big issues in American politics.

And unlike Joe Biden, who I think has very little room to improve from here, the American people don’t really know Harris. The opportunity for her to make a different impression if she was speaking for herself, rather than for the administration, is real. Now, that doesn’t mean she’d be able to pull that off. That’s a hard political job. But she’s a lot sharper in interviews and debates than I think people are now prepared for.

She has a résumé and some skills quite well-suited to this moment. It definitely doesn’t seem impossible that she could rise to the task. There is a reason she was considered so strong in 2019 and in 2020. Wouldn’t you want to see her debate Donald Trump?

But that still leaves a question of how she ended up with this reputation in the first place, how she went from this meteoric rise, winning a Senate seat in 2016, being taken seriously as a top tier presidential candidate just four years later, getting tapped, then, for vice president, to being really quickly, after that, considered a political underachiever, the reason Joe Biden needs to run again rather than the successor he was building that bridge to.

Elaina Plott Calabro is a staff writer at The Atlantic who previously covered politics at The New York Times. And in October, she published a really big, really interesting profile of Harris — about what had happened during her vice presidency, how that differed from the reputation she had before. And for that, she spent quite a lot of time with Harris and the people who worked with her. So that’s to come on the show, to unravel the puzzle, maybe even the paradox, of Kamala Harris with me. As always, my email, [email protected].

Elaina Plott Calabro, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I want to begin with a clip of Vice President Harris defending Joe Biden right after the first presidential debate in this interview with Anderson Cooper.

Listen, people can debate on style points, but ultimately, this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance. And the contrast is clear. Look at what happened during the course of the debate. Donald Trump lied over and over and over again, as he is wont to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November.

He went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of a woman to make decisions about their own body. He has been completely ambiguous and all over the place about where he stands on that issue, despite the fact that he hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade.

And that’s exactly what they did. And just three years ago, we commemorated the two-year anniversary of Dobbs, wherein women across our country have been denied emergency health care, have suffered miscarriages to the point that —

All that may be true, but the president of the United States —

But these facts are very important.

— was not able to make that case to Donald Trump on the stage tonight.

So there’s something grim there about Cooper basically saying, great, that was a great debate answer. Why wasn’t the president able to say what you just said?

I think, honestly, a lot of people who have followed the vice president closely the past three years were, in some ways, surprised by that answer.

One of the huge reasons for her struggles and her, in my opinion, lack of popularity among many Americans is that she’s a very poor communicator when the parameters are quite wide. And what do I mean by that? I mean, when she’s on a stage and she’s asked about the American experiment, democracy, the state of it, things like that, she really gets lost in the woods when she talks.

But a moment like this, when the parameters are quite narrow, when she needs to — and it’s such a cliché with her at this point to say it like this, but making the case against someone or something is where I think her confidence truly shows and when she is actually communicating in a way that doesn’t feel instantly clippable for a Republican ad.

I want to get at this idea of her as a poor communicator, because, in some ways, what has happened to the reputation of Kamala Harris between, let’s call it 2019 and 2020, when she’s a huge rising star, and she’s running for president and considered in maybe the top tier of the presidential candidates, nobody’s saying, well, this is going to be a disaster. Kamala Harris is a terrible communicator.

And then something happens. And the whole conventional wisdom in Washington on Kamala Harris undergoes this devolution to, she’s not a way above replacement politician, but a way below replacement politician. One of the reasons Joe Biden has to run again, no matter how old he is, is she can’t carry the load. Why does that happen?

Having spent more time than I’d like to admit combing through every aspect of her career as a public servant, you have to think about, OK, what was she before she ran for president in the primary? She was a senator from California. She had not been in office long at all before she launched her primary bid.

Before that, she was attorney general of California. Before that, she was the D.A. in San Francisco. Let’s think, then, about the D.A., because I think this elucidates the point pretty well. When you are running for D.A., you are not necessarily trying to capture the imagination of voters. It’s very just sort of metrics-driven, dry even.

And she ran the campaign that way. She said, my opponent, the incumbent, has a very low conviction rate for felonies. I’m going to raise that conviction rate. And because she was so often the first, or always, rather, the first, in the jobs that she held, whether that was because of her gender, being South Asian, having Black heritage, a lot of times, in the era she was running, you’d want to minimize those facts.

And I think in San Francisco in particular, in that D.A.‘s race, what she wanted to show voters was that she kind of wanted to blend in like background music, in a way. Like, I’m the guy that you currently have, but I’m just a lot more competent. And it’s sort of that very kind of systematic, practical appeal that works in an office that’s really close to the ground in that way.

Nobody is looking to their D.A. to give soaring and inspiring speeches about democracy, and nor are they looking to be sold on a story of someone’s life. I mean, I’m sure most Americans in this country couldn’t tell you the origin myth of their local district prosecutor or what have you. And she sort of ran her campaign for attorney general that same way.

I remember talking to one of her advisers on that campaign, and she said they did, in fact, urge her, you know, share more about your biography. Make your personal story more of an aspect of this campaign. And she was resistant to that idea.

But she definitely does it more now. She talks about the friend who was molested when she was growing up, and she brings that friend into her home. And that’s part of why she becomes a prosecutor. So when she does tell her story, what is the story she tells?

It’s interesting that you brought up that story in particular, because I remember an aide coming to me in the midst of reporting my profile on her, saying, I just found out a key reason why she became a prosecutor, and I’m going to set up an interview so she can tell you about it. So I thought it was quite telling that this person who had been on her team for a while is only now learning this pretty important facet of her path to her career.

So, she is inherently resistant to trying to sell herself in such a way. But again, with attorney general, that is not the worst thing ever. Governor — it would have been a different story, of course. She gets into the Senate, runs for president, and what you see happen is that her background and her skill set, in being a prosecutor, prosecuting the case against Donald Trump, collides with a moment when the national sentiment toward police and law enforcement, in general, is quite grim.

And you have those around her, like her sister, Maya Harris, who say, you kind of drop the prosecutor thing. This is not something that voters want to be reminded of. She wrote a book when she was in California called “Smart on Crime,” which really — you read it, it sounds more like a tough on crime book. But that was no longer relevant, as her advisers told her, to her interest in the presidential campaign.

And so what happened was her communication became so clearly reflective of someone that she herself didn’t recognize, if that makes sense. When she is able to kind of step into that mode she feels comfortable, where she feels more like a district attorney again, like you saw in hearings with Brett Kavanaugh or Jeff Sessions, when her star really started to explode —

When you and I met, I brought up the incident in Charlottesville, where, as you know, there was a rally by white supremacists that left a young woman dead. You will recall that the president who nominated you described the incident by saying, quote, “I think there is blame on both sides.” So I think this will be a simple question for you. Do you, sir, believe there was blame on both sides?

Senator, we did talk, and I enjoyed our meeting and to talk about the history of this country. And we talked about that at some length and talked about discrimination. I appreciated your opening statement yesterday, where you talked about your experience. One of the principles I’ve articulated throughout this hearing is the independence of the judiciary.

And, sir, I’d appreciate if you’d answer the question.

I am, Senator. So one of the principles I’ve talked about throughout this hearing is the independence of the judiciary. And one of the things judges do, following the lead of the Chief Justice and what all the judges do, is not — stay out of current events. Stay out of commenting on current events, because it risks confusion about what our role is. We are judges who decide cases and controversy. We’re not pundits, so we don’t comment on current events. We stay out of political controversy.

With all due respect, I only have limited time. But are you saying that it’s too difficult a question, or it’s a question you can’t answer, which is whether you agree with the statement that there was blame on both sides? We can move on, but are you saying you cannot answer that simple — pretty simple question?

I think that’s the flavor we’re starting to see again. But the interim has — I mean, it’s just been a struggle because that’s never been how she thinks of politics.

You open your profile with a kind of very telling story that I’ve also heard from others about getting a tour of the art in the vice president’s residence. Do you want to talk through that?

Yeah, so I went to meet with the vice president at her residence for about an hour and a half. And when I got in there, she gave me a tour of the residence. So, like past vice presidents, she’s completely redesigned it, hired someone to come in and help her effect her vision. And she wanted to show me all of the artwork that she’d included.

And what I found pretty interesting right off the bat was that as she was describing these pieces, she said nothing about what it made her feel, what attracted her to it. The artistry itself is probably a better way to say it.

She would just point to it and say, this is by a Japanese American artist. This is by a gay artist, and sort of took me through an identitarian walk-through of the art on display in her home and never said anything else about it. And she ends it with, so you get the idea. So you get what I’m going for here, was the meaning of that. And, yeah, it was telling. I think there was a reason I started my piece with that anecdote.

But I also think, to me, it’s the sort of thing that reflected, I think, her desire, at times, to say what she thinks the base of the party wants to hear, which is where a lot of her communication fumbles, I think, come from. I think a lot of times that she is very scared of saying something wrong and going counter to the base, as opposed to just saying rather forthrightly how she feels about something.

You’re not the only person who’s gotten that exact tour and had that exact reaction to it. And it’s why focus on this. It’s obviously a very small thing, but there is this way — maybe it’s because it’s not actually her politics, right? I think it’s a really interesting argument you’re making here and that I think might be true, right, that she’s actually speaking this era of the Democratic Party with an accent, to use that metaphor.

That’s a nice way to put it. Yeah.

That, in fact, the reason the symbolism is a little bit blunt force is it’s not her natural politics. She’s not just running to be the first. She doesn’t come out of that era in Democratic Party politics. She comes out of this era when it made sense in SF to be a kind of smart on crime, tough on crime prosecutor, to brag about your conviction record, to say that the people you’re running against don’t have enough convictions, right? To say that you have compassion, but you also have steel to you.

And that as she tried to refashion herself for an era that did not allow her to make that set of arguments in an era in which there was extraordinary excitement about a Black, Indian American woman after Obama, I mean, people wanted her to pan out. They wanted Kamala Harris to be the next chapter in the history that seemed to be happening when the party elected Obama in 2008 and 2012.

And I think she tried to shape herself into that. And I guess what you’re saying here, which is interesting and maybe speaks to why that’s sort of an awkward tour she gives people, is that it’s an awkward fit, not just for the person on the tour, but maybe also for her.

To me, that’s absolutely the case. And I’ll return, again, to her presidential primary bid, which is where I think this theme sort of crystallized. I remember talking to aides on that campaign or former aides — this would have been after the fact — who said that when she started getting advice from people closest to her saying, this is a different moment in the Democratic Party, your background should not be your selling point, that her response was essentially, but I am a prose — that’s what I’ve done.

That is who I am. So what story do I tell instead? It’s not like I had a detour at some point where I went from smart on crime to, actually, just kidding, I changed my mind — here’s the new book. There wasn’t really an authentic pivot for her to make.

So when she’s sort of advised and takes that advice to heart that who she is, is not what that iteration of the party wants, she tries to reshape herself. And that’s why — I mean, let’s talk about the question of authenticity. That’s something that I think is really fraught, often, with racist and, quite often, sexist stereotypes, things like that.

But voters really did pick up on something about Kamala Harris that just felt inauthentic when she spoke. I think it was David Axelrod in my story, who just said, voters can pick up on that when it doesn’t feel — honesty is not even the right word, I think, telling a lie about your record or something, but just misrepresenting who you are or what it is that you really want to be saying.

She has reminded me of something that was true about Hillary Clinton, which is both of them struggled with this question of authenticity, struggled to seem like they were themselves, giving a big speech. And then when you would meet them privately, I don’t know that I’ve ever met a politician where I felt there was a bigger gap between the sort of charisma on the stump and the charisma around a table than Kamala Harris.

Clinton had that dimension to her, too. But Harris is like — she’s extremely warm and magnetic and profane, much more so than a lot of politicians who I know. You actually would want to have a beer with her. You’d want to go to the barbecue or the party she hosted. But you don’t see that version of her out in public all that often. And I don’t blame her for why, right?

I think there’s a long history of seeing this, whereas Joe Biden or Donald Trump can just go, like, let it all hang out, and then they seem authentic. But this feels to me like a place where there is a real — I mean, there is something lurking behind the public persona that if she were able to unleash it, at least from what I’ve seen, I think would be actually quite compelling.

And what I will say is that having traveled to so many events with her and actually seeing her interact with voters one-on-one, you do see that person. And this goes back to something I feel pretty strongly about, which is that when she is on a stage in front of a big audience and is expected to talk about gauzy questions of democracy and things like that, she just doesn’t do well, even broad questions like, what does this administration see as the future of climate change?

It’s something that I think once she gets in a smaller group and she’s able to really level with the person that she’s speaking to and has eyes on them, she, I think, becomes a completely different person. She’s far more comfortable.

And that’s what I experienced in the residence. I mean, this was someone who I found to be almost maternal. At one point she says to me — it’s not even a question — you’re newly married. I said, yes, Madam Vice President. And she just said, pay attention to your marriage, your relationships, because life has a way of sweeping you up.

And it was just something I had never seen from her on the stage, I think is the important distinction, that aura around her. Where I had seen it was one-on-one with voters.

And when I spoke with Hillary Clinton for this story, she said specifically, Kamala Harris is not a performance politician. I didn’t take that to be a criticism. She’s not a performance politician either. But her point was that— she said, when I was running for Senate, I did a lot of these really small round tables with voters all across New York. The media had no interest in that.

And this is a complaint you will hear a lot from Kamala Harris’s aides. She is, in fact, out there. Yes, she does travel a lot — I’ve gone with her for a lot of these stops — and is talking to people, interacting with voters. But they’re like, nobody’s coming with us on Air Force Two. We can’t get any of these major outlets to come do it.

And so, Kamala Harris, she said to me, my career was not about giving lovely speeches. It was about working with my constituents in whatever capacity I was in. And that’s great. But on a national stage, there’s simply no way that the media can package that fact and sell it for you. Lovely speeches is a large part of the ballgame when you are in the White House.

You mentioned that book “Smart on Crime.” You mentioned it reads from maybe our current perspective as tough on crime. What does she say in that book? How would you describe it?

Well, think about her record in California. She was not shy about prosecuting people for marijuana usage. And it’s one of the reasons you saw quite the backlash — I don’t know if you’ll recall, Ezra — the moment when she’s asked — I think it was on a podcast — have you ever smoked marijuana? And she starts laughing and says something to the effect of, what kind of question is that? You know, I’m Jamaican.

And that might have been funny. But what a lot of people, I think, correctly pointed out is that, well, the thing that you’re laughing about is the thing that you were quite eager to move against in your positions of power in California, that today is not something that she’s going to want to talk about again.

But I remember talking to David Axelrod for my profile. This was last fall, and he said there’s such a tidal shift, in a way, where there’s a vacuum for somebody to step in and say, I am a progressive, but the Democratic Party can have the answer for crime. And he was sort of astonished that she hadn’t stepped in to kind of claim that role.

This, to me, is the paradox of her — it might ultimately be the tragedy of her — because Harris runs in 2020 at this exact moment when her precise political profile is disastrous for the Democratic Party, right?

It’s post-Ferguson. It’s post-Black Lives Matter. George Floyd is yet to come, but we’re already in this moment where what you want to be is not a smart on crime Democrat. It’s a criminal justice reformer. But when I go back right now — because preparing for the show, I was reading a bunch of older political profiles of Harris, and I was reading this one from The New Yorker in 2019. And they described her then as, quote, “a Black female law and order Democrat.”

And when you imagine the candidate Democrats would want to run this year amidst concern about crime, concern about disorder at the border, running against a convicted criminal in Donald Trump, at the moment that the Supreme Court is saying that the president can functionally do almost anything they want, like a Black female law and order Democrat is the profile that you would grow in a lab.

And it’s not clear to me. Like, can she reinhabit it? Can she find that again? Does she still believe in any of that? But it seems very — rather than Harris, in some ways, seeming ill-suited for the moment, most of her political history seems perfectly suited for the moment.

I agree with that so strongly. And another thing I feel so strongly about is that her perhaps not inhabiting that role, that should seem so natural and so intuitive in this moment in particular, I think is a failure of President Biden.

I’ve thought a lot about how, when they came into office, they really didn’t have a vision for her vice presidency. And part of that was by virtue of how she was chosen. She was not selected as a governing partner. People like Jim Clyburn, who has known Biden for quite a long time, is quite close with him, urges him expressly to pick a Black woman as vice president. And that’s great, but coming into the presidency, the White House, you have to take time to set out, OK, what role do you actually want the vice president to fill as a governing partner?

There are some reasons that are understandable for that not happening immediately. One was Covid. They came into office. It was all hands on deck. But another thing that I found pretty fascinating is that the role that vice presidents have typically been asked to fill — when I say typically, I mean, the past 20 years or so, 25 years — is a liaison to Capitol Hill, a kind of anchor to Washington for the outsider-ish president.

So you think about Dick Cheney for George W. Bush. You think about Joe Biden for Barack Obama, I think, most notably. Barack Obama was quite candid that he did not like the task of going on Capitol Hill and trying to negotiate to push his legislative agenda forward. Joe Biden loves that.

And so you had sort of this paradox that Kamala Harris comes in as this person who was, like, 10 years old when Joe Biden ran his first campaign for the Senate. There’s no world in which it makes sense to try to frame her as the Capitol Hill whisperer of the Biden administration.

But in fact, that’s what they tried to do at first. And I think it was just because they saw the historical pattern. They didn’t know what else to really do with her because they hadn’t really put enough thought into it. And she failed quite miserably in that role.

Again, as I mentioned, she was in the Senate a rather short time before she launched her primary bid. She had not built up the relational capital with lawmakers to be someone who could come in and really make things happen. And so you saw, which I think was quite embarrassing for her, that early on, Joe Biden said, OK, I’m going to go with you to these meetings, almost like a chaperone, to the point that it became just Joe Biden going to meet with someone like Senator Sinema or Senator Manchin to try to get them on board on his voting rights package.

So that fizzled out quite quickly. And I think you were then left with a vice president drifting in the wind. And, to me, it was so interesting about how probably Joe Biden’s worst answer, one of the worst kind of moments of the debate that we saw, was his inability to speak coherently about abortion. And it is that exact fact that indicates why we even have some sense of what Kamala Harris’s profile of her vice presidency has been.

In anticipation of the overturning of Roe, Biden, who does not feel comfortable talking about abortion, certainly not hitting the campaign trail in talking about it, suddenly, that was the vacuum for her to fill. And it was by happenstance, in many ways, right?

So the lack of planning, I think, has sort of brought Kamala Harris to where she is today. The West Wing has never really cared to think strategically about how to present her to the American public. And what I found in my reporting is, unfortunately, one reason was that when you ask Joe Biden’s aides, is she ready to step in and be president, they don’t want to engage the question because they feel that in doing so, they would legitimize the implication that she might, in fact, need to step in for Joe Biden, which just goes back to what everybody is talking about today, that those around him have sort of gaslit and bullied reporters who dared bring up the fact of his age. And I think that has translated directly to how people have tried to cover the vice president or understand the vice president.

But Biden has wanted to serve a second term. I have heard many people say that it was almost a stroke of genius for them to choose a weak vice president, because if they had chosen a stronger vice president, the pressure on him to step aside would have been much greater.

But if they had had a serious strategy to bulk up Harris’s profile, to make her seem presidential to people, to give her victories, to say, maybe you don’t want Joe Biden out there doing a lot of adversarial interviews and YouTube shows and podcasts, but you could send Harris out there. She’s a good interviewer. She makes mistakes like everybody, but she’s actually quite strong, in my view. I’ve listened to a bunch of her interviews. But they didn’t want to do that.

I’m not saying this was all a strategy, but in terms of their incentives and Joe Biden’s incentives, he didn’t want people coming to the conclusion that he’d done a great job in the first term, but he had this excellent vice president. And given that most Americans thought he was too old for a second term, he should step aside. He wanted people to feel that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump.

I think that’s right. But what people, I think, latched on to pretty quickly, and correctly so, I think, is Joe Biden positioned himself publicly as wanting to be a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leadership from the outset of his presidency. So however he felt privately, he was on the record saying that this is not about me. This is about the country. This is about saving democracy, all of the things we would expect a politician to say.

But the fact that, particularly when it came to that bridge comment, that that was followed up by really not much of a cursory effort to promote a fuller and more successful portrait of Kamala Harris to the American people, I think that dissonance is partially responsible for what we see now.

I want to zoom in on the moment he picks Harris. So as I remember the veep stakes, you had a couple of people who were really in contention towards the end — Tammy Duckworth, who they really liked, who’s a senator, a wounded war hero. Elizabeth Warren was in contention. Karen Bass, who’s now the mayor of Los Angeles. Amy Klobuchar was in the mix at different points.

I mean, there were a lot of people they were talking to, could have spoken to. He ends up settling on Harris. He ends up settling on Harris, even though, of everybody in the primary, she dealt him the most vicious blow in the debate and a blow that, I think, his campaign felt and then was able to argue, effectively, was unfair, this sort of attack on busing.

There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.

Which, then, their campaign got people to ask her, well, what is your position on busing? And frankly, it wasn’t actually that different than Joe Biden’s. But so she’s able to surmount that. Why does he choose her?

What it came down to — and I want to point to the busing comment again. This was pretty hard for Jill Biden to get past. She, I think, far more than Joe Biden himself, had trouble sort of digesting the idea that his running mate would be somebody that she saw as having attacked him so relentlessly and unfairly in the primary season. My understanding is that when it came down to Karen Bass versus Kamala Harris, they simply thought that Kamala Harris would do a better job.

And then when she comes in, they do give her certain portfolios. And there’s been a lot of debate in Washington among political people, I know, about why they give her certain portfolios. So they give her immigration, which is a very, very, very difficult portfolio.

They give her voting rights, which my understanding is she wanted, but also, they did not have the votes to pass the voting rights bills they wanted to pass. They did not have the votes to get rid of the filibuster. And they did not have the votes to surmount a filibuster.

At one point, they gave her the AI portfolio, which was very strange. There’s been a sense that even outside this question of putting her out there and putting her out in front, that she wasn’t being given projects that were actually winnable, right, in the way that Al Gore got reinventing government, which he could be out there on the talk shows, talking about, and scoring wins on.

Joe Biden was a key negotiator on very important bills in Congress. There were a lot of deals that Joe Biden could fairly say that he was the person who, in the end, got to the finish line with Mitch McConnell. But they were giving her things that everybody knew at the beginning, there was not going to be a signing ceremony. Why was that?

Immigration, I think, is a pretty fascinating illustration of this whole theme in general. It’s telling, right, that you immediately say immigration and don’t specify the so-called root causes issue. What does that mean? That means your portfolio is ostensibly trying to grapple with things like impoverished conditions and crime from Central American countries that are actually causing these migrants to flee north to begin with.

The way that that assignment came about — and this speaks to, I think, just the lack of a broader strategy that the West Wing had when it came to her — as Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, told me, they were in a meeting, talking about this very issue. And Kamala Harris, as Klain told me, spoke rather forcefully and rather well about her ideas for alleviating some of these root cause elements.

And Joe Biden was impressed with her ideas. And he essentially said, why don’t you take that issue? Why don’t you take it on? And she’s kind of silent for a moment. And after the meeting, she approaches Klain and says, I’m really happy to be engaged on this, but I was sort of throwing those things out there in the hopes that someone else could take them on and not me, because it is just a completely no-win issue. I mean, to the extent that you can, as a governing leader, help alleviate those root causes, I mean, that’s a 10, 15-year at minimum metric.

Kamala Harris, as vice president, is going to fix El Salvador?

Yes. Word is out on whether that has happened yet. [LAUGHS] But anyway, Ron Klain says, look, I get it. But — and here’s the important part — when Joe Biden was vice president, this was the issue he took on for Barack Obama. So he didn’t even see it as, oh, I’m saddling her with the thing that I don’t want to do, or sort of the scraps. He saw it as a great sign of respect that he would take the issue that he had worked on for Barack Obama and feel enough confidence in her that he would want to give it to her as well.

So completely divorced from questions like, can she make any meaningful, just optically, a sense of a win on an issue like this? And what does that mean for her profile as a vice president? Things like that were just not coming into the equation at all.

And so you have that, and then you have voting rights, which, you’re correct, she did want that. But even from the outset, she knew that a voting rights package was not passing the Senate. It just wasn’t. And because she didn’t have the relationships on Capitol Hill that would be needed to actually realize the chance of getting it to the president’s desk, that was just another thing that even though she felt comfortable speaking about it and the need for it, again, there was no signing ceremony that was ever going to accompany that.

On immigration, this is a place where she also did herself no favors. I mentioned in general, that I think she’s a stronger communicator than is currently her reputation. But here, she gave one of her first major interviews to Lester Holt, and it was genuinely a bit of a debacle.

Do you have any plans to visit the border?

I’m here in Guatemala today. At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.

You haven’t been to the border.

And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not —

So this, for me, was one of the places we began to feel the sense of her turn in Washington, right? The sense that maybe, actually, she wasn’t quite ready for prime time. What was your sense of what happened there?

OK, I’d like to focus first on the reaction from the White House to that interview. What many aides I spoke to couldn’t understand was why, when the questions were so easily anticipated, she had failed to the degree that she had.

But to me, that’s almost less important because, yes, the interview itself was quite the debacle. But I think what really allowed it to snowball into something that we are still talking about today, all these years later, is that for many Americans, it was their first introduction to Kamala Harris, just in general.

I keep saying, again, I know, she was not in the Senate a very long time before she launched her primary bid. But I think it’s so important in that she did not have, really, a built-in profile with Americans to lean back on and be able to interpret an interview like that and say, eh, everybody messes up sometimes. But I know Kamala Harris because of these other reasons, and I have faith in her.

The second thing we saw — and again, another reason that it became the debacle it did — is that she pretty much retreated from public view afterward. I think Elizabeth Warren is a great example of a candidate who, while on the campaign trail, her team really understood that if she had a bad interview, just blanket the airwaves afterward. Just do more and more and more until people can’t even remember what the issue was in the interview from eight days ago or whatever it was.

Kamala Harris didn’t do that. Now, that’s not to say that people like Ron Klain didn’t encourage her otherwise, but she became really terrified of making another mistake of that magnitude, that rather than sort of getting out there and talking and talking and talking until it just seemed like, eh, another interview — who even remembers — it became one of the few interviews she even did that entire year, and certainly, that entire summer. And so it just took on an outsized importance that was probably never in proportion to the mistakes in the interview itself, if that makes sense.

I don’t remember if it’s in your profile, but something Klain says about her is that she bears the weight of embarrassing or slipping up for the administration very heavily, that one of the things that made her more cautious in this period is, it’s one thing to be running your own campaign and screw up. It’s another thing to be out there as a supporting player and screw up and making the person sort of at the top of the ticket or at the top of the White House look bad.

And that that created a real — I mean, she’s always been known as a bit of a cautious politician, but that created a real fear of failure in her. And also, she has some strictures on her as a vice president, right? If she begins going out and doing constant interviews, the White House, which, I think, has, as I was saying before, let’s call it a mixed relationship to what level of prominence she should have, might not have been thrilled about her becoming an omnipresent media figure.

So, yes, that was my profile where Klain made that point. Harris’s aides, though, their frustration was that because she felt that so strongly, and it’s a completely valid reaction to have — I’m a supporting player here. I do not want to distract from this administration’s agenda by flubbing in interviews and having that become the headline or the thing that’s showing up on Saturday Night Live or something like that.

What her aides were frustrated by was that knowing that she was feeling that way, that she was becoming interminably more cautious, it seemed, as a result of that, that was the moment they felt when the West Wing really could have stepped in and tried to help promote her. So she was never, by the way, she was never going to go on a media blitz just on her own accord, in an effort to fix it herself. That was something that the West Wing, if it was going to happen, that they would have to be the engine behind. And the appetite for that collectively was just never really there.

I want to talk about some other things that begin to shape, I think, her public profile in this period. And one relates to that relationship with the West Wing. You began getting these stories pretty regularly about staff turmoil in the vice president’s office, about chaos in the vice president’s office, about her churning through her people. You were hearing it in background quotes from administration officials. You were hearing it in these stories in “Politico” and the “Washington Post.”

And there was a sense that something was wrong, even in the small part of the White House or the administration, rather, that Vice President Harris was in charge of running. How do you understand those stories? What was wrong? I mean, were they picking up on something real? And how big of a deal was it, really?

I think what the West Wing, just based on my reporting, saw as wrong was just sort of amorphous, this idea that when she went out in public, you were sort of always at the edge of your seat, not for a good reason, but because you didn’t quite know where a sentence might go. And that —

That’s how I feel about Joe Biden.

[CHUCKLING]

And that came to be real. Again, it’s sort of a more amorphous thing, but there was not one specific thing where they thought, she’s incapable of doing this. It was just a general, “this is a headache every time she goes out there.”

But I will say that when reporters would talk to the West Wing about that, rather than take an opportunity just on paper to constantly reinforce their support of her, they just didn’t do that. And when you would insert the age angle in particular, do you have confidence in this person to step in should something happen, they took issue with the implication of the question and spent more time, I think, berating the mere ask, rather than using it as an opportunity to elevate their confidence in her.

But there was something more being said in these stories, which was that there was turmoil in her office, that she was losing staff, that there was some kind of chaos in her management. There was a kind of suggestion that that had been true, maybe in her Senate office, too. Was it being managed very badly? Was there a problem between her and her staff?

At the outset, there absolutely was. And the internal narrative in her office as to why that was, was that she was really working with a group of people that she didn’t really have longstanding relationships with. And I think that so many people had competing ideas of what her vice presidency should be, that a lot of the chaos you saw at the beginning was just clashing ideas and her inability to say, we’re going this way, or we’re going that way.

One of the aides that left during that turmoil of the first year, I remember her telling me that the boss that she had worked for on Capitol Hill before she went to work for Kamala Harris as vice president, she said, I worked for a representative who, if everybody was screaming with a million different ideas, this person would just say, we’re doing this, we’re doing this, and you’re all getting on board, and we’re sticking to it. She was not good at doing that, is what I’m told. She just didn’t have the confidence yet to say, this is what the plan is.

Let me ask you about another dimension of this. So you talked earlier about Joe Biden saying he was going to be a bridge to the next generation of Democratic Party leaders. There’s always this question, though, of a bridge to which faction of the party. Now the party is more united, I think, than it was in 2020, when you had the sort of democratic socialist “squad” dimension of it. You had the sort of rising Black Lives Matter, post-George Floyd. There was overlap here, but you could call it more woke. You could call it more built around identity and ethnicity. You had the moderates, which Joe Biden was a part of, and I think were seen as maybe still an important force, but a thing that was draining of its power. Obama was held in a little less esteem at that moment, I think, inside, at least the commentariat, than he is right now.

So there was this question of to what Biden was going to build a bridge. He picks Harris after George Floyd’s murder. And I think that pick also reflects a sense of what the next iteration of the party was going to be, right? It was not going to be a party that was going to be nominating old white guys to be the nominee.

It was going to be a party that was more fully embracing a sort of antiracism, more fully embracing the politics that felt very dominant in that moment. It always seemed to me that’s the reason that Amy Klobuchar didn’t do better in the veep stakes and a reason that Harris seemed like a sensible pick for them. On the one hand, she wasn’t too far away from their politics, but on the other hand, it seemed like she directionally could represent this.

And then, pretty quickly, that politics loses its energy. A backlash builds. There’s increasingly a sense that what Joe Biden is, is more like the future than the past. Like, if you could find somebody like Joe Biden, but younger, that would be a strong candidate. And so one thing that seemed to me to happen in the ripples of Washington, D.C., was that the thing that Biden was building a bridge to seemed, at one point, to be the politics Harris represented or could lead. And all of a sudden, it wasn’t the politics that Harris represented or could lead.

And so it almost seemed to many people like they had picked their vice president on a political theory that had just proven wrong, that if they had picked Tammy Duckworth or an Amy Klobuchar, that would have been more in keeping with where people now thought the politics of the future were sitting. Do you think that’s true?

Going back to something we discussed earlier about why did he pick her, you mentioned her as somebody different from Amy Klobuchar. And certainly, that was the persona. She was projecting a quite different persona from Amy Klobuchar. But I think one of the reasons that Joe Biden picked her and that they would click in conversations is they’re not altogether that far apart on policy.

To me, the true Kamala Harris is someone — a Democrat who is much more pragmatic than the idea of her has become. And I understand why that idea exists, but it makes it all the more so that the party has changed. And as we’ve been saying, the change is almost designed just to lift her up in what I think is the core of who she is as a politician and the core of her ideological approach to governing.

There’s a way in which I think the picture you’re helping me clarify is that she became a cipher twice, once when she runs in 2020 and realizes that her entire record, her entire positioning, her beliefs, her experience are ill-suited for the political moment. And again, she becomes vice president.

And that is always a collapse into being a cipher, because you have to be whatever the administration needs you to be. You have to be on board with whatever the president is doing, right? You almost, by definition, in that job, cannot be yourself. You cannot go out and shift the way you’re seeing. You can’t decide on new policies, make big pivots, right? You’ve really very little control over your public persona.

And so you have this person who had a very clear political identity, lost it in 2020, wins the vice presidency, but at the cost of losing that identity even more. And now everybody’s like, who is Kamala Harris? And the answer is a little bit unclear because it’s been a little bit since she was able to carve out a public version of herself that is authentic to whoever she is now.

That’s again, why a reason that I think the Lester Holt interview became the catastrophe, really, that it was. It was never about just the one interview. It was about it inevitably being the entree, of sorts, of her to the American people that she had never really quite achieved before. There was no backdrop, really, against which for Americans to judge her in that moment.

So I will say that, sometimes, I’ve wondered about her — why is she doing this? I mean, she clearly just found such joy from her days as a prosecutor. And I mean, her whole tenor changes when you’re talking with her about that and what she loved about that job, that, sometimes, it’s like, why are you going for this, as you’re just getting further and further away from the more intimate grass roots settings that really seemed to bring you joy and professional fulfillment?

There’s been this feeling among Democrats for some time. You might think Joe Biden is too old for this, but Harris is definitely a weaker candidate. It doesn’t look obvious to me at this point after that debate that she is a weaker candidate than Joe Biden. At the very least, she seems to me to have a lot more room to go up. Maybe she has more room to fall, too. I guess that’s possible, though in a CNN poll that came out this morning, Biden was six points behind Trump, and Harris was two points behind Trump. But I’ve seen that go in different directions. But I’m curious if you have a view on this, because there was a hardened conventional wisdom that she’s a weaker candidate than Biden. But now that seems like a very open question.

Well, and the reason it’s no longer such an open question is not just because of Biden’s failure, but because where we are in the campaign — she’ll do a vice-presidential debate — she performs best when she is in conversation with someone about something very specific. I don’t mean to harp on that over and over.

But the trend I would see of her when I was on the road with her is, she’d get on stage at, say, Georgia Tech, where she’s talking to these college students about climate change. And on stage are two professors, two scientists. And when they’re asking her questions, those are those edge of the seat moments and not in a good way.

But about halfway through when she is in those conversations, she essentially takes the mic and starts directing the conversation herself. She’ll start asking, what about your background? What got you interested in this? And it’s when she feels that control and that she’s more in conversation with somebody instead of just being asked question, her answering, asked another question, I think that’s when she performs better, and she also starts to actually speak in much more precise terms about whatever agenda item it is that she’s on stage there trying to sell. And I think that’s why, on a debate stage, even before what happened the other day, it has just always been quite well suited to her.

One of the difficulties, I think, if Biden decides not to run, Harris is by far the favorite, right? I don’t know if he would actively endorse her or just kind of signal that he thinks she’s great, but she’s, either way, the favorite to win in convention. He could actively endorse her and functionally hand her the nomination. Hell, he could resign and hand her the presidency.

But she’d have to do something very tricky, which is, usually, when the vice president runs, they have a whole campaign to redefine themselves. Joe Biden had the entire 2020 campaign to show that he was obviously a huge fan of Barack Obama, very proud of his service, but not exactly Barack Obama. You could think of George H.W Bush. You could think of Al Gore. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t.

But usually, they have quite a long time, the whole sort of interminable American presidential cycle, to show people who they are. What Harris would have to do, if Biden dropped out, is reconstruct or construct this entire political persona beyond just being Joe Biden’s vice president extremely fast, which I don’t think is completely impossible.

People would be very interested to see what she has to say. They would really tune in for that convention speech. They would really tune in for her interviews, but it would rely on her and the people around her knowing what it is she wanted to say, knowing what it is she thought American politics was about right now, knowing what it is she thought the questions were about. Do you have any sense of what you think that would look like or if she’s up to it?

I think it’s a big ask, in large part because she and her team have been so relentlessly on message, even off the record, that this administration is not about her and what she wants, to the point, again, even off the record, when you say, well, look, let’s just take a gander. What does she want? What would she do as president? The question just feels irrelevant to them because it’s not they say it’s not the point. And again, this is even off the record.

So I think she’d be coming in with Americans who, one, don’t really have a great idea of who she is just as a person, what her origin story is, her biography, anything like that, nor, just inherently, by virtue of the fact that she’s been vice president, would they have a great idea of what she wanted to accomplish as president.

My sense, just having gotten to know her, is that she would have a bit of a tough time at first, probably breaking out of a “we,” saying “our administration.” I mean, those things just become habitual for a vice president, quite obviously. And I think for her to have to suddenly make the transition to, “Here is what I would do,” that is an adjustment that I think can’t be overlooked in terms of — I mean, there are growing pains involved with that.

How about simply the capacity she has to prosecute a case against Donald Trump? I mean, one of the things that has been on my mind about her sort of unusual potential fit for right now is so much of what swirls around Donald Trump is legal as opposed to policy, right?

So much of, certainly, the way Democrats are thinking about Donald Trump in terms of the criminal cases, in terms of the recent series of Supreme Court rulings, is about boundaries of legality, about what it means to have a convicted criminal in the White House. Is that a case she is well suited to make?

I think it is. And I think my addendum to whether she, in this short time, could sell Americans on herself and her agenda, that’s important. But I almost don’t know that she would need to at this point, where we are in this political moment.

I think a lot of people in this country, casting a vote for them would be about casting it against Donald Trump, maybe not necessarily for someone. Her strength, I think, would be in prosecuting a case against him such that that becomes her profile, if that makes sense. Getting on a debate stage with Donald Trump, as people saw with her questioning Brett Kavanaugh and just the overwhelming excitement that attended those events, would translate well here. I think the difference would be, is she somebody who, by virtue of making that case, can she excite people to actually vote for the Democrats versus just staying home? I don’t know that it’s about her performance could seed voters to Donald Trump.

I think that’s a good place to end. So, then, always our final question — what are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

So the first book I recommend is called “Southerners” by Marshall Frady. It’s an anthology, actually, of a lot of the profiles and general essays that Marshall Frady, who was a reporter for Newsweek and Harper’s, New York Review of Books, several places in the midcentury during the Civil Rights era. He is the kind of writer who you read him, and you almost become angry, because you just know you will never be that good at a sentence level. His sentences are — they almost dance off the page. And so, just, the prose is really compelling.

But what I love about his approach to political reporting is, I think, sometimes, in the — and maybe this is the Politico-ification of political coverage today. There’s a tendency to almost want to treat our elected leaders as sort of omniscient and omnipotent and work from that premise, as opposed to this idea that these are people who, a lot of, just really don’t know what they’re doing. They’re monkeys fighting for the same crown.

And I think Marshall Frady, in taking that latter approach, gets at the truth of the characters he’s writing about much more effectively and sort of showing them as the sort of slapdash figures they so often are. So whether you want to read about Lester Maddox, the Huey Long family, I highly recommend.

OK, my second is “The Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles, which I would describe as a novel about existential despair, if that entices any listeners. But it’s about three Americans, three New Yorkers, who go to North Africa and are thinking of it as sort of just a tourist jaunt. The couple in there is hoping that it will rekindle their romance and sort of come in — and Paul Bowles writes about these themes, often — the romantic notions of travelers to, quote unquote, “exotic places.” And the book, then, very darkly, chronicles sort of their descent into despair as their ignorance of cultures come to be realized to them.

The third I would recommend is “The Company She Keeps” by Mary McCarthy. This was McCarthy’s debut novel. It’s not quite exactly an anthology, even though some of the chapters in there were first published in places like “Harper’s Bazaar.”

But this book is about Meg Sargent, who, just very obviously, an autobiographical character of a Catholic girl who, post-college, goes to New York to try to work for a new republic nation equivalent and try to make something of herself in the city’s boho intellectual culture, dips into Trotskyism, which gets her fired from her job, and like all books of this era, ends with a scene of her in psychoanalysis.

Elaina Plott Calabro, thank you very much.

Thank you, Ezra.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of “New York Times” Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser, and special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

EZRA KLEIN: From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

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A vision of leadership : a reflective essay . Abstract . My interest in the field of education was sparked before I entered kindergarten. My mom was a teacher and I had two high school-aged siblings planning to enter the educational field. These three individuals greatly influenced my desire to enter the educational profession.
Reflective Essay on Leadership and Management
In the understanding that this is a growing subsector, the core values that define her leadership in the context of organization is character, honesty, integrity, equity, trustworthiness, self-discipline, courage, fairness and a range of positive leadership and management attributes are critical for success.
Reflective Essay on Being a Leader
Published: Mar 13, 2024. Leadership is a crucial aspect of any organization or group, as it guides the members towards a common goal and motivates them to achieve success. Throughout my life, I have had the opportunity to take on various leadership roles, whether it was leading a team project in school or being in charge of a community event.
Writing and Leadership: Applying Reflective Writing to Leading Change
For anyone who is about to embark on organizational change, has the responsibility to lead it or needs to help others make sense of it, reflective writing can enhance and deepen your leadership practice. The proceeding is a follow-up to " Writing and Leadership: Reflecting on the Page ," which appeared on Ideas to Action in September 2014.
A complete guide to writing a reflective essay
Identify the topic you will be writing on. 2. Note down any ideas that are related to the topic and if you want to, try drawing a diagram to link together any topics, theories, and ideas. 3. Allow your ideas to flow freely, knowing that you will always have time to edit your reflective essay. 4.
Leadership Style: Reflection and Analysis
The concept of leadership is an essential part of the modern world due to the fact that it is one of the key determinants of successful management. Therefore, it is critical to be able to properly assess and evaluate one's personality and its corresponding leadership style. The main reason is that leadership can be expressed in various forms.
A vision for school leadership : a reflective essay
A final analysis for creating a vision of school leadership takes the reader to. a new level in the reflective thinking process. The intent of this essay is to. develop a broader perspective of the impacUhat leadership has on the bottom line, student achievement. Setting each student up for success through increased.
Writing A Reflective Essay On Leadership
A reflective essay on leadership is an opportunity to take responsibility for one's actions and the actions that are taken. for the good of the organization. Writing a reflective essay on leadership should allow the student to create a vision of the future.
Reflective Practice in Leadership
Introduction. Reflective practice is an essential part of human personality that enables a person to self-discover his inner qualities. This concept is meaningful to my professional and career destiny because it enables me to understand my talents and abilities. Therefore, I have gained insights my behavioural instincts and how they either ...
PDF THE REFLECTIVE PATH TO LEADERSHIP
lures (Seifried & Höpfer, 2013).Similarly, reflective practice is closely associated with the notion of learning from experience, which in turn involves the following: (1) blending theory and practice; (2) active learning; (3) participative learning and; (4) challengin.
Reflective leadership: my own personal insights into this concept
One of the best ways of describing reflective leadership is from a web article I discovered whilst researching this narrative. " Reflective leadership is a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one's life with presence and personal mastery. Learning to be present, to be aware and attentive to our experience with people ...
How to Write a Reflective Essay
In a reflective essay, you may use your conclusion to give closure to the experience you're writing about. Add any insights to explain your reasons for your impression. Finally, remember that a reflection is a way to write about the past from the perspective of the present. Make a clear connection from the past to the present.
Reflective Leadership: Learning to Manage and Lead Human ...
This chapter mainly focuses on the concept of reflection as a process, both individual and collaborative, involving experience and uncertainty under the theme of reflective leadership. This type of leadership basically means learning to manage and lead human organizations. It originates from the concept of reflection defining leadership roles and responsibilities in all types of organizations.
Writing and Leadership: Reflecting on the Page
The process of writing, and particularly reflective writing, has an extraordinary capacity to aid creative and critical thinking and deal with complex emotions. Keep in mind that writers not only benefit from the products of writing — messages that can be archived or transported — but also from its practice. Experientially, writing slows ...
Exploring the Art of Reflection: A Writing Reflective Essay
Step 1: Select a Topic. Choose a topic that reflects on your personal experiences or emotions that you wish to explore and reflect upon. Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas. Reflect on the topic and jot down key points, memories, and emotions that you want to include in your essay. Step 3: Create an Outline.
Revealed: Harvard Business School's New MBA Essays For Applicants
The last time HBS made a major switch, moving to the essay prompt it just eliminated, was in 2016. That change to just one essay with no word limit and a post-interview reflection was made by then admissions chief Dee Leopold. When Leopold applied to Harvard as an MBA candidate in 1978, she had to write eight essays.
PDF Roles, Scope, Criteria, Standards and Procedures of the Department of
and creative writing and rhetoric, in preparation for professional writing careers or graduate study 3. the English teaching option for students who wish to specialize in the study of literature, language, and composition as preparation for certification for secondary school teaching. The department also offers minors in literature and in writing.
Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Elaina Plott Calabro
She has a résumé and some skills quite well-suited to this moment. It definitely doesn't seem impossible that she could rise to the task. There is a reason she was considered so strong in 2019 ...

My Experience In Leadership Styles: Reflective Essay

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