It’s Time for Brutal Self-Reflection (The Key to Killing Professional Stagnation)
One of the best things I’ve read in my development as a CEO is a New York Times op-ed on self-examination by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, authors of the book “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well.”
The bottom line of their research is this: it takes brutal, relentless self-reflection to grow and learn new things to move through the obstacles, failures or stagnation.
Even though I founded an e-portfolio company, Pathbrite, focused on bolstering reflection and deep assessment, I know that these techniques are not just for students. Leaders in every sector need to spend time learning new things are reflecting upon themselves in order to experience new breakthroughs in their work.
Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public-health researcher, wrote a piece for TheNew
Yorker on achieving his “personal best” by hiring a more experienced surgeon to coach him to the next level. One of the things I love about his story is how he spent so much time reflecting on and brutally facing his professional stagnation. Staying on top of the latest state-of-the-art medical technologies was not enough to help him improve his surgical techniques. Ultimately, Gawande realized he needed to take time to reflect on what he could improve in himself. He put in the effort to be coached, and meditated on new things that could take his surgical performance somewhere new.
It’s so easy to think that moving to the next level of achievement is about factors external to ourselves: we look for answers by attempting to tweak the people we work with, the gadgets and software we use, or we make up excuses that place responsibility for our own failures on someone or something else.
Sure, it’s possible that there are factors beyond ourselves that are inhibiting us, but self-reflection is a process we can’t ignore, and it’s a process that has more integrity than blaming our customers or coworkers. I use my own platform to visualize who I am as a person, to see where I’ve been professionally, and to help me think through where I’m going. Hard-core documentation and reflection on my work is how I stay clear about what I do, so I can see where I need to grow.
If we can’t be brutally honest and self-reflective with ourselves, we might ask ourselves what right we have to assess others, especially as leaders in organizations?
It’s time we take a compassionate, honest, and meaningful look at ourselves when we hit professional roadblocks instead of assuming we know it all. Even at the top of my game as CEO of a successful start-up, I know that one of the most powerful things I can do to avoid stagnation is to reflect, and adjust accordingly.
