3.2.3.1 The Inner Mirror
Leading requires us to know the determinants of our own personality, our individual
shaping, our images of roles and our (limited) point of view: What is my inner
script? What are my beliefs concerning good leadership, right and wrong, and other
people? What motivates me? What makes me vulnerable? What do I refuse to see?
Only the person who knows the answers to these questions can distance himself or
herself from these issues, can decide for or against them instead of reacting by
reflex only.
Thus, a leader has to be able to step back from their conscious self-definition in
order to realize who they really are – not who they want to be. Self-awareness
includes recognizing our effects on others, because these effects determine
relationships. How a person is, how they affect others and how they see themselves –
these are three completely different things.
Consequently gaining a self-perception is one of the most important building
blocks of modern management. Leading yourself and others begins with reflecting
on your inner beliefs. How do I as a leader deal with power, influence, competition,
performance, stress, weaknesses and emotions and how does my behavior affect
teamwork and the corporate culture? These are questions a leader should confront
himself or herself with.
Only those who trust themselves will be trusted by others. In order to build this
trust you have to know yourself very well. This includes accepting your own
emotions, especially if they seem to be negative and not in keeping with the culture
and rules of the company. Moreover, the leader has to be able to express his or her
emotions appropriately and to share their inner life with others.
It is essential that leaders constantly work on their own self-awareness. That
does not mean, however, that they are not able to act due to all the pondering and
questioning. But self-reflection is the foundation of successful action. However,
self-reflection is not being taught to junior managers, although it should be the basic
education for leaders. The subject of self-reflection is surrounded by a suspicious
aura of the esoteric and psychoanalytical and is therefore avoided – even though the
consequences for leaders, employees and companies can be fatal.
A leader may have the best education in management skills, they may be trained
in delegating and motivating – they will still fail if they do not see or understand
that they react to certain people in certain situations extremely aggressively or
defensively and unintentionally sends out the wrong signals to the environment, just
because they do not have an inner (or by using feedback an outer) mirror.
Our self-perception crucially shapes the personal style of leadership and the
company, because there is no complete objectivity, no unbreakable reality and no
absolute truth, but always only an individual understanding of it. In the experience
of a leader the company is a projection of his or her inner world. Each manager will
see something different in one and the same company, because each is designing his
or her own map of it (see Sprenger 2002a, pp. 24–98).
3.2 Leading with Your Head and Heart 131