In a corporate world where it is easy to look externally for inspiration, learning and even blame, there seems to be a lack of understanding of how valuable and important it can be to look at yourself too.
This is not just important for personal growth and reflection in a business setting, but also useful information for employers, discovering the value of self-reflection in business.
It is a known fact that morale and cultural standards in the work place not only affect the individual, but other employees in the network around them. A typical example is, in a relaxed workplace, a new employee previously accustomed to working under high stress and high workloads will jump into their new role, resuming the same pace. Suddenly, they detect and learn the established workplace culture around their new position, and in an attempt to fit in and integrate well, their behavior adapts to the accepted pace of all those around them. This also applies visa versa, where a relaxed individual joining a high paced workplace will pick up their own game, or quit, and so, this cultural integration effect can never be labelled as specifically good or bad; it is what it is, and is of a common occurrence.
One fact about the above is that, whilst the team usually have the majority of effect on establishing the overall culture in a workplace, an individual always leaves their mark, causing a small blending. In other words, the individual always has an impact on the overall culture, causing it to change slightly, and the more individuals added, the more the culture morphs into something different. For example, if a hard worker enters, they may relax a little in an established, relaxed culture, but their hard work ethic imprints on the culture somewhat, and raises the bar a little more than previously, as the surrounding employees observe the rewards he or she reap when they work that little bit harder. The same goes for the reverse, where a high paced culture may continue to work at this pace when a relaxed employee joins, however the team may discover that the midpoint between the new employee’s pace and their own is more comfortable, and the blending causes the workplace culture to shift.
With all of this, above, established, it is easy to see how much an individual can impact an overall workplace, and it is important, not only for one employee to evaluate themselves for self improvement and growth, but also for employers to harness this knowledge to create favourable, effective and efficient cultures to benefit all stakeholders.
Shifting Accountability
Accountability on failures or discrepancies in one facet of the effect an employee can have on others that highlights the need for self reflection in business. Blame shifts the focus or the heat of yourself so that you seemed powerless in a difficult situation, meaning that you were not able to assist with changing the outcome to be positive.
Whilst, sometimes it may be the trust, many of us do lay blame so easily when the heat comes on. Victimizing the blamed person (for example, “it was the client’s fault for not knowing what they want!”) means that you can fall into the trap of blocking yourself from learning. The client may have had a reason for knocking back, for example, your proposal, and instead of trying to find out how to avoid this the next time and every other time after that, you end up defending yourself by blaming them.
Unjustified blame is a human emotion fueled by fear of embarrassment, and can delay detecting a weakness in yourself for a long time, rather than facing and overcoming it. By self reflecting on personal accountability, and encouraging employees around to do the same, it can create a culture of bravery, where less finger pointing and more action takes place.
Another example of shifting accountability is justification. Similar to blame, however it is when someone blames something non-human such as lack of time, resources, skills, etc. Justification has similar negative side effects to blame: where you justify your failure rather than face it and take action. Something I always say is, people may be busy, but will make time for something they really want to do (a fact often seen in relationships: if you like someone, you will make time for them regardless of your schedule- a hard truth). If you self reflect and found yourself justifying your failure on a lack of skill, find out why and do something about it: take a course, ask other employees for advice, or your employer for further training.
The last example of shifting accountability is denial. This is when you know something is negative, but ignore or tolerate it for whatever reason. By far, denial is one of the hardest to self reflect upon, as it can run so deep that you may not even know you are in denial. Denial keeps you from reaching your goals, because it is more comfortable to settle, than fight. Your career and life require you to work hard to be successful, and denial is your enemy, telling you everything is just OK as is, regardless of issues. Self reflect on this, and delve deep to location issues you have, and then find solutions. Often, identifying the problem is the hardest part, simply because you are so used to being in denial about it, than the actual issue itself. You may realize that, for example, that promotion is within your grasp if you just applied yourself more in areas you know yourself to be weak in.
So, from the examples above, self-reflection can often lead to you discovering weaknesses in yourself that you can change for your own personal benefit. The nice perk is that sometimes, these positive changes flow on to your team members and people close to you, who feed off your example of being more transparent and self-aware. This discovery and positive addition to the corporate culture of a workplace can be more valuable than most people would realize.
Christopher Melotti
Freelance Copywriter at Melotti Media Melotti Media: For All Of Your Copywriting Needs http://www.melottimedia.com.au
