How can you use reflection to improve your leadership style?

In addition to the good tips mentioned by others here, consider those people who don't work with you directly. Since many leadership behaviors don't turn on and off - some of the most real feedback comes from people with little stake in your professional game. Friends, family members, or social groups for example can be helpful in bringing to the forefront leadership style tips.

-Collect feedback from your team members, peers, and superiors. -This can be done through surveys, one-on-one conversations, or anonymous feedback mechanisms. Ask specific questions about your leadership style, communication, decision-making, and other relevant aspects. -Be open to both positive and constructive feedback. -Embrace criticism as an opportunity for growth.

As a leader giving feedback is easy but receiving feedback is normally difficult for anyone. But it purely depends on the context in which you receive feedback. If you listen to feedback from your peer, team, manager in the listening of pointing you as an incapable person to play the role then you are going to defend it. Just switch your context, listen to feedback in such a way that people help you to take you to the next level in your career. I have a practice of asking feedback about me to my team, manager, peers and stakeholders. When you make this as a practice you initiate the conversation about it, it doesn't sound hard for you. Because you prefer to listen to the feedback. Just a simple contextual switch makes the magic.

Actually I think it takes some reflection before receiving feedback. It's useful to get a sense of one's relationship to the experience of feedback before one seeks it. Otherwise one is sitting in an unexamined mental model about the whole notion of feedback. Revisiting both "negative" and "constructive" experiences of feedback to assess whether there's some leftover baggage regarding the experience informs how one proceeds. Taking the time to address any 'negative' experiences and complete them will open a path for the new. In addition, it's useful to establish what if any parameters about feedback one has. Simply receiving any/ all feedback in any shape or form and attempting to be open any time is not optimal as it doesn't respect you.

Collecting feedback is just the step 1 of the whole game. It doesn't serve the purpose fully. After collecting feedback, you should reflect on it. Now that you have feedback from multiple people from your organization, put them all down and see what is in common. Given them the higher priority to reflect and work on it.

Here collecting the feedback is best served if you have a framework feedback that is useful/ unuseful. I define the nature of the feedback delivered to me in order for it to be effective. Having people just give you their 'opinion' masquerading as "constructive feedback' is not useful. Most of that is simply people telling you how they think you should do something as if you should be like them. You're not. I've set it up so that the feedback I'm interested in is not in the realm of what and how to change/ fix/ etc. That's their perception. I want to know "what has happened, been experienced, been the impact of my words/ actions. That's what I call reality feedback. IF I want to change I will, in my way. Otherwise I'm attempting to please

As a leader, after listening to feedback and you should be able to plan to improvise yourself and implement the received feedback. Pick up the feedback which directly impacts your vision and long-term goals. Sometime feedback can be shattered in multiple directions. Hence picking them which are aligned with your vision and long-term goals are highly important.

SMART goals only work for those for whom that system is a match. It's more useful to ascertain how you get things done effectively when you have made sustainable changes and implement your own methodology.

As a leader being an example of what you talk is very important to inspire your team. Collecting, Reflecting and Planning alone won't help. You should put them in action. The best way to see how effectively you have implemented them is, when you go to the same team, peers and manager next time, they should have seen the difference in you and that should have been acknowledged by them. This is true leadership. Most leaders feel they should talk more, but NO. You should act. Put things in action.

Implementation is often pushed as a process of will. Just do it. In fact it's a process of experimentation. We try to do what we see to do then adapt to the new 'feedback' of how it went and then try again. Progress is not a straight line of determination/ perseverance only. It's fluid and seeks to find its own way. Water flows around things and over them and sometimes but rarely through them. Implementation often requires the same adaptability instead of an attempt to control the outcome as if one is the ONLY factor in the equation.

-Dedicate time regularly to reflect on your leadership actions, decisions, and overall performance. -Consider both successful and challenging situations. -Analyze what worked well and what could be improved. -Do self analysis and feedback yourself.

After implementing, you should consider checking with people about how much you have improvised on that area. You can keep picking multiple areas of your career and follow the above process to be a better leader.

It's useful to remember that not everyone will like what you do or how you do it. The question is what is the outcome you are seeking and what do you see or need to find out in order to attain that outcome. You can't please everyone and simply conforming to everyone's feedback is not going to work. Most people put their own agenda for your behavior embedded into their feedback so in the end, it's up to you to feel the fit and discard the rest. Not every shoe on the rack will work for what you're trying to accomplish, no matter how credible the person giving you the feedback is, they're just one more shoe. You have to run/ walk in it