The power of reflection

Reflection is a topic that is regularly explored and widely discussed in business circles, but often leaders underestimate its importance or struggle to find the time to engage in meaningful conversations.?Many businesses focus on performance, outcomes and quickly move onto the next project. However, we believe that in order to grow and learn effectively – reflection is essential.

The global pandemic has forced us to work and live in different ways. While there may be many things we will look forward to getting back to, we should also take this time to reflect on lessons we have learned and what changes we can take with us to improve our quality of life. Taking the time to analyse and respond with a change in our behaviour, is a proponent of growth and at Accolade, it is part of our approach to continuous improvement.

Interestingly, almost every guest we have had on our Realising Your Potential podcast has pointed to the process self-assessment as a key ingredient in their success. Reflection as a leader and for any person requires radical honesty. It is a process where we can strengthen self-awareness to help our decision-making, communication and learning become more effective. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work has some sage advice: Talk to yourself like someone you respect, with honesty and tough love.

With so much to be gained from reflection, we ourselves are taking some time to analyse the development of the podcast so far. We want to begin by sharing some of our learnings from the making of Accolade Wines’ first ever podcast, because behind every experience, is an opportunity to grow.

So, what have we learnt from this journey so far?

Realising Your Potential was the product of a clear vision. We wanted to find a mechanism that allowed us to share inspiring stories from our networks with our team and community. This was born from a belief that in this fast-paced digital world we are spending less time seeking out and listening to people with real stories.?By aligning with our business’ advocacy for storytelling the entire company was able to embrace our approach from the outset. A reminder that with clear direction, an ambition can quickly become a reality.

I have been repeatedly reminded throughout this experience that we must encourage our teams to take calculated risks if they are to deliver the best results. In fact, in business, well thought through risks are almost always aligned with innovation, and this is something we encourage throughout our Company. Of course, we took a chance in creating the podcast. Would the time and investment be worth it? Would anyone listen? By encouraging bold decision making and creating a safe space to explore the project, our team was able to deliver a new initiative that resonated with our community.

Our passionate podcast project team was small, but each member had a clear role to play enabling us to deliver the project quickly and effectively. Trust was an important factor here and something that needs to be built in all teams for them to operate at a high level. We saw first-hand that if you have faith in your team, clearly define not only their role, but the importance this plays in the overarching strategy, the best results can be achieved. In fact, when your team has bought into the concept, they’ll thrive in environments where they are given the autonomy to explore and innovate.

The podcast came from a quest to share learnings with our team and an authentic desire to tell real leadership stories from inspiring people within our community. It was a tool for our people globally to access learning anywhere, anytime in an easily digestible way. The stories and experiences shared exemplified that regardless of industry or level, every person has valuable lessons to share. You just have to remain curious.

Each podcast was road tested with multiple listens and hours of editing to do the stories justice. In the words of leadership mentor, Simon Sinek “Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” Having a team that really believed in the project allowed it to go above and beyond any of our expectations.

A core proponent of our corporate philosophy is that if you are willing to ask questions and to really listen to the answers, you can learn from anyone. With 18 guests across three series of Realising Your Potential to-date, our learnings have been immense.

We’ve been encouraged by how generously each guest donated their time as well as their willingness to talk candidly about their own experiences. Each interviewee genuinely believed in what we were doing and it was this process that saw many of our guests undertake their own process of reflection.

Despite vastly different career paths and backgrounds of our interviewees, our conversations uncovered that quite often the recipe for success is framed by similar thinking. Our aim is to ensure we dissect and analyse these lessons, to support high-performance and encourage growth.

We will continue to take stock of the journey so far over the coming weeks and hope, as always, that these reflections further assist you in realising your own potential.

We encourage you to do the same. Take time to reflect on this past year, what you want to learn from, take with you, and what you want to leave behind. In the spirit of reflection, experimentation, and innovation we are creating something new in our next podcast series and we look forward to sharing it with you next month!