Project 52: Week 32 (7/1/24)

Reflection and retrospection -- and reframing

Our reflection and meditation ...

“The ability to shift from reacting against the past to leaning into and presencing an emerging future is probably the most important leadership capacity today.”

“The crisis of our time isn’t just a crisis of a single leader, organization, country, or conflict. The crisis of our time reveals the dying of an old social structure and way of thinking, an old way of institutionalizing and enacting collective social forms.”

— C. Otto Scharmer

"I thought about something I taught my kids when they were in elementary school … I used to ask them to cup their hands and put them in front of me. And I said, ‘In your hand is your flame. It’s your soul. It’s your light. You need to surround yourself with friends who, when your light is shining bright, don’t feel the need to blow it out.”

“Don’t walk through the world looking for evidence that you don’t belong because you will always find it. Don’t walk through the world looking for evidence that you’re not enough because you’ll always find it. Our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people; we carry those inside of our hearts.”

Brené Brown

Career Accompaniment: Week 32

Reflection and retrospection -- and reframing

In our Tri Cosain careers work, we encourage our participants periodically to reflect on how their career journeys - their inspiration and learning journeys, too -? have unfolded. We also invite reflection on how people might enhance and develop their journeys in the future. In the Agile work Scott does, these moments of reflection are often called “retrospectives.”? The names for these moments of reflection matter less than that we take time to hold and honor them.

If you have accepted our suggestion to work with Agile Planning, you will be invited to conduct a retrospective at the end of every short cycle, perhaps every two or three weeks. Agilists find that this cycle of retrospection pays excellent dividends. If you prefer a longer cycle, like once a month, we won’t strongly object. Our encouragement would be to make reflection a regular habit, at least, and on a regular cadence that works for you.

Agilists would often hold retrospectives as a team event every two weeks and then again quarterly and annually. In the longer cadences, more time and profound reflection can be devoted to considering the completed period, with hopes and dreams for the upcoming days, weeks, and months.

In moments of reflection, we might ask ourselves (or ask among friends, colleagues, and supporters)...

1. What has gone well in the period just passed (assessed against career vision and sense of personal inspiration)?
2. What has been more challenging - on the same criteria?
3. What have we learned?
4. How does the experience of this period affect our Agile Plan for the upcoming period?
5. How have our aspirations stacked up against our achievements?
6. Were our plans realistic (enough)?
7. What would we like to do more of in the coming period?
8. What would we like to do less of?
9. What were the obstacles we faced? How did we overcome them, and how would we like to overcome similar ones in the future?
10. As we look at the achievements of the past period, how would we like to change our approach in the future (Agilists call this “inspect and adapt”)?
11. How will we adjust our Agile Plan based on what we have learned for future periods? Do you know if there are specific actions we now plan to take? To investigate new markets and conduct more or different Conversations of Inquiry?
12. What specific changes or improvements would we like to commit to for the coming period, and how will we record, incorporate, and honor these?
13. Does our career vision need adjusting based on what we have learned?
14. Is there anything that needs to be added to our sense of personal inspiration?

There are many questions for you: we'd like to invite you to take what is helpful for yourself at any given time and leave the rest, perhaps for later. We'd like to invite you to engage in retrospection and reflection on a regular cadence that fits you and to make these things a habit of that rhythm.

A small amount of regular reflection, we find, is usually more helpful and powerful than larger chunks deferred for a long time, but each person’s choices here are very correctly their own.

People of faith, we observe, often make these reflections the subject of prayer or meditation or indeed conduct them as instances of those practices.

As noted above, reflection in teams of supporters frequently provides new and profound perspectives. Whatever you learn in retrospect, we'd like to invite you to record and save it in your journal and use it to influence your plans and commitments for the coming period in as concrete a way as possible. However, you manage those plans.

As ever, I am ready to accompany you on reflective and retrospective journeys, as with all other parts of your Tri Cosain career exploration.

Monday, 1 July 2024

Gerald Doyle

Additional Resource:

Otto Scharmer on the four levels of listening

"Listening is the most underrated of leadership skills, leading to a disconnect between leaders and the situation. Otto describes four levels of listening. This is essential viewing for anyone desiring to truly understand situations."

Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.

Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023/24

Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ), as well as career services and job search coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School ( Miriam Pike , Kelly Ramos ) and through the The Tyree Institute .

He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning (Eva Prokop ); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. ( Dan Feely )in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.

Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.

Guest Respondent: I am pleased to introduce my colleague, Dr. Sakshi Chhabra , who will join me each week as a respondent, offering her reflections and insights.

Dr. Sakshi Chhabra, currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the School of Management and Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at BML Munjal University, India, holds a Ph.D. from BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus, along with an MBA in Software Enterprise Management and a B.Tech in Electronics and Communication. With over seven years of academic experience, including roles as an Assistant Professor and Programme Coordinator specializing in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation, she has developed expertise in diverse subjects such as design thinking for entrepreneurs, managing innovation and technology, and social and sustainable entrepreneurship.

As a Senior member of IIC at Atal Thinking Labs at Jain University in Bangalore, she organizes workshops on design thinking, further demonstrating her commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.

She has secured grants for research, including one from the Indian Council of Social Science & Research, and actively advocates for diversity and entrepreneurship. Her accomplishments include winning awards for best papers and posters at national and international conferences, being a peer reviewer and track chair, and being nominated for the "Future of Work 50" list by UPKEY, USA.? She has completed two Capstone projects applying design thinking principles under the supervision of Harvard and University of Chicago Alumni. She mentors at UPKEY and collaborates on research projects with the Bill Gates Foundation, focusing on women, sustainable, inclusive, and innovative entrepreneurship.