6 Months of Reflection Leadership

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

I read somewhere that the large majority of blogs that are started every year never make it three months before the writer quits and leaves the old posts to wither on the vine. So, I’m pretty excited to have made it to the 6 month mark with Reflection Leadership.

I had started writing back in the late summer as a diversion to the daily grind of my job. I had originally started out writing a book that I’d been planning for a couple of years but I wasn’t getting immediate satisfaction out of that kind of writing.

After spending a month simultaneously writing and researching about blogging, I decided to give blogging a go. So I started re-appropriating the material I had written into blog posts and at the end of September Reflection Leadership went live.

I’ve enjoyed the process of building Reflection Leadership from the ground up. I very purposefully didn’t share my project with family and friends because I wanted the blog to grow organically without inflating it with loved ones who felt they had to read it.

So far this strategy has worked. In the last six months there have been just under 3,600 unique visitors to Reflection Leadership and the number of folks following along on Twitter has gone from zero to almost 500. I am most gratified and humbled by the support and following of what I have to say.

In honor of this first 6 month anniversary, I thought I’d share a list of the 10 Most Popular articles here at Reflection Leadership over the first six months in case you missed them the first time around:

Understanding Why People Behave the Way They Do – Everyone behaves the way that they do because they are acting through a filter of the rocks (values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations) that they carry around. Leaders need to recognize that each individual’s reaction to things is going to be different because of their unique set of rocks.

7 Books That Made Me the Leader I am Today - When I look at my bookshelf, I find seven books that I can point to that meant the most to me at the time when I read them. These are the 7 leadership books that help make me the leader that I am today.

An Introduction to Leader-Member Exchange Theory – Leader-Member Exchange theory suggests that every leader has a unique, individual relationship with each follower and that each of these relationships is different in terms of the quality of the interactions based on whether the follower is part of our “in-group” or “out-group”.

What is Reflection Leadership? – Reflection Leadership encourages leaders to take a step back, to begin to reflect and spend more time looking at the why we do what we do every day. By encouraging leaders to take the time to pay closer attention to what is most important, Reflection Leadership can provide us with the tools we need to become more effective leaders.

Should Leaders Focus on Each Individual Follower? – As leaders, do we always need to focus on leading each of our individual followers?

How Are You At Self-Monitoring? – Research suggests that those who are able to accurately read situational cues and adapt their behavior to those cues are high self-monitors and tend to emerge as leaders more often than those that are low-self monitors.

Reflection on Just Ask Leadership – This is a guest post from author Gary B. Cohen that looks at how Just Ask Leadership intersects with Reflection Leadership.

Have You Found Flow? – This is the first in my series of articles about Flow. When we are able to experience Flow on a regular basis we are able to live a happy and satisfying life. When we are able to experience Flow in our everyday work we find the work more satisfying.

Being a Better Team Member – The best way to help a team that we are part of to be high performing is to take the lead in being the best team member we can be. We can accomplish this by focusing on learning from other team members and always remembering that the team is in it together.

Finding What Motivates Followers – As leaders we need our followers to help us work towards our goals or vision. When we are able to motivate our employees they will provide that help. By using Follower Reflection we are able to find what motivates each person individually, allowing us to produce motivated and loyal followers.

My Reflection: I very much appreciate you taking time out of your busy life to spend a few minutes each week reading my material. I hope I can continue to keep your interest by providing meaningful information that you find useful.

You also might be interested in:

1. Being a Better Team Member
2. Should Leaders Focus on Each Individual Follower?
3. The Challenge of Leader-Member Exchange Theory
4. November Leadership Development Blog Carnival
5. Challenges To Being a Team