Introspection and Emotional Vulnerability as Leader Development and Team Building Tools
Introspection and Emotional Vulnerability as Leader Development and Team Building Tools
by Steven Rotkoff
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All of us have gone through the process of changing stations and being confronted with the question “tell me a little about you”. Invariably our answer revolves around some form of our military resume, “I’ve served here, had these jobs, worked for these bosses, have this education and by the way I’m married, have 2.1 kids and a dog named fluffy.” While this approach conveys a lot of information in reality it tells someone almost nothing about what you believe, how you lead, or who you truly are. There is another more effective way of having this conversation. It is called ‘Who am I?’ (WAI).
WAI is a tool designed to help leaders and small groups to first raise individual member’s self-awareness through introspection, and then increase group-level trust through the intentional practice of emotional vulnerability. FM 6-22, Army Leadership describes self-awareness as a meta-competency that supports all other leadership competencies. Self –awareness requires serious introspection. It provides a single reference point for you about one’s own system of beliefs and values. The more confident you are of your reference point, the easier it is to “step outside yourself” and examine another’s frame of reference. This allows you to take another’s perspective long enough to begin to understand them and potentially trust and respect them more easily. Knowing your own culture, reflecting on your own experiences and understanding why you believe and value what you do, provides for an easier “compare and contrast” that enables one to better accept alternative perspectives. This short article describes what WAI is, how it evolved, how to run one, and what you can expect from this simple, leader facilitated exercise.
Six years ago the Army started a Red Team program to train and educate leaders who would be charged with providing alternative perspectives inside their organizations. The program leaders struggled with finding an ‘ice-breaking’ exercise that would create an atmosphere where participants would not only know each other better but also be more open to different ways of looking at problems. The complexity underlying the operational environment requires leaders who can look at problems through different lenses and understand the inter-relationship among people and things effecting that environment. The exercise that evolved from this search was WAI. This exercise has proved to be an enormously powerful leader development and group networking tool because it allows participants to connect very quickly in a more meaningful way. It has migrated from the Red team program into the Army’s Starfish Program and informally into some sections within the Intermediate Leadership Education program, and is spreading to many organizations which Red Team or Starfish graduates have since moved on to.
Introspection and emotional vulnerability are fundamentally leader development tools. Admittedly, when we speak about leader development we don’t generally think of people sharing personal stories of deep challenges or emotionally trying experiences with those with whom they will subsequently work or even lead. Simply put, fully-evolved leadership requires knowing oneself and connecting with others to inspire and motivate. WAI enables this development. The basic premise of the exercise is that each participant share ‘watershed events’ in their life that shaped how they engage with the world.
Download The Full Article: Introspection and Emotional Vulnerability as Leader Development and Team Building Tools
COL (Ret.) Steven Rotkoff served as an S-2 or G-2 at every level from Infantry Battalion through Army G2 and commanded both Military Intelligence battalion and brigade as part of III Corps. His final position on active service was as the Deputy CFLCC G-2 for OIF 1. Upon retirement, Steven served as the lead for intelligence transformation efforts for the then Army G2, LTG Alexander. The University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies (UFMCS), and integration of red team capability in the Army grew out of this transformation effort. Now, he serves as the deputy director of that program. In August 2009 Mr. Rotkoff was selected by GEN Dempsey then the TRADOC CDR to serve as the action officer to develop a course of instruction based upon The Starfish and Spider in conjunction with the author Ori Brafman.
