Thinking outside of yourself.
Also known as metacognition, it’s what most of us do all day- overthinking.
Vanderbilt defines metacognition as “thinking about one’s thinking. More precisely, it refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance” (Chick, 2013). The time in my leadership journey, when I started embracing my person being incomplete, became the most explosive time of growth in my life. In the year beforehand, I had made more than a few ill-informed leadership decisions- things I would most certainly not do again today and decisions that burned a few bridges. However, those mistakes humbled me and put me in a position to be the learner instead of the leader for a while.
Then and now, I stand by the assertation that self-awareness, or metacognition, is key to leadership. A person cannot lead someone until they see themselves. It was during this time of rebuilding that I found Maya Angelou’s words, “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better” (Angelou, 2018). Around that same time, my mom said, “Take the good and leave the bad; we did the best we could with what we had.” Angelou and my mother never met, but their two quotes have informed many of my following life decisions. Both of them acknowledged the validity of giving your best effort using existing knowledge but also understood that there is always more to be learned.
Their wisdom helped me to extend grace to both myself and others who make poor leadership choices. We cannot possibly know everything at any point in our life, so if we begin each day looking to learn and grow from examination of self, we will continue becoming better and more informed leaders.
References:
Angelou, M. [@drmayaangelou]. 2018, August 12. Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/DrMayaAngelou/status/1028663286512930817?lang=en
Chick, N. (2013). Metacognition. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved 2 July, 2023 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/.