GUEST POST BY Wendy Jenkins OAM, READY RESILIENCE
Ready Resilience helps organisations thrive during times of change and challenge, using practical neuroscience-based resilience tools that have been proven to offer in-the-moment solutions and long-lasting results.
January 2023 Resilient Leadership Tips
Who can be the toughest person to lead?
Yourself
Regardless of your role, leading yourself is one of the keys to being a more resilient and effective leader.
The first step is developing your metacognitive skills.
When we stop and think about the processes our brains go through to make sense of the world (‘cognition’), we perform a metacognitive act.
Intentional thinking about how you think and learn.
For example, you engage in metacognition if you notice that you are having more trouble learning concept A than concept B, or if you realize that your approach to solving a problem is not working, so you decide to try a different approach.
A simple example is being aware that you have difficulty remembering people’s names, so you need to be mindful to take extra care to memorise and recall them. This may involve learning a technique that helps you with this task.
According to Columbia University, individuals with metacognitive skills are usually:
- More self-aware as critical thinkers and problem solvers, enabling them to actively approach knowledge gaps and problems and to rely on themselves.
- Able to monitor, plan, and control their mental processes.
- Better able to assess the depth of their knowledge.
Life-long skills that are worth developing.
The ability to self-lead can also have power in your workplace.
Not much will make a better impression on your leader and colleagues than your ability to lead yourself well.
It can develop credibility and respect. It can inspire your team and position you as a role model.
The challenge is not to ‘overthink your thinking’ but to harness the insights to determine how to act next.
How would you assess your own metacognitive abilities on a scale of 1 to 10?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Jenkins is the founder of Ready Resilience, Co-Founder of the Lungitude Foundation, Speaker and Lung Transplant Survivor. Ready Resilience helps organisations thrive during times of change and challenge, using practical neuroscience-based resilience tools that have been proven to offer in-the-moment solutions and long-lasting results. Having been told she had two years to live over fifteen years ago, Wendy is driven to help people transform their perspective on challenges in life. To find out more visit www.readyresilience.com.
){kind=link}