Written by Aang Lakey, Life Coach, Consultant & Speaker
Aang Lakey is the founder and CEO of Increasing Consciousness, a company dedicated to facilitating global equity through leadership coaching and education. Aang is well known for connecting key research areas in the self-development, human intelligence, DEI, and violence prevention realms to empower leaders to facilitate systemic change.
What if the way you responded to complexity could transform not only your personal growth but the way you lead others as well? With the continuous rise of artificial intelligence dominating the business world, the critical importance of human intelligences and the ability to reflexively and empathetically respond to human desires will be the single most important skill that leaders can develop for the future. The ability to understand and interpret human emotions and contextual factors in the moment is one of the few and rare areas that AI cannot master.
Even if you could input the various variables of the specific historical, linguistic and cultural dynamics, it still lacks the ability to intuitively respond to any number of contextual factors that could interrupt the interpersonal dynamic. It would have to make numerous assumptions about the variables and act in accordance with a pre-programmed response to those variables. And while yes, the vast majority of interpersonal dynamics could have presumed responses for empathy and connection building, there is a nuance to being a great influencer and communicator that simply cannot be automated.
Leadership requires agility and responsiveness to interpersonal dynamics with an understanding and acknowledgment of the complex historical, linguistical, contextual, and emotional factors that make each individual dynamic unique.
In this article, we’ll explore reflexivity in leadership practice, detailing how self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-adjustment provide a foundational framework for adaptability and context-specific strategies that can help you navigate complex situations with presence, clarity, and ease.
Introduction
Anyone who has ever held a leadership position has asked themselves at one point or another, "What separates good leaders from truly transformative ones?". While there are so many critical skills that leaders must master, the most powerful and influential skill that transcends all other skillsets is the ability to integrate reflexivity into your leadership to continuously reflect on, evaluate, and adjust your actions and behaviors to meet the needs of the people around you and the context of which you are operating within.
Reflexivity is more than just self-awareness or self-reflection; it’s an active process that demands action and adjustment to be able to best support the complex dynamics of leadership practice. It is a delicate balance of both being and doing and requires continuous intention.
To help illustrate this process, let me take you back to my little league days and a coach who forever changed my understanding of what it means to have weaknesses and how, with intention, our weaknesses can become our greatest assets.
Sports analogy – Mastering reflexivity through practice
Athletes don’t just train; they continuously refine specific skills, evaluate their performance, and make adjustments in real-time to improve.
When I first started playing baseball, I could not for the life of me hit an inside center pitch. There was one particular coach from another team who realized that I could not hit an this specific pitch and was able to consistently strike me out every time we played them. Fortunately for me, this coach ended up picking me up for an All-Star team and shared with me that I needed to fix this weakness if I wanted to be a good player on the team. So every day, he would make me go to batting practice and pitch me nothing but inside center pitches.
Eventually, we learned that I didn’t adjust my step based on the pitch that was coming towards me, rather, I just assumed I would always get a pitch I wanted and stepped straight forward. Of course, you don’t always get the perfect pitch or the most ideal scenario, and you have to be able to reflexively respond in the moment. Once I learned that I needed to adjust the direction of my step to the pitch that was coming in, I was able to practice and master hitting an inside center.
The core elements of reflexivity
This is what we mean by reflexivity. It is a simple cycle of awareness, evaluation, and adjustment. First, you have to become aware, then evaluate the area of concern, and then make adjustments to improve your skillsets. For me, I had an outside evaluator, a coach, tell me that I was weak in a particular area, helped me to evaluate and identify the area of growth, and then actively take action toward my growth area every day.
This is exactly what every professional athlete does every day to improve their skills and to become better players.
Based on my example, you can see that reflexivity is different from simple reflection and awareness. Simply reflecting on something and becoming self-aware, is not enough. You must evaluate how you can grow from your insights and take action towards that growth every day to facilitate the skillset that you are trying to develop. If I had just taken what that coach said and I said, oh, I just can't hit an inside center, that's who I am, that's how I am, and I never took action to adjust that, then never would have improved and learned to hit an inside center pitch.
The same is true for leadership and everything that the complexities of the workplace throw at us. You need to be able to adjust, you need to be able to recognize the context and to adapt in the moment based on the circumstances of the situation, and you have to be able to evaluate yourself in that process. Specifically, how are you communicating, how are your biases impacting your interactions with others? How are your behaviors and actions influencing your team members? How do your decisions affect the people you work with or impact organizational culture and various communities/ specific groups?
If you're not actively taking action on those areas, then you will never grow, and you will never be able to influence their team in the ways that you need.
Now, let’s dive in a bit and break down how athletes embody reflexivity in order to perform at the highest levels. As a simple overview before we cover each area is
Self-awareness: recognizing weak spots in technique.
Self-evaluation: analyzing performance through game footage or coaching feedback.
Self-adjustment: making adjustments in practice and competition to apply what they have learned.
1. Self-awareness
Identifying biases, weaknesses, or blind spots as well as recognizing the impact of one's actions and decisions on others.
In my example above, I had a coach tell me that I was weak in a particular area and once I became aware of my weakness, I could then move to the evaluation phase to understand the nuance of how my behaviors and actions led me to this identified concern. Without having this area identified as a concern, whether through self-reflection or an outside source, I could not have taken action to specifically address this area and improve my skillset.
In a leadership context, there could be any number of areas that you may need to improve and the insight could come from your own reflections or that of an outside source (team member, employee, peer, supervisor, etc). Being open to feedback is a critical aspect of self-awareness and leaders must be willing to set their ego aside to receive identified areas of concern.
2. Self-evaluation
Continuously assessing behavior, choices, and outcomes.
In my example above, my coach was actually the one who helped me to evaluate and identify key areas of growth. While this can be self-directed, it doesn’t always have to be and the more angles you have to understand the area for development, the better your chances are of finding the right balance to become efficient. In this case, my coach helped me to understand how I stepped into pitches and encouraged me to practice stepping into and out towards the pitch as I watched where the ball was coming in. However, as with all growth, there is only so much that others can do for us and eventually we have to explore and adjust on our own.
In a leadership context, once we have identified specific areas for improvement, we need to be able to critically assess how our actions, behaviors, and choices are interfering with our leadership. This could look like simply asking ourselves questions like, “How is my specific behavior or choice impacting others?”, “Is this behavior or choice aligned with my values and goals?”, “What do I need to specifically work on or adjust in how I am operating to improve?” Of course, these questions are just examples and there are no limits to the evaluative criteria that you could bring to your process.
3. Self-adjustment
Making intentional changes to align actions with insights.
As my own evaluative process continued, I had to continuously practice watching the ball come over the place, discerning whether or not it was coming in or out, and practice lifting my step, waiting for the direction, and stepping as needed. Over and over again, until the process became second nature.
Making adjustments in a leadership context requires bringing intention to the specific areas you have identified as needing adjustment and incorporating micro-adjustments to your practice. This could look like playing with different communication tones, exploring bringing authenticity to your practice, or practicing empathy in emotionally charged moments. Depending on the nature and depth of the concern you could consider making larger adjustments such as shifting leadership strategies or redefining cultural practices.
Final thoughts on core elements
Of course, you can see here that reflexivity is different from simple reflection and awareness. Simply reflecting on something and becoming self-aware, is not enough. You must evaluate how you can grow from your insights and take action towards that growth every day to facilitate the skillset that you are trying to develop. If I had just taken what that coach said and I said, oh, I just can't hit an inside center, that's who I am, that's how I am, and I never took action to adjust that, then never would have improved and learned to hit an inside center pitch.
Now, let’s relate this back to leadership. When we talk about applying reflexivity in leadership, it’s about creating an awareness and action cycle to improve various aspects of our leadership style and interpersonal interactions to facilitate better outcomes for our teams. This looks like understanding and responding to areas like developing emotional intelligence to improve performance, mitigating bias, enhancing communication, improving decision-making, or effectively managing and navigating conflict. Or use these points: leaders apart is their ability to own their mistakes, repair trust, and demonstrate integrity in action, and practicing reflexivity is what helps leaders to be adaptable, practice congruence, and restore trust when needed.
The key here is to take action in whatever areas are uniquely relevant to you and your team so that you can all grow together, and you can influence or persuade others to achieve the goals you desire.
The balance of being and doing
Just like all great things in life, practicing reflexivity means finding a way to balance both being and doing in life. No matter the circumstances, life, and leadership require balance. Finding the right balance of being and doing is what will inevitably determine your success in any area.
What exactly do we mean here by being and doing?
Being is simply an awareness or presence that we bring to our lives. It is an intentional slowing down to be able to understand oneself and the context of the situation.
Doing is the action or application that we apply to our lives. It is acting in accordance with who you want to be in the world (values) and integrating knowledge of various practices related to the contextual factors that you are in and the cultural dynamics of the person or people sitting across from you.
Focusing on one without the other creates imbalance and we want to ensure that we find ways to be fulling present while also taking intentional steps to create meaningful change. When Being is overemphasized, stagnation results, and when Doing is overemphasized burnout results or our actions can become misaligned with our values.
So, how do we find the right balance? It all starts with awareness and intentionality. Now that you are aware of the need to bring reflexivity to your life and leadership, you can start to bring intention to your own processes. Next, I’ve laid out
Practical steps to cultivate reflexivity
1. Create regular reflection points
You want to make sure you establish regular time in your schedule or daily routines for reflection on biases, actions, behaviors, and decisions.
Journaling, mindfulness, or structured feedback sessions.
Ask: What is the best way for you to reflect on your day and your interpersonal interactions
2. Establish a feedback loop
Make sure you create some sort of feedback loop with colleagues, mentors, or coaches to continuously receive external perspectives.
Partner with mentors or colleagues to provide external perspectives.
Ask, what is the best way for you to receive feedback on your identified areas for improvement.
3. Commit to action
Mentally and emotionally accept that action must be taken to achieve the desired change and make a commitment to yourself by creating specific goals to improve.
Translate reflections into SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
Take regular action towards these goals
What are specific actions you can take towards your areas of improvement and when and how will you seek to accomplish them?
4. Practice failing
Nothing in life comes easily and the ability to master a skill requires a willingness to fail over and over again so you can learn the best ways to navigate the nuance.
Put yourself in situations that require you to practice the skill you are trying to develop.
Continuously reflect on failures to identify patterns and adjust your approach to improve over time.
Normalize failure as part of growth by celebrating lessons learned and progress made.
Track progress and iterate
Find ways and mechanisms to track and measure progress on reflexivity practices and adjustments made.
Regularly review progress and necessary adjustments, just like an athlete fine-tuning their form.
What is the best mechanism for you to keep track of your progress and who can help to hold you accountable? Or how can you hold yourself accountable?
Conclusion
Ultimately, reflexivity in leadership is about embracing a continuous cycle of awareness, evaluation, and intentional adjustment to foster growth—for yourself, your team, and your organization. It’s not just about recognizing what’s working or what isn’t; it’s about taking meaningful, deliberate steps to align your actions with your values and vision.
True leadership is a blend of being present enough to understand the complexities of the moment and doing what’s necessary to adapt with authenticity and purpose. By practicing reflexivity, you not only strengthen your own leadership but also create an environment where trust, collaboration, and innovation can thrive, setting the stage for lasting impact.
Reflexivity is more than a leadership skill—it is a transformative mindset that empowers leaders to navigate uncertainty, embrace growth, and lead with authenticity. By actively evaluating their intentions, actions, and impacts, leaders can align with their values, adapt to challenges, and build trust. This dynamic practice not only enhances their personal effectiveness but also creates a ripple effect, inspiring teams and organizations to thrive.
Conscious leaders set themselves apart through their ability to own mistakes, repair trust, and demonstrate integrity in action. Reflexivity serves as the foundation for these capabilities, fostering congruence and adaptability. By cultivating a culture of reflexivity, leaders and organizations can drive meaningful change and create lasting impact.
Next steps
For readers inspired by this conversation and eager to learn more, check out Aang’s YouTube videos or follow them on LinkedIn or Instagram to integrate reflexivity practices into your daily life. If you’re ready for deeper transformation, explore our coaching opportunities for both personal and professional growth.
If you want to share these ideas and concepts, Aang offers workshops on a range of different topics and loves getting to connect and share practical application strategies with community events.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Aang Lakey
Aang Lakey, Life Coach, Consultant & Speaker
Aang Lakey is a leader in ushering in a new wave of global consciousness. Their work facilitates global equity by educating and coaching leadership teams to integrate reflexivity, intentionality, and anti-oppressive practices into their daily lives and leadership styles. Through the principle of refraction, Aang encourages leaders to touch as many people as possible by living with integrity and emanating congruence in their leadership. Their approach is simple: elevate your own consciousness and watch the ripple effect that has on every aspect of your life and with every person you interact with.
