Written by Toni M. Pristo, Ph.D.
Leading with Love: Keep a Reflection Journal to Become a Better Leader, Faster
Short on time? Here are Key Snippets from Toni’s several decades of experience as an organizational psychologist in leadership and organization development.
Why is journaling important for leadership?
A hallmark of an effective leader is the ability to express thoughts feelings and emotions clearly and constructively. Without this capability, others don’t really know who you are as leader. A journal provides a confidential place to record and test unshared perspectives, internal debates, emotional reactions, descriptions of success and analysis of failures. Your self-awareness and self-learning will grow as you use your journal to describe the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that surround an experience. And constructive conversations with yourself through journaling will carry over into healthy dialogues when interacting with others.
What does it mean to lead with love?
It has taken most of my career to understand what real leadership is—this ability to help another human being connect with their inherent potential and use it for the good of themselves and others. For the lasting and positive effects that such leadership has on those they lead, organizations and even society, it really does seem to come “from “a place of love.”
Read on to learn how my mentor Mari was an early example of my ultimate understanding of leadership. Plus find important questions to ask yourself as a leader.
Not an Early Journaler…But Wish I Had Been
Truth be told, I’ve not been one to keep a journal. For most of my life, I’ve made a steady practice of deeply reflecting in my head. I routinely think and rethink about things that stand out to me for whatever reason, and park the thoughts, feelings and observations in my mind. When something subsequently happens that seems related, I conjure things up and explore the connections. As relationships emerge, I start looking for the “why” that explains how the ideas all fit together and hope for insight.
I’ve figured out a few good things this way. Yet, there’s not much discipline to it and I wonder how much learning across my life I’ve missed as a result. Furthermore, when insights do occur, they don’t always come quickly. In fact, it can take years to realize something profoundly important. Here’s a case in point.
Decades ago, I can remember feeling so grateful to learn I had been accepted into a psychology graduate program. Forever, I had wanted to become a psychologist. At this point I was two years out of college and was ready to work hard to achieve my goal. In the first year of the four-year program, I was required to take three semesters of Statistics for the Social Sciences. I wasn’t thrilled about this. In fact, I was worried. I had taken stats in college, and while I had done ok in the class, I really didn’t learn a thing. Class time was meaningless. I was lost in response to a very smart, but detached professor who seemed to be in a world of his own when it came to teaching statistical methods and concepts.
Mari: A Different Kind of Leader
Capture Key Events
Then, in graduate school there was Dr. Mari JK Brown. What a difference a professor makes! I can still see her in my mind’s eye. Always wearing a white lab coat, Mari was a brilliant, smiling Scandinavian with jet black hair, interspersed with grey streaks. When asked a stats question, she would pause, take a long inhale on her cigarette and then answer with consideration and clarity for whomever was asking. Most importantly, Mari was patient beyond words when it came to teaching statistics to her students.
My first stats exam in graduate school has been unforgettable, even after all these years. Although I had spent hours preparing, I found myself struggling with many of the exam questions. As time wore on, I became humiliated and increasingly anxious watching other students leave the room one by one. I presumed that they breezed through the exam, which distracted my focus and added to growing anxiety. Time was running out, and I was stuck on a problem worth many points. I approached Mari and mumbled something about asking for “clarification.” She observed me carefully and listened intently. Then, right before my eyes, she took her pencil and my exam paper and wrote out the entire answer to the question, explaining the logic to me in the process.
I was stunned. I hadn’t asked her to do this! I remember thinking “how is she going to grade my test now that she has given me the answer!”
Back at my apartment, I kept reflecting on the event. Never had I experienced anything like it in all my years of test taking. All of I could think was that Mari must really want me to understand statistics—more than anything else. While I was consumed with getting grades, she was focused on enabling my ability to learn. This was incredibly meaningful to me and it inspired me to think differently about my role as a student in pursuit of becoming a psychologist.
Potential Revealed
By the following week, Mari helped me connect with another grad student who was willing to tutor me. Between Mari and the tutor, I was making real progress. By the end of my four-year program, not only did I successfully complete the three classes, I also had elected t to take independent studies in statistics with Mari. I even selected statistics as a minor subject in my doctoral comprehensive exams. (This was a pass/fail exam, thank goodness!) I remember Mari bowing to me when she announced that I had passed.
Intermittently over the years, I would still think about the stats exam miracle event. I would still feel such gratitude and fondness for Mari, that I would make donations in her name at the university to honor her memory. Clearly, she made a difference in my ability to successfully complete graduate school. As it turns out, however, this is only the tip of the iceberg compared to what I eventually learned from Mari Brown and others like her—many, many years later.
Long Term Impact of Extraordinary Leaders
Fast forward to the year 2020. By now, I had been working as an organizational psychologist for several decades in the areas of leadership and organization development. We were in the midst of the pandemic when two colleagues and I decided it was a good time to compile our research and write a leadership book on what makes a “best boss.” Our purpose was to infuse something positive into our world at a very dark time. Our data included stories told by employees about the best leader they had ever encountered, like the story below.
“He made me realize that I wasn’t just the best of the mediocre options. That I was actually… that I had opinions…I can remember talking in a meeting and there he was with his hand behind his ear, helping me by encouraging me to speak up and speak out. He would talk to me later on and give me feedback. I heard you or I didn’t hear you at the end of your point. He would say, “I’m an old man and I need to hear you!” He was constantly challenging me like that but made it so low risk. He made it like a joke. It came with such support I knew that it came from a place of love.” (Ferguson et. al, 2021)
Data showed the best leaders lead from a higher purpose
Notice Patterns of Behavior Over Time
These and others stories in our database showed us common patterns in the leadership behaviors of the most memorable leaders. For example, a best boss literally ignited or activated potential in the individual. Typically, the boss would take time to acknowledge/value the employee and then take definitive steps either to develop potential or provide opportunities for the employee to demonstrate their existing potential to others. Also, best boss behavior frequently included the ability to inspire continuous learning in the individual by removing shame from committing mistakes, and instead directing the employee’s attention on learning.
We also identified a pattern among favored bosses that showed how they lead from a higher purpose, by putting the interests of the employee on par with their own interests and those of the organization.
Discern Cause and Effect Relationships
These and other potential-building behaviors exhibited by the boss created a solid foundation of trust between themselves and the employee. With mutual trust, employee performance soared, leading to positive impacts for themselves and the companies in which they worked.
Mari’s loving leadership had a great impact on my ability to achieve my goal.
Gain Insight
Wasn’t this my very experience with Mari?
She undeniably activated a potential in me for developing a conceptual and practical understand of statistics through her empathic response to my fears at a critical moment in my life. Putting my interests first, she deftly redirected my attention from grades to learning and then gave me space to befriend statistics across four years. Her leadership had a great impact on my ability to achieve my long-awaited goal.
It has taken most of my career to understand what real leadership is—this ability to help another human being connect with their inherent potential and use it for the good of themselves and others. For the lasting and positive effects that such leadership has on those they lead, organizations and even society, it really does seem to come “from “a place of love.”
Furthermore, it is only in writing this article that now that I that realize that Mari was an early example of my ultimate understanding of leadership. Given the work I have done, how I wish I had such insight sooner.
Why is journaling important for leadership?
1. Journals can be used as parking lots for unprocessed thoughts and observations.
There are great demands on the time and attention of people today, and unending distractions. Quite literally, there is no way we can fully attend to all that is potentially useful to us, whether we are leading others or just trying to do a good job of leading ourselves. Certain things can strike us as significant throughout the course of a day, but there’s no time in the moment to process it. Or maybe we’re not sure if something has any relevance at all, but we simply sense the uniqueness of the experience or observation. These are excellent times to capture such thoughts in a journal to revisit later.
2. Journals provide a place for untested notions—i.e., candid and compassionate expressions of self
A hallmark of an effective leader is the ability to express thoughts feelings and emotions clearly and constructively. Without this capability, others don’t really know who you are as leader. A journal provides a confidential place to record and test unshared perspectives, internal debates, emotional reactions, descriptions of success and analysis of failures. Your self-awareness and self-learning will grow as you use your journal to describe the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that surround an experience. And constructive conversations with yourself through journaling will carry over into healthy dialogues when interacting with others.
3. Journaling enables deeper thinking over time that leads to insight.
Also, it likely leads to more insights, more quickly than would occur without the benefit of journaling. I’ve learned this through working with a few leaders, who I know have journaled for decades. Their philosophies of leadership are clearly articulated, based on personal values and are visible in the ways in which they lead their companies and their people.
I have also seen how journaling expedites insight in myself and in my coaching clients by cultivating a systems perspective in our journaling practices. Figure 1 shows how journaling could have expedited my insights in graduate school by using a systems perspective.
Figure 1.0 Systems Perspective Captured Through Journaling
Capture Notable Events
- “My professor gave me the answer and logic to a major problem in my first stats exam.”
- “I started stats tutoring today.”
Notice Patterns of Behavior Over Time
- “Whenever I get the answer wrong, I start to panic.”
- “My focus shifts in a positive, productive way when I sense support and patience from my professor and tutor.”
- “I begin to learn when I’m not so afraid of failing.”
Discern Cause and Effect Relationships
- “The more I work with Mari, the more I sense her patience with my confusion. The more I sense this patience, the more I feel comfortable in the struggle to learn. The more I feel comfortable in the struggle to learn, the more in fact, I learn.”
Gain Insight by Surfacing Assumptions and Beliefs that Interfere with Learning and Growth
- “I erroneously assume that “struggle” is unacceptable because it isn’t “perfect.” And it is essential for me to be perfect.”
- “And now I can see how perfectionism is anti-learning!”
Business Leaders Journal Template and Reflective Leadership Questions
Often, people don’t know where to begin with journaling. So, they might start by doing what they think they “should” do, whatever that might be. They will start their practice only to quit in a week or two. My suggestion is to design a path of least resistance by designing your practice to fit your essential goal for journaling and life style. When you begin in this manner, your practice will take on its own life as it begins to serve your needs and therefore becomes self-reinforcing.
Journal templates come in myriad forms, ranging from blank diaries, to semi-structured leather-bound books interspersed with thought provoking questions, to highly structured workbooks that literally walk you through a thinking process. Which one is right for you depends on how you described your essential goal, “Why do I want to journal.”
Below are three examples of how to answer this question and the corresponding (and overlapping) reflection questions that might apply. Your reaction to and resonance with these questions will help you seek the journal template that will work best for you.
Your reflection on your reflections leads to the best version of self
Whether you are in your early 20’s or your 80’s, working or retired, leading others or leading yourself; whether you are on the North American continent, Europe or any of the other five, your reflection on your reflections lead to a best version of self that infiltrates into the world we all share. There is never ending insight to be gained through your version of disciplined journaling.
Why do I want to journal?
References
Ferguson, D., T.M. Pristo, and J. Furcon. (2021). Best Boss: The Impact of Extraordinary Leaders,
New York, NY: Business Expert Press.
Kim, D. H. (1999). Introduction to systems thinking (Vol. 16). Waltham, MA: Pegasus
Communications.
Open Mind Guided Journal for Employees & Leaders Pursuing Their Potential
By Toni M. Pristo, PhD.
Open Mind is a guided journal to assist you in developing your own potential. This PDF fillable journal offers three important “Observations on Learning” for your positive attitude orientation and focus. Each of these guiding principles for lifelong learning are tied to exercises and journaling opportunities to deeply inform yourself.
Many of the exercises incorporate a “systems perspective” in that they encourage reflection on patterns of your behavior over time. This can lead you to identify to cause-and-effect insights which in turn reveal your mental models (both old, unhelpful ones and new generative ways of thinking) to enable positive change.
Author: Toni M. Pristo is Principal of Pristo Consulting and author of Open Mind: A Guided Journal for Employees and Leaders Pursuing Their Potential exclusively available through the IAJW.org and a co-author of Best Boss! The Impact of Extraordinary Leaders.
Toni Pristo always wanted to be a psychologist.
She started saying so at the age of 10, noticing her father’s eyes brighten at her early vocational proclamation. It was his affirmation, and her deep curiosity in relationships and human behavior that set Toni on the path that would define her career. Toni had the good fortune of growing up surrounded by a large family–American parents of Italian and Bohemian descent, their own parents, four trusting and extraordinary sisters, precious nieces and nephews, an army of cousins, —and also a close-knit neighborhood of childhood friends. These bonds encircled her like loving arms, sparked spontaneous joy and laughter, and buoyed her through times of great sadness and struggle that are part of every existence. Pursuing and understanding human behavior and the value of strong relationships became the hallmark of her personal, professional, and academic life.
Today, Toni M. Pristo, PhD is an organizational psychologist specializing in organization and leadership development. She is guided by a passion and interest in the development of human potential in an increasingly challenged world. She created Pristo Consulting in 1996, after 13 years of prior, related experience as an internal consultant (Amoco Corporation and Keebler Company) and external consultant (Hay Group).
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