Development of Personal Leadership – Reflections and Tools

Development of Personal Leadership – Reflections and Tools

By Frederik Poulsen, Torben Dalager, Susanne Lima, Kaja Søndergaard, Mads Bendixen, Benjamin Dornfeldt and Sofie Seier Helms

Good leadership is a complex discipline that places significant demands on a leader’s ability to adapt their leadership style to a wide range of situations, each requiring very different behavioural patterns – some of which may come more naturally to the leader than others.

In this article, we bring together key perspectives, experiences, and insights from six business psychologists at Summit, all of whom work daily to help leaders strengthen and develop their personal leadership.

Reflexivity as a Foundation for Good Leadership

Being a leader often means navigating complex situations involving many different people, in various relationships, each shaped by their own goals and interests. Reflexivity – the ability to understand, assess, and adjust one’s actions – becomes a core competency in this context.

At its core, reflection is the act of taking a curious and critical look at oneself, one’s thoughts, emotions, decisions, and actions – with particular attention to the effect or consequences they have on both oneself and those around them.

A common trait among leaders who actively cultivate their reflexivity and successfully use it as a tool is that they continually ask themselves questions such as:

• Why am I reacting the way I do in this situation?
• What am I trying to achieve here?
• Why does this situation affect me so much?
• Why am I not addressing this issue with my colleague/employee/partner?
• What do I find difficult, and why?
• And perhaps the most crucial leadership question: What can and will I do about it?

Being both capable of – and prioritising time for – this form of self-dialogue enhances awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. It leads to more appropriate and situationally adjusted behaviour, while significantly improving the leader’s ability to build relationships and achieve results.

If you wish to train and develop your reflective skills, it does not have to be complicated. A simple yet powerful tool for working on and strengthening reflexivity is the systematic use of the “Intention, Behaviour, and Effect” model:

1. Intention: What is my intention? What do I want to achieve? Why is this the most important thing for me in this situation?
2. Behaviour: What specific behaviour is required of me? What does the situation demand? How might my actions influence the people I work with, based on what I know about them? What will be essential in this context?
3. Effect: How did the situation unfold? Did it have the desired effect? Did I achieve what I wanted? How might others have experienced it? Is there anything I should do differently next time? Is there anything I need to follow up on?

It is not the specific questions that matter most but rather the reflective practice they represent. Ultimately, it is about examining one’s own emotions, thoughts, actions, and decisions with a combination of curiosity and constructive self-criticism.

Emotions as a Compass in Leadership

Emotions play both a central and unavoidable role in leadership. At its core, emotions tend to signal that something important is at stake – something that may be worth paying attention to and addressing.

• Frustration: Something is preventing me from achieving what I want.
• Anger and helplessness: I do not know what to do about this!
• Joy and pride: We/you/I succeeded!
• Anxiety: I wonder what others think? I am not sure I can do this!
• Doubt and uncertainty: I do not know what to do, and I do not know what will happen if I choose either A or B.

The challenge that arises with these emotions is when they influence or even take over our behaviour in an unfiltered manner – when they are projected onto those around us without first being examined with the necessary curiosity about what the emotion is trying to communicate.

One way to highlight this is through a quote from Peter Bastian in his book “Mesterlære”:

“A mature person is someone who can bear the weight of their own emotional life without trembling and without burdening others with it.”

It is important to emphasise that this does not mean that we should ignore or suppress our emotions. We cannot, and we should not. Quite the opposite. Instead, it means that we might benefit from making an effort to approach both our own and others’ emotions and inner states with curiosity, awareness, and a healthy level of role consciousness.

This involves taking a step back to a point where one can examine and reflect on the emotion and the experience:

• Why do I get so frustrated with this colleague?
• What is this really about?
• What is at stake for me here?
• What is my responsibility in relation to what we need to achieve together?

This ability to be emotionally aware and curious requires that we are capable of both sensing and regulating our immediate emotions so that they do not overwhelm us. It also requires that the leader has the courage and ability to look inward and acknowledge how their own emotions may influence perceptions, decision-making, communication, and relationships.

Clarity and Communication

Good leadership requires clarity. Many leaders struggle with providing honest feedback or setting clear expectations for employees, often because they fear conflict or want to shield others from the discomfort such conversations might bring. However, without clear communication, leaders risk creating ambiguity, fostering misunderstandings and conflicts, and missing valuable opportunities for development.

Clarity involves setting direction, aligning expectations, and providing feedback in a manner that is both direct and respectful. These conversations often require a degree of courage – perhaps because we, quite rightly, may feel uncertain about how the other person will react and whether we have the right to (or are justified in) sharing our observations.

A helpful mindset is to acknowledge that personal development often begins when someone provides us with an external perspective on our behaviour. Additionally, as a leader, offering such clarity is an integral part of your role.

Achieving clarity through effective communication is a balancing act. It requires the ability to express observations, interests, and needs clearly – while maintaining a respectful and empathetic approach that is direct without being judgmental. Leaders must practice using language that is descriptive rather than evaluative – expressing needs constructively rather than placing blame.

The result of this approach is that discussions remain focused on what the leader has legitimate grounds to comment on – their own experiences – rather than assumptions about the other person’s thoughts or intentions. A practical example:

• Effective approach: “I need to talk to you about our collaboration because I do not feel that you are meeting the expectations I have for a colleague with your level of experience.”
• Ineffective approach: “You should be able to handle this kind of task.”

A useful guiding principle is to ensure that you genuinely want what is best for your colleague or employee – that you sincerely wish to help them overcome challenges that may be standing in the way of their success.

From our experience, the significance of clarity in leadership cannot be overstated. Feedback is just one of many tools in the leader’s toolbox – others, which are often even more difficult to apply, include expectation-setting, making demands, setting boundaries, defining direction, and making strategic decisions regarding success criteria and priorities. However, many leaders display a reluctance toward personal leadership of employees, a hesitancy that often resembles conflict avoidance – something that, unfortunately, all too often results in ambiguity.

Power as an Inherent Condition

As a leader, you are entrusted with organisational responsibility and influence. When discussing leadership, it is therefore impossible to ignore the topic of power. Power, however, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is a powerful tool for influence, enabling leaders to drive change and development. On the other hand, power can easily cause leaders to lose touch with reality if they are not conscious of how they wield it.

The American professor of psychology, Dacher Keltner, highlights a significant paradox in his book The Power Paradox: The more power we attain, the greater the risk of losing the ability to use it wisely. According to Keltner, power often leads to a decline in empathy, reduced attentiveness to the needs of others, and a stronger focus on one’s own goals and perspectives.

This paradox makes it crucial for leaders to continuously reflect on themselves, their role, and their behaviour – in other words, to remain role-conscious and self-reflective. This brings us back to the importance of a leader’s ability to reflect and maintain self-awareness as key competencies.

One of the most important insights from Keltner’s book is that leaders who exercise power with empathy tend to be more successful and achieve greater influence. This ties into what we often call “playing the leadership card” – demanding authority and followership simply because one holds a leadership position: “You must comply because I am the leader.”

This kind of power tends to create resistance. Conversely, power and influence that are earned—because a leader demonstrates competence, fairness, and consideration – are often perceived as entirely legitimate. This kind of power can be a highly effective tool for achieving the goals and results that leaders are ultimately responsible for delivering.

Ego and Bias – Our Hidden Challenges

Most people have experienced it: When a leader is highly structured, they may struggle to connect with employees who work more intuitively or spontaneously. Or, if a leader is direct and decisive, they may become frustrated with employees who are more reflective and cautious. This may seem obvious. However, just because it is easy to understand rationally does not mean it is easy to overcome in daily leadership practice.

Many leaders are aware of this challenge and make conscious efforts to adapt their behaviour, yet they often find themselves falling into the same patterns repeatedly.

This is an example of how personal leadership development requires a psychological understanding of how we, as humans, unconsciously deceive ourselves in ways that allow our “ego” to get in the way. One of the key factors at play here is cognitive bias.

One particularly relevant bias is our tendency to prefer those who are similar to ourselves – what feels familiar is perceived as safe. We instinctively project our own worldview and learned expectations onto others. This happens automatically, without us realising it, and leads us to regard our own preferences as the “right” way to behave and work. Consequently, when we encounter an employee who approaches tasks differently, we struggle to assess them based on anything other than our own standards.

“No, I don’t do that!” you might object. However, the point is that these mental processes and the resulting behaviours occur so quickly that they are difficult to notice, let alone correct. Look up these cognitive biases for further reading: egocentric bias, confirmation bias, and false consensus bias.

When our ego clouds our perception of reality in this way, we risk more than just overlooking valuable input from others that could lead to innovative solutions. On a psychological level, a leader may lose the trust of their employees because the employees do not feel seen or understood. This weakens followership. In the worst case, employees may even feel anxious in the leader’s presence and start working against them as a form of self-protection – reacting to the (often unconscious) threat the leader represents.

These biases are difficult, but not impossible, to counteract. Leaders must embark on a journey of self-exploration, examining who they are as individuals. External perspectives are crucial here. Insights from someone with psychological expertise, or simply a person who knows you well, can provide an invaluable outside perspective. This creates a foundation for self-improvement, but knowledge alone is not enough. Without consistent practice, ongoing feedback, and continuous reflection, behavioural change remains difficult to achieve.

Developing Personal Leadership

As highlighted in this article, personal leadership is not a static trait but a journey – a continuous development of greater self-awareness and the ability to lead others with clarity, empathy, and integrity. Fortunately, these leadership competencies can be cultivated with the right tools and effort.

By working on reflection, emotional awareness, clear communication, and curiosity about power dynamics and cognitive biases, leaders can strengthen their relationships and achieve better results. At Summit, we are passionate about supporting leaders in this development. We firmly believe that strong leadership creates better workplaces and builds stronger, more successful organisations.