This bite-sized learning module is all about self-awareness and self-mastery.  You will be introduced to ideas that will help you explore some of your own habits of thought and action, seek feedback essential to learning and growth, and develop a practice of grounded self-inquiry.  By understanding better some of our own needs, motivations and behaviours, we are able to make more productive choices about how we work with, and lead others.

It draws on a well-researched blend of the latest neuroscience and psychology, with applied ideas from some of the world’s leading thinkers in the areas of learning, personal growth and peak performance.

To this we bring our many years of experience, supporting, challenging and enabling leaders all around the world to form and build high productive, collaborative and generative leadership teams and organisations.

More detail on each of the lessons

Get ready to learn

This lesson is all about preparing for a great learning experience.  It helps you to settle into the use of the e-learning platform, and understand the nature of an 'action learning' or 'action inquiry' mindset.

Many of us have dropped out of the habit of experimental action and reflective practice - in our busy, working worlds.  We run relentlessly from one task to another, barely pausing to notice the real responses from others around us or notice our own habitual auto-pilots.  So, for some, the return to an inquiry-led journaling process, will be a new discipline to work into your day.

The video explains why doing ALL these things (as a learning cycle) is essential to any lasting change.

We include this lesson in all our courses and bite-size products - so if you have seen this before, you can skip it and move straight on.

Know self

Why start here?  Adult, senior leadership learning is unlike the learning we do early in our lives and careers.  When we are young and inexperienced, almost all learning is ‘additive’ in the sense that we have large arenas of not-knowing that we can fill with new ideas.  However, when we have invested in ourselves for many years, we need to start ‘unlearning’ as much as acquire new things.

Unlearning is a little harder as it requires us to bring into conscious awareness aspects of our practices, behaviours and assumptions that have disappeared into taken-for-granted ‘auto-pilots’.  This often occurs at a time in our life when our old, ‘go-to’ routines, habits and reactions seem to no longer serve us.  Things we learned earlier in our lives to protect or defend us, make us feel more secure in the face of our own doubts, or were merely copied and acquired unconsciously from the environment we happened to be in, seem to hold us stuck, rather than move us forward as they once did.

Unlearning and relearning as a senior leader takes enormous humility and some degree of energy!  And it starts with thinking again about who we are, and what ‘makes us tick’ the way we do.  That is why we start with opening up the opportunity for some self-inquiry, and provide a mechanism for you to seek feedback from others.  This opening up, and demonstrating vulnerability and a learning attitude, is the first step to creating the conditions of trust with and for others.

Personal 'drivers'

Some of us are perfectionists – others speed-addicts!  Whatever your personal ‘drivers’ they will have their roots in your history and upbringing, and the various experiences you have had along the way.

They will serve you well – AND they carry a ‘price’ to both you and those you lead, facilitate and work alongside.  They may be overly used, especially when you are stressed or ‘triggered’, getting in the way of adaptation and learning.  Understanding them is essential to getting into a more productive and learningful relationship with stressor events.

Becoming more aware of these ‘drivers’, their benefits and impacts, and how to recognise and support development in yourself and others – gives you more choice, more freedom, and therefore more personal mastery.

Understand human needs to build trust

Trust appears either explicitly or implicitly in just about every organisational ‘value statement’ document.  We use the word as if it were something simple that could just be demanded at will – of ourselves or each other.  When we combine this with an overly mechanistic view of the human being at work (for example 20th Century ideas such as “leave you emotions at the door” etc), we have lost touch with the fact that TRUST is profoundly human, based on the degree to which we are able to be vulnerable to ourselves and each other, and feel confidence that our deepest needs will be met with integrity.

This lesson uses the latest neuroscience, psychology and sociology to explore our deep human needs.  Take this lesson slowly, think it through and ‘feel’ it through as you go, allowing it to touch you and tell you something about what is important to you.

It deepens our understanding of our personal ‘triggers’ – those stress moments or periods which catch us and plunge us into a non-resourceful state, potentially defensive and reliant on old fixed habits - blocking adaptation and change.  Making a link between these and our deepest human needs, gives us the capacity for self-compassion and a deeper understanding of others - from which we might go on to enhance our capacity to adapt, renew and learn.

Be fully present at your best

​We cannot hope to lead anything or anyone, if we are not fully aware of what is going on.  Whether we are interested in developing ourselves, leading people through change, creating new strategic options, or working at distance with complex dynamics - we have to fully turn up, with all our senses alive to the moment, to find the opportunities to be helpful.

This lesson contains an introduction video, and later in the lesson there is a 'deep dive' longer video by Daniel Goleman (of Emotional Intelligence fame) which those of you with a deeper interest may want to watch.

There is a handout with some additional tips, pragmatic tools, and some spaces to make notes.  You might find it useful to print this before sitting down to watch the video - to capture your thoughts and questions as you go along.

Reflecting 'out loud'

You may find that some aspects of this work touches you in ways that you will find uncomfortable, perhaps even exposing 'edges' that you hoped that you were hiding really well.

You can be pretty sure that you are NOT masking them very well at all, despite your best 'stories of yourself' (even if some of your stories sound convincing, and you are able to tell them even to yourself).  Facing your vulnerabilities with integrity and humility will build-up your credibility in the eyes of those around you, whereas trying to present an inauthentic version of yourself merely exposes your insecurity to all.  Our defences often allow us to be 'expert' for many years, and as long as we stay in expert-style jobs, we can carry on this way.  But the minute we get into real, senior leadership, we are SEEN.  Choices have to be made, it is time to return to self-development rather than self-protection.

If access to this package is part of an ongoing consulting support project with Lacerta Consulting, then please use the 'assignment' process right at the end of the package, to capture your learning, explore the questions it asks and complete some writing.  The more you open up, the more your consultant will be able to help you.  This is, in itself, part of the process.

If your access here is NOT part of a supported programme, please feel free to complete the paper anyway – we are always willing to offer our thoughts and point you in the direction of new support or learning.  And of course we are always delighted to receive any feedback about how you have experienced our learning products.

Whatever you write, it is ONLY seen by the Lacerta Consultant assigned to your programme.  It will never be shared with anyone else, and gives us the opportunity to understand how this is impacting you, what help you might need individually, and offers ideas how we might support the whole team.

Frequently asked questions