Reflective leadership: The stories of five leaders successfully building generative organizational culture

This qualitative study of organizational leadership examined the relationship of reflection to building a generative organizational culture. A generative culture is one that develops the employees' capacity for contributing and learning, empowers employees' strengths, develops high trust, and results in uplifted financial viability and an uplifted sense of wellbeing and spirit in the organization. This work is an outgrowth of Robert Greenleaf's (1977) notion of "servant-leadership."; The stories of five organizational leaders, who were nominated by nationally prominent leadership authorities, were reported. All leaders were also self-identified as practicing servant or generative leadership, having built successful internal culture among the employees, as well as thriving financially and giving back to the community. The research design employed was qualitative, in-depth interviews. The analysis of findings was based on a heuristic orientation.; Four primary findings related to the use of reflection. First, all five leaders had a disciplined approach to their reflection, invested time and resources, gave it importance and used it frequently and regularly. Second, all leaders used many different kinds of reflection. They were willing to look beyond initial assumptions and face their own individual blind spots through in-depth reflection. They used group reflection in combination with individual reflection in making difficult decisions. The use of intuition was mentioned frequently as an important aspect of individual reflection in decision making. Third, all leaders took action on their reflective insights. Finally, reflection was used for the leader's own self-renewal, in addition to the generative effects on the organizational culture. All five leaders considered reflection important to the development of a generative organizational culture. The study concludes with a discussion of the impact of the stories and recommendations for using reflection in leadership.