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Developing the ability of proactive reflection.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

in this article, I will describe the classroom environment that I attempt to create in my Leadership and Organizational Development course. Then I will outline the process through which I assist cadets in developing their proactive reflection skills that will allow them to become leaders of character who are life-long learners. Although leadership and organizational development theory is taught throughout the course, the major focus of the course is developing the cadets' ability to engage in proactive reflection.

Introduction

"Today's highly successful manager or administrator is distinguished not so much by any single set of knowledge or skills but by his ability to adapt to and master the changing demands of his job and career--by his ability to learn (Kolb, 1976, 21)."

This article only addresses how to develop students' ability to proactively reflect on experience. It is important that the reader be reminded that there are variables in addition to the ability to engage in proactive reflection that are not discussed in this paper that will determine whether experiential learning is effective. For example, the attitude of the learner will be a major determinant of the success of experiential learning.

Taking into consideration the increasing rate of technological change and globalization, I believe this statement is more salient today than in 1976. Normative education that focuses on memorization of fact and ideas is so bound up in the past as to give little help in dealing with the issues of the present and the future (Dewey, 1938). It is clear that such education leaves leaders unprepared for dealing with the complexity and contingency of their work environments (Schon, 1994). This normative approach to education, "by advocating the systematic application of theory and techniques to every situation, ... fails to consider that practitioners deal with ill-defined, unique, emotive, and complex issues (Cunliffe, 2002, 35)."

There are no natural laws or final, completely adequate understandings of leadership. Rather a leader develops more and more adequate instrumentalities for dealing with always changing and growing leadership situations. In practice, leadership deals with individualized and unique situations that are never exactly duplicable and about which, accordingly, no complete understanding is possible. Thus, blindly replicating leadership actions that were successful in past experiences, or prescribed in the leadership literature, in present or future leadership situations with all their uniqueness and contingency is no guarantee that they will be effective.

In today's military and workplace, "[t]he only constant is change, and responding effectively to change almost always requires learning (Seibert & Daudelin, 1999)." To allow leaders to develop the ability to navigate the uniqueness and contingency of their future leadership experiences, we must help them develop their ability to learn from experience. In this...

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