[MUSIC]. I hope you digested our previous module and are now ready for action. You often receive as an advice the be yourself tip. And it is essential, indeed, to be able to be your true self in its best expression. Essential, but not easy. Because to be yourself, you have to know who you are, and this is hard work. How often do you look at yourself in a mirror? And how long, and what for? And what do you see? More often than not, and it has been my experience working with executives, I have found that the facade leaders present is very different from the reality inside of them. By reflecting on yourself, you discover facets of your personality that are deeply hidden. And you gain true confidence. You understand that there are two ways to grow. Because behind a mask, you have in your different roles in your life, you often have doubts. As a leader, you have to appear powerful and doubtless. When in reality, you constantly need to grow self-awareness and confidence. I have seen this with executives and even CEOs. And there is another thing. Another thing I have learned with time. Even if you have core personality traits that are anchored deep inside of you, you do change. You evolve and transform yourselves as you are exposed to new events, discover new people. So to stay connected to yourself, you need a way to inquire, to question who you are. Indeed, leadership is a process of transformational growth that begins with self-awareness. To achieve this goal, and guide you in your introspection, I have developed an approach using the self portrait, a writing exercise. The idea is to give you a sense of perspective when looking inside yourself to explore different layers with four circles of reflection. The questions are the result of work and interaction with the British historian and philosopher, Theodore Zeldin, who wrote, among many other books, An Intimate History of Humanity in 1994. Here's what Theodore says about Savoir Relier and the importance to understand or Délier or disconnect, things before you can reconnect them or Relier them. The four circles are you and yourself, you and others, you and a group, and you and society. For each layer, there are questions to drive your reflection, a total of 40 questions, 10 per layer. But don't worry. The Savoir Relier process goes step by step. And you will have several opportunities to engage in the self portrait exercise. For this first one, you will be given eight questions which will help you think about who you are as a relational being. You will also be asked to add one question of your own, a question that you are asking yourself at the moment in which you will complete in your self portrait. The idea is that you engage in reflection for about 30 minutes, or about an hour. And then write freely five paragraphs. One for you and yourself. One for you and others. One for you and a group. One for you and society. And a fifth paragraph for your own question and how you address it. The final document should be around 1,000 words. It will be confidential and protected by your password. And later in the process, you will use it to exchange and share your self reflection with another person enrolled on the MOOC like you. But this is for your next module, so don't worry about it, and trust me. To encourage you before you begin this exercise, in case you need encouragement, you can watch and listen to feedback from some who have done this exercise before you. >> The greatest moment I had in Savoir Relier Leadership Program Is about the self portrait. A self portrait is one which basically tells you who you are. How you are going to be with your peers and colleagues. How you would be behaving connected with your environment. How you would be connected with your society. And this is basically, kind of a mirror of your personality, which you would be in a position to share with others. Which could also be in a position to give as a dire portrait, which help us to get connected, which help us to better understand, which help us to build together to achieve what we actually have to do in any organization >> It is really worth getting into a leadership at Savoir Relier >> Before the self portrait, I actually do a lot of self reflection, but it's mainly focused on me as a person. And after the self-portrait, I found it's very interesting to see whether it's someone who has a very similar portrait as me, or someone who has very different portrait from me. It's very easy to find something we have in common. And we can understand each other better to build a common connection. >> Writing the self portraits. Well, at first, when you see the questions, you might think, hm, that's easy. And then suddenly, you are in front of your paper or your computer and you beginning to start thinking that it's really, really hard looking back to yourself. >> You see, if you're nervous, others have been nervous before you, so you're not alone. But everyone who has done the exercise appreciates it once it's done. And I'm talking about over 1,600 people from all over the world. One of them is Apollonia Poilane. Apollonia wrote her first self portrait a couple of years ago, if I remember correctly. She will share with you her experience, and more precisely, how she felt before writing, during the writing, and how useful this exercise has been for her over time. >> So, the self portrait was a very complicated exercise. Writing about yourself and figuring out or putting in words who you are is always a complicated exercise. I think doing it helped me verbalize some thoughts and ideas and conceptions I may have had about myself. But I think that it's an exercise that's especially useful to come back to every once in a while, to see how you have evolved and what developments you have had or you need to make for the future. >> Apollonia will now give you a tip for this first step of the Savoir Relier protocol called introspection. >> One tip that I found useful was rephrasing the questions, and the different circles of analysis of your self portrait, into questions. So that your portrait is as sincere as possible to who you really are on these different levels. >> Remember that the content of your self portrait is absolutely private, and this is essential. Now, please plan one hour. I advise you not to take longer. This is part of the process. Follow the guidelines and see you on savoir-relier.com.
