Why Every Leader Should Have a Regular Reflection Time

It’s more important than you think!

Leaders are a busy lot of people.

We are responsible for guiding our team (or organisation) toward its goals and ensuring its purpose and mission is accomplished. In addition to our primary objectives, we have secondary responsibilities, such as caring for and motivating our team.

Many things demand our attention daily: not only those we’re primarily responsible for but sometimes those we are not directly responsible for. With so many things to deal with, we tend to be very busy most of the time, though some leaders wear “busyness” as a badge of honour!

The whirlwind!

When I first became an Operations Director many years ago, busyness became my best friend. From the moment I stepped into the office until the time to go home, I had to attend to many things. Most days, I wondered where all my time went, and occasionally, I wondered if all that I did was even necessary.

Even as recently as several months ago, when I was running a short-term project, I found myself going from early morning to evening without having much time for a breather. It was as if one task led to another, or many things all happened simultaneously. The sequence of the day could become so blurred out that I wondered, “What happened today?”

If we are not careful, we get swept away by the whirlwind!

For some of us, our personality adds to it too. If we’re the “Go, Go!” or hyperactive type, or if we get bored quickly and need constant activities and varieties to keep ourselves motivated, we can easily get caught up in doing things and being busy.

The problem is that if we’re not careful, we can be so busy doing things that we lose our way! It will be sad that after all that busyness, we find ourselves not having any impact or not being fulfilled!

That’s why a leader needs to have regular reflection time!

Why Every Leader Should Have a Regular Reflection Time

Several months into my Operations Director role, I was so stressed that I realised I needed to pause and take stock, which I did. After that, I started taking time every morning for personal reflection; I would arrive in the office at least an hour before everyone else came in to have undisturbed time to do so.

Benefits of a Regular Reflection Time

Those times of reflection helped me tremendously. For the following reasons:

1. It’s an opportunity to examine myself, evaluate, and improve. I can look at how I’ve made decisions, handled situations, or related to my team, etc., and think of what I have done well, what I could improve, and how I could do better.

2. It’s a time to prioritise. What’s important, what’s not, what’s critical for getting us to our goals, and what’s not helpful. What do the team or I need to start doing, and what do we need to stop doing, etc.?

3. It helps me regain/retain my focus. What do the team need that only I could do? What is my unique contribution to the team’s shared purpose and mission, and how well am I doing it? What could other team members do better than me that I must stop doing?

4. It helps me focus on my being. Who am I? What is my unique calling, and how am I living it out in the long term and the day-to-day? What are my values, and how do they appear in my life and work?

5. It allows me to gain perspective. What’s happening in me, around me, in the team, etc.? Why are things happening the way they are? What lessons can I learn from them? What’s within my control? What’s outside my control?

The time to think helped me stay grounded on what’s important and not get swept away by busyness.

“A regular reflection time helps me focus on my being and also gain perspective!”

Not just personal

I recently had the opportunity to coach a client in rethinking what’s important for his life. He remarked that he has been pursuing many things because of his interests and personality, but the self-awareness from our coaching time helped him see what he needed to focus on.

Personal reflection time is good, but we don’t always see clearly because of our blind spots. Having a coach helps overcome that limitation. If I had known about “Coaching” as an Operations Director, I would have also enlisted a coach’s help.

Some suggestions

It’s not difficult to have regular reflection time. It could be

• 10 to 15 minutes each day, either at the beginning of the day or at the end (I prefer the start of the day because it’s easier to set it apart) or
• 30 to 60 minutes each week, either at the end of the week or the beginning, or
• Once a fortnight, with a coach.

The important thing is to schedule it (i.e. in your schedule) and do it regularly.

What about you?

How often do you spend time reflecting? How has it helped you?

What would you need to do to start having a regular reflection time?