The Importance of Daily Reflection
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” – Margaret J. Wheatley
In our busyness, one of the things we neglect as leaders is taking the time to stop and reflect upon our day in order to learn from the experiences of the day. This is even though it has been proven to be one of the most effective tools in our learning and especially in developing our emotional intelligence.
See this article How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence from Inc. One of the steps the author mentions is “Reflect on your own emotions.” as one of the ways to grow your emotional intelligence. And the following article from the Harvard Business School Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance has the following to say regarding reflection:
“Key concepts include:
Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection-that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.
Reflecting on what has been learned makes experience more productive.
Reflection builds one's confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning.”
So, it is obvious that reflection is important in our growth as leaders and we somehow need to make time at the end of each day to do so – even if it is only 15 minutes. Following is what is called Review of the Day for Managers and I (and others) have found it to be a great tool for using reflection as a means of learning. Following are the key steps from this model. Go to the link for some great questions to ask for each step.
Review of the Day for Managers
1. “From your perspective as a manager, what was the high point of the day?
2. The low point of the day? Again, look for reasons and patterns.
3. When were you working at your best during the day?
4. When did you struggle to stay focused and engaged?
5. How hectic was the day?
6. Think about each of your direct reports. Imagine how he/she might have pictured interacting with you.
7. Look toward tomorrow.”
Start taking about 15 minutes at the end of your day to walk though these seven steps and you will be surprised by how much you learn.