Leadership and Life Essentials: The Space You're Skipping - Why Busy Leaders Need Reflection Most

Speaker A: Foreign. M welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials with Jackie, where I cut through the noise and deliver concise, actionable insights on effective leadership. I'm your host, Jackie Surgeon Ergaleni from Leadership in Life by K Rec In a world overflowing with information, this show offers short, focused episodes packed with tangible advice and tools to help you lead and live better. Let's dive in.

Speaker B: Welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials. This is episode 93, the space you're skipping why busy leaders need reflection most have you ever had a day where you move from one thing straight into the next? By the time you sit down at night, you can't actually tell what happened during the day. It was a total blur and you feel like you can't remember anything. Did you actually make a decision about that event next week? What was the final result of that meeting you had this afternoon? You know you still have a bunch of tasks that didn't get done, but you can't remember what's still outstanding. This isn't you failing. This is what busy looks like today, and it's important to recognize and name it because most of us have quietly accepted it as normal. Your attention span isn't what it used to be. Neither is mine. We're pulled in five directions before we've even finished a coffee. And, um, there's almost always a crisis somewhere or someone who needs something from you right now. Add in a phone that buzzes every few minutes and a browser tab open on three things at once, or maybe more, and it's no wonder. It's sitting still with your thoughts that feels almost impossible. We've been conditioned to react in the moment, to answer that text or the email immediately, to be always available. So we can never seem to focus on just one thing. So when someone suggests you do exactly that, it can feel like the least responsible thing you can do with your time. Shouldn't you be doing something? We've all done it. It's conditioned into us, but it's also backwards and counterintuitive. The busy you are, the more your decisions are running on autopilot. And autopilot is where mistakes get made and priorities get mixed up. I, uh, want you to think about the leader who's handled the same problem from the same person for the third month running. She knows it's coming, she braces for it, and she deals with it the same way every time because there's never a moment to step back and ask why it keeps happening in the first place. Or the leader who walks out of a meeting having agreed to something he didn't actually mean to agree to because he was three things behind before the meeting even started. Neither of those is a character problem, nor are they unusual. It's what happens when there's no space between what's happening and how you respond to it. Your brain can't learn from something if it never slows down enough to look at it. Moving fast gets you through a to do list, maybe, but it doesn't teach you anything because learning requires you to stop and actually examine what just happened, not just survive it and move on to the next thing. There's a line that's often attributed to Viktor Frankl, although no one's entirely sure it was his. And it goes between stimulus and response. There is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And I like this quote because it illustrates how important that pause is. That space. We live without it far too often, and it takes intent and consciousness to add it back in. Something happens, we react. We're already three steps into the next thing before we've thought about whether the reaction was even the right one. That space doesn't open up on its own though. You have to make room for it, and reflection is how you make that room. It can feel overwhelming to try and figure out how to incorporate reflection into your already jam packed calendar. We often mistakenly think it has to be a big thing. It's an all day or a weekend retreat. But it doesn't. And I want to share with you three small ways you can incorporate reflection into your routine without completely overhauling your calendar or or needing to take a whole day away. And let's start with the first one, the smallest one, the daily check in. This is just a few minutes. Either first thing in the morning before you begin, or at the end of the day. If you do it in the morning, reflect back to yesterday. If you do it at the end of the day, just look back at the day. Pull out one thing that's worth carrying forward, or decide what actually matters before the day decides for you. Choose your biggest priority for the day. Name it. It's small enough. You don't need a whole calendar block or a special notebook. Just do it with your coffee. This should take five minutes or less, although I do encourage you to put it into your calendar so it's protected. Time. The weekly reflection is a bit bigger, maybe 30 minutes. Same day and time each week. Either a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon is what I think works best. If you can keep it to the same time, it's Easy to add to your calendar. It becomes a rhythm and a habit instead of something you have to remember to do. And again, don't forget to schedule it in your calendar so you can protect the time and remember to do it. This is where you start to see patterns that a single day won't show you. You might notice a meeting that goes sideways every time, or a task that you keep pushing to tomorrow. You can plan your week, schedule your priorities and uh, start to notice and recognize problems. Finally, there's the monthly clarity break. A full hour, ideally off site somewhere. Think your favourite coffee shop where you can get your favourite coffee or treat. It just needs to be somewhere you're not going to get pulled back into an email or a crisis. Paper and pen. No screens, no agenda beyond your own thoughts. This one's not really about the day to day, it's more about the bigger questions. Where is this heading? What have I been avoiding? What would I do differently if I started this month? Over what are my biggest challenges? And in the quiet solutions will emerge. I talk a lot about clarity breaks, and if I'm being honest with you, my first one was rough. I'd blocked an hour, I'd gone somewhere quiet, and then I sat with a blank page thinking, this is dumb. What am I supposed to be doing? I don't know what to write. It didn't really feel natural at all. It actually felt really awkward. If that happens to you, know that it's totally normal. You can always start with one. What's my biggest challenge right now? But mostly, just let your mind wander and write down whatever shows up, even if it feels pointless at first, mine did too. Right up, uh, until it wasn't 45 minutes in. I had pages of notes, questions I hadn't let myself ask, and a couple real answers to problems that had been sitting there nagging me for weeks. It's supposed to feel a bit awkward at the start. Again, it's not a sign you're doing anything wrong. I have a radio show and blog post about clarity breaks and if you want to dig in more, I'll link them on my show page. But none of this works if you don't protect the time. So I also want to share a few tips to help it actually stick. The first one is just to, uh, put it in your calendar and treat it like you would. Another serious commitment, don't accept meetings during that block. People will try and book over it at first, especially if they don't know what it is. Hold the line. Eventually they'll stop Trying your calendar teaches people how to treat your time, whether you mean it to or not, and it helps your brain recognize the importance of the work. Secondly, turn off your phone and your notifications. Ignore the messages and the email for like 30 minutes. It'll still be there when you're done, I promise. Nothing's going to fall apart because you were unreachable for half an hour via email. If anything were truly on fire, you'd know. And you can tell the people around you that emergencies aren't addressed through instant messages and emails, so it's okay to leave those unread for short chunks of time. Another trick is to attach that reflection time to something you're already doing. So right after your last meeting on Friday, or before anyone in the house is awake in the morning, A new habit sticks best when it's riding on top of an old habit instead of just floating off on its own. James Clear talks about habit stacking in his book Atomic Habits. If you want to know more about that. If the idea of a blank page feels overwhelming, go in with a couple questions already ready so that you're not staring at a blank page wondering where to start. I love the Roy Group's feedback model. What went well? What was tricky? What would I do differently? These are great reflection questions, whether you're looking back at a week or or after a project. I especially love the what was tricky question because it unearths challenges and what might not have worked without the guilt and the blame. And start smaller than you think you need to. If none of this is a habit yet, don't try and do all of it at once. Don't start with an hour long clarity break and expect it to stick without putting some other effort into it. Maybe you try a shorter amount of time. Block 30 minutes, build the habit first and let the time grow once it's part of how you work and try not to just force it all at once. And again, don't try and do all of them. Maybe start with one of them. Recognize these are habits and skills and they're new so you aren't going to be awesome at them at first because but keep trying and you'll improve and they'll even start to feel a little more normal. And um, we're at the part of the show where we talk about what you can do. I have blog posts and radio shows about this topic and I'll link them on my show page. You can pick one reflection habit, whether it's the daily, weekly or monthly. Put it in your calendar and do it this week. Don't try and start all of them at once. If you're starting from zero, just start with a daily check in five minutes is enough to start the habit before you want to protect a bigger block of time. If regular reflection feels like too much right now, just do it after a project, a meeting, an interaction, a challenge, ask yourself the 3 Roy group what went well? What was tricky? What would you do differently? You can try writing down two or three questions that you'll ask yourself ahead of time so you're not just staring at a blank page. Maybe you share your commitment with one other person, whether it's a colleague, a partner, your team. Tell them that you're protecting this time so that you can build in a little bit of accountability. And as always, I'll have resources related to this show on my show page at, uh, leadershipandlife Ca. And remember, you don't need a whole day to reflect. You need 10 honest minutes and a willingness to actually use them.

Speaker A: You've reached the end of another episode of Leadership and Life Essentials.

Speaker B: If you want to learn more about

Speaker A: today's topics, please visit leadershipandlife Ca, where you'll find episode show notes and free bonus resources. I'm Jackie Sergener Gallioni, founder of Leadership and Life by krec, Inc. Where I strive to empower leaders with the skills no one taught them to create teams

Speaker B: who want to work together.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining me.