Ben Morton says leaders know reflection matters but treat it like a luxury they can skip. They block focus time in Outlook, then lose it to meetings or guilt about not looking busy. Reflection is a leadership skill that needs protecting, not an optional extra.
One of the most common things I hear from clients, whether that's one-to-one coaching or as part of a broader leadership program, is just how valuable they find it when they're given the time and space to pause. Time to think, time to step back, and time to reflect. And yet, nearly every time they share that with me, they also go on to say how it kind of feels like a luxury rather than something that is truly necessary, essential even, for effective leadership. I was working with a group recently and this came up once again. There was a leader in the group who was sharing with me and her colleagues how she really does try to utilize the Focus Time that Microsoft Outlook gives you. But she went on to say that despite her very best intentions, one of two things tends to happen. Either the time gets taken up with another meeting that someone books in with her, somebody diary crashes her, or if she does manage to protect the time, then she feels guilty about using it, almost as though she should be doing something more tangible with the time than merely pausing to reflect and think about the broader context of what she's doing.
