A Pause to Reflect

Happy 2018!

A new year is a great opportunity to pause, reflect on the previous year, and plan for the year to come. We hope that you’ll take some time this week to look back on your leadership learnings from 2017 and to think about how you might challenge yourself as a leader in 2018.

In that vein, I’m giving you a list of coaching questions to ask yourself this week instead of a more narrative blog post. In addition to the questions below, Rodger will send an email with the LEAD 365 leadership audit, an annual process that we hope helps keep you motivated to continue your leadership growth.

Ready for those coaching questions? Here you go! (There are a lot, so feel free to pick and choose which questions to engage in. You don’t need to answer them all)

• How did you grow most as a leader in 2017?
• What was the most challenging aspect of your leadership in 2017?
• What was your greatest leadership win in 2017?
  • What about this made it come to mind?
  • What did you learn?
  • How were other people impacted?
  • How did you surprise yourself in this situation?
• What was your greatest leadership failure in 2017?
  • What about this made it come to mind?
  • What did you learn?
  • How were other people impacted?
  • How did you surprise yourself in this situation?
• How healthy were the living systems you were a part of at work in 2017?
  • Where did you see anxiety?
  • How did you respond to that anxiety?
  • How were you (or weren’t you) able to stay calm and connected?
• What did you tolerate in your organization or team’s culture in 2017 that you won’t tolerate this year?
• What happened in 2017 that you need to celebrate?
• What is coming up in 2018 that will challenge you as a leader? What do you need to do to prepare for that?
• In order to make the biggest impact on your organization, what is the most important aspect of leadership that you need to focus on?
• What have you been avoiding that you want to stop avoiding?
• What aspects of your work are you holding on to that perhaps you should let go of in order to free up more time in 2018 for leadership?
• Pretend it is a year from now, what do you hope to have learned as a leader? What do you hope to have accomplished? How do you hope to have challenged yourself?
• What else?

I hope this process has given you some new insight into how you might intentionally grow as a leader this year. If you want to talk through any of the above coaching questions or the audit, we are always here for you.

Until next time, lead on!
Meredith

Image by barbasia. Used under CC by 2.0 license.