One of the internal challenges of moving into a leadership role is that you often receive very little short-term feedback. I hear frequently from new leaders that they wish that they knew how they were doing.
I’ve posted about that phenomenon before. Success measures are more and more lagging indicators as you advance in leadership.
When you’re not receiving regular input from other people, it becomes important for you to learn to hold an effective self-evaluation. Many leaders schedule time every week to hold a reflection like this.
I’m actually not going to give you a list of questions to ask yourself. I’m not going to give you a checklist of activities to make sure you completed each week.
Some of you wish I would. You want the recipe, the formula for success, the agenda for the weekly reflection.
But the most helpful reflection isn’t one that inspects the same fixed set of measures each week. It isn’t just about checking compliance with a plans and commitments or recommitting to established goals.
I said I wasn’t going to give you a list of questions. But I will give you one question you can ask during this weekly reflection. And that’s this: “How well have my actions this week – including the way I’m handling this reflection – aligned with my goals, priorities, and commitments. And what can I change to make them align better next week?”
OK, maybe that counts as two questions, but I think they’re so closely related I view them as just one.
Anyway, if you’d like a partner to help you think through what that kind of reflection might look like for you, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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