Leaders stop, reflect and pause
Dear Leaders, Congratulations as you made it to the end of the year. But what do great Leaders do at the end of the year or after a tedious hard work. They stop , reflect and paused.
Leadership can be tedious. There is need to refresh , reinvigorate and renew ourselves like the eagles. After a long journey in the storm, the eagle will locate a top mountain or tree, spend day looking at the sun for renewal.
Peter Drucker, Management Consultant said,
“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
In our busy world there seems to be little time for commas let alone full stops and new paragraphs in our day!
We are so busy and hustling from January to December. We are very quick in our learning experiences but we allow little time for reflection.
Leaders are learners. As Leaders , if we want learning to turn into growth, then we have to STOP – PAUSE and TAKE IT IN. Sometimes you have to allow the specific learning from an experience to catch up with you. How often do you take the time to pause and let the lesson you’ve learned soak in and create a paradigm shift for you?
Most learning experiences are One and Done!
A person might read a book or attend a one-day workshop. They may set a quick Action Plan at the end of the workshop, but then return to work the next day and fall back into the old habits of doing what they’ve always done. We are too quick to teach others but less time to pause and reflect.
THE POWER OF PAUSING AND REFLECTION
REFLECTION TURNS EXPERIENCE INTO INSIGHT: There is a saying that experience is a better teacher. I beg to defer from this axiom. I personally believe , it’s EVALUATED experience ! We all had several experience everyday but most times we never learn anything from it because we didn’t take time to reflect on it. I have worked as a Specialist Radiographer for almost three decades now. I got a new job last week. What did I do? I spend few days reflecting upon my previous experiences and how I will be more relevance in my new appointment. That’s worked for me. I went to the new hospital for two weeks just to pause and reflect. If not you could easily mistake your new job as the previous one. Hence , trouble !
- STOPPING, PAUSING AND REFLECTING GIVE LEADERS A CLARITY OF PURPOSE: Leaders see more, see before and see far than the followers. You see more when you relax and refresh. You can then navigate for others. Your vision will be enhanced if you learn the art of reflection.
Learning from experience – Is one of our most powerful ways of growing if you apply reflection to it.
Here are the four elements:
- Have an experience
- Review the experience
- Conclude for the experience
- Plan the next step
I realized that you don’t grow from the experience unless you pause to take time to reflect afterwards and apply what you have learned. Many learning opportunities are lost each day because we have the experience and then do nothing with it except move onto another experience.
You need reflection enhances understanding. Learning and growth in the moment will only happen if you allow a pause for reflection. Experience alone won’t change your mindset or your approach to how you do things. It’s your understanding of that experience that creates a paradigm shift. If you stop to reflect, you give yourself some space to allow your understanding to catch up! This is so important for learning. Everyone needs a Time and a Place to Pause. They say, “If someone is going the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed up. He needs to stop”.
Pausing with intention Expands and Enriches Thinking: We renew our thinking when we pause, have a break. It simmers our emotion and reduces anxiety. It also increases our tolerance and patience as leaders.
The power of pausing gives you time to think.
- 1. I cannot emphasize enough the value of stepping out of the do-do list and creating some reflective space to think alone. Reflecting equals growing! I use Honey and Mumford’s four steps to create some good questions to generate some deeper thinking around any learning experience. Here’s what happens when you allow reflective practice into your life:
- It allows you to revaluate where you are now and re-connect to where you want to be. It gives you further insight into how to (or how not to!) get there. You have to slow down to speed up. Accelerated momentum towards your goal will happen if you schedule some time to reflect before moving on. Rushing from A to B to get things done might mean that you miss something significant because you are too focused on the finishing line and not on the growing to get there. Learning is left discarded along the way.
TAKE HOME:
Successful people build reflective practice into their daily lives. They schedule time to THINK as well as DO. Their doing is purposeful and effective because they have given themselves space to walk through their experiences, look at it from a different perspective and plan their next step. Leaders, this last week of December, please stop, pause and reflect. It will enable you to hear from the Lord about divine leading ahead of you.
Ask God for your FOCUS WORD FOR 2021. To me, 2021 is my Year of REINVENTION.
How about you ?
See you at the TOP