strategy + business – Powerful modes of reflection are crucial for leaders and their teams, especially when dealing with a crisis: “Reflection for seasoned leaders has always been a personal process. Step back. Regroup. Look in the mirror. Push the pause button. There is often an intuitive belief that reflection carries restorative powers and can even be transformational. In theory, it goes like this: On top of a mountain, a leader retreats to ask him or herself a set of questions about life, stress, and sacrifice, capturing the answers in a beautifully bound notebook. The questions don’t vary much. Where are you going? How are you living your values? What gives you meaning, purpose, or fulfillment? Are all the components of your life managed as you need them to be managed: career, family, friends, finances, health, and spiritual growth? The power of this reflection comes from digging deep and being in touch with your core. It is very much an affair of the heart. With the insights from this exercise, you come back to your role renewed, focused on what matters to you and clearer about how you will lead this year. Although this kind of deep reflection (on an imagined mountaintop) is a useful process, it may not be enough to tackle the range of problems a business encounters in the course of a year because it focuses solely on the leader. In our experience working together and independently coaching leaders, we find that they and their teams benefit from four ways of more targeted reflection that help refocus and reframe challenges (see “The four kinds of reflection”). This is particularly true when the world as we knew it has so dramatically changed and the challenges we face will be of a new kind.

In our experience, the leadership health check should be done twice a year. Its purpose is to refine how you lead in order to elicit better performance, engagement, or commitment from those around you. Rather than a look at yourself in a mirror, you distill the views of others concerning your words and actions. Informally or formally, you gather the answers to the following questions from people you trust, such as a coach, colleagues, and mentors. And you collect the perspectives of key critics…”