At a recent healthcare conference, a seasoned leader shared the following insight with me: “In healthcare, we always talk about having our clinical staff practice at the top of their license. But we never apply this to ourselves as executives. Most of the time, we are not practicing at the top of our license because we don’t take time to think and reflect.” What a powerful thought!

I believe that the biggest challenge for leaders today- not just in healthcare but in all industries- is lack of time for thinking and reflection. In the current unpredictable and complex environment with unprecedented rates of change, leaders are running from meeting to meeting, putting our fires and navigating internal and external crises. There is no time for thinking or reflection. There is no alone time. A Harvard Business Review study that asked EAs to track their bosses’ schedules concluded that the only alone that top leaders have at work on any given day is in chunks of 15-20 minutes or less. And that is not enough for any meaningful thinking or reflection. Most leaders spend that alone time answering emails and texts, which creates more ambiguity and less clarity.

Why are thinking and reflection so important for leaders? Self-awareness is the starting point of leadership. You can’t lead others until you learn how to lead yourself. And to lead yourself, you need to understand yourself. You need to know what you are good at, what you are not that good at, and the impact of your actions on others. That is self-awareness and it requires deep thinking and reflection. Most leaders think about these things occasionally, but then the phone rings, a text message chimes, or someone barges into their offices and the thinking is interrupted. That is why proactive, intentional leadership is so hard these days.

So what can leaders do to create time for thinking and reflection and to build and maintain their self-awareness? The best leaders that I have worked with follow one simple rule: they regularly block time on their calendars for thinking and reflection. They don’t leave it up to chance- they schedule 30 minutes of planning on Monday morning, 45 minutes for a deep-thinking lunch on Wednesday, or 60 minutes of reflection on Friday afternoon- whatever makes sense for them and their schedules. And the time blocked appears as a meeting on their electronic schedules, so others can’t override it and schedule another meeting. It is meeting just like any other, but only one person is attending the meeting: the leader is meeting with herself! And many leaders have told me that for them, it is the most important meeting of the week.

Effective leaders don’t leave anything to chance once the time for the meeting arrives. They move away from their laptops, put their phones on silent and somewhere not visible, and they sit down with a pen, a paper, and their thoughts. No distractions and no interaction with the outside world for the sole purpose of thinking and reflection.

For leaders who have never done this practice before, the first time might be very daunting: “Once I have scheduled the time and removed all the distractions, what should I think about?” they ask. Here are a few questions to get started:
– How am I showing up for my team?
– What am I doing well as a leader?
– What am I struggling with?
– What changes do I need to make as a leader?
– How do we rally together and support each other?

Once they have these figured out, they can move on to more complex questions such as:
– What do I need to do to avoid standing in my own way?
– What’s the smallest step I can take toward a big thing today?
– What am I so worked up about?
– What blessings can I count right now?
– What should I do to care less about impressing other people?

And naturally, new questions and issues will appear but the key is to stick to with the habit of blocking time, thinking and reflecting. That is what self-aware, proactive and intentional leaders do. And that’s how they achieve high performance for themselves, their teams and their organizations.

Let’s start practicing at the top of our license as leaders!

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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Keynote Speaker on Leadership.