3 questions to ask yourself every day

What’s your job as a manager? Attend every meeting? Solve every problem? The most effective managers know that their real job is to lead — to help their team and their organization succeed. When you’re staring at an endless to-do list, it can be hard to remember that. You may find yourself asking, How am I going to get all of this done? or perhaps, I wonder what the weather’s like in Tahiti today?

Sadly, those questions won’t get you very far. But asking yourself good ones will. “Taking time for daily reflection helps me to have better 1-on-1s and to give better feedback,” one experienced manager told us. “The hardest part is actually taking time to do it.”

To make daily self-reflection an effective habit:

• Schedule a time when you won’t be interrupted. For example, before you check your messages or turn on your computer or after you’ve completed the last task of the day.
• Keep it brief and structured. Research suggests that you can improve your performance with just 15 minutes of self-reflection per day. Use the same simple questions every time — like the three questions below, which focus on the most important aspects of your job — and devote about five minutes to each.
• Write down your thoughts. Having a record of your responses allows you to pick one or two things you can put into action during your next workday. You’ll also see where you’re making progress and can build momentum — and where you’re stalling out and need to refocus your efforts.

1. Am I leading the way I want to lead?

Some leaders never stop to consider this question. But whether you’ve thought about it or not, you have a leadership style. It’s revealed in how much you talk and how much you listen in meetings, in the questions you ask — or don’t ask — in your 1-on-1s, and in the messages you decide to reply to and the ones you ignore. Every choice is a chance to build or lose trust, to encourage or stifle someone’s growth, or to embrace or retreat from opportunity. Answering this question lets you check whether your behaviors align with what is important to you.

If you believe that your most important job is to coach your team to its full potential, think about your interactions yesterday. Did you ask questions to draw out your team’s thinking rather than provide answers? Today, should you let them be the first to speak?

Or maybe you know that without the marketing group’s latest progress update, your team will struggle to make a critical deadline. Have you blocked out time on your calendar to connect with your team after the marketing meeting so that nothing distracts you from passing on that crucial information?

Or maybe you had to cancel your last 1-on-1 with a direct report who’s eager for a raise, and you haven’t rescheduled it because you’ve been telling yourself you’re too busy. But the truth is, you dread telling them the raise isn’t happening. You know that it’s been eating away at you, and you know putting it off isn’t going to make the conversation any easier. Take these five minutes to be honest with yourself — then book the meeting.

For more, see Identify and develop the behaviors that matter most to you as a leader.

2. What can improve?

The status quo is comfortable — dangerously so. If you think everything’s going fine, take a closer look at what’s holding you back and what opportunities you could be missing. It might be seemingly small things — wasting time fixing a team member’s expense reports instead of training them how to file them properly. Or it could be something larger, like your team spending so much time onboarding new clients that they haven’t been able to implement any of the new features discussed at your last offsite.

If you’re focusing your time on what could be better, you’re more likely to see opportunities and to get ahead of challenges that could cause problems down the line. You may already have a running list of things you’d like to change. If not, put down every idea you’ve had and every idea you’ve heard from your team. (And if you don’t regularly ask your team what could get better, now is a good time to start — you’ll surface ideas that never would have occurred to you, and you’ll encourage a team mindset of continual improvement.)

Then, every day, spend five minutes identifying the most important and doable items and deciding the next action you can take to make progress on them. Remember that big gains often come from small innovations you build on over time. And for help figuring out which ideas to pursue first, see Unsure about top priorities.

3. How can I help someone else?

As a manager, your personal success is often tied directly to the success of others — the members of your team, your peers, and higher-ups in your organization. When you ask yourself this question, think about those groups and your day ahead — what action can you take to help them succeed?

Your team. Who on your team is stuck on a problem? Can you help someone prioritize? Or acknowledge a direct report’s progress and encourage them to keep at it? If someone on your team isn’t getting what they need from another team, can you connect with a fellow manager to get things moving? For more, see 9 types of help managers give — and when to use each.

Your peers. Who’s working on the highest-priority project for the organization? What do they need from you or what can you do for them? Is there a project you can work on with a peer that would make both of your lives better in the long run? For more, see 5 strategic exchanges that can help you and your peers work well together.

Your manager. Put yourself in their shoes. What is their top priority right now? If you were your boss, what would you want from the person in your current position? Can you help them directly or free up their time by taking something off their plate? For more, see 9 phrases to help you build trust with your boss.

Article found at: https://aap.jhana.com/blog/3-questions-to-ask-yourself-every-day/