by: Sim Sitkin

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1. Pause to Examine Your Experience

As noted strategic leadership scholar Henry Mintzberg observed, most leaders are constantly in motion, with very little time to think.

They solve problems, make decisions, respond to issues, and move on to the next issue. But unless they stop to reflect, much of the value of those experiences is lost.

Reflection turns experience into learning. It means asking: 

  • What happened? 
  • Why did I approach it that way? 
  • What worked? What did not? 
  • What assumptions was I making? 
  • What should I do differently next time?

The best leaders I know do this regularly. They do not simply keep doing what worked in the past. They keep thinking about why it did or didn’t work. They ask whether it still works now.

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2. Capture Insights Before They Disappear

Insights are easy to lose.

Leaders are busy. A useful realization today can be forgotten by tomorrow unless it is captured somehow.

Reflective practitioners develop simple ways to record what they are learning. That might mean writing a quick note after a meeting, sending yourself an email, or recording a short voice memo on your way home. The goal is not to create a perfect record.

The goal is to make sure valuable insights are not lost.

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3. Keep a Running Record of Lessons Learned

Capturing a single insight is useful. Building a record over time is far more powerful.

Many leaders keep some form of ongoing notes—journals, notebooks, or digital files—where they track lessons learned, advice received, patterns they are noticing, and ideas they want to revisit.

This creates a body of experience you can return to. But it only works if you actually go back and look at it.

That’s because reflection is not just recording. It is revisiting–and reconsidering or recommitting.

Years ago, I explored a concept with colleagues that we called “total quality learning.” The idea is similar in spirit to total quality management, but applied to learning rather than quality control. Instead of only improving processes, the goal is to improve how individuals and organizations learn from what they do.

Reflective practice is a core part of that. It is not just about occasional insight. It is about building a system—personally and organizationally—for continuously learning from experience and improving over time. 

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4. Use Technology to Support Reflection and Feedback

Reflection does not have to happen on paper.

Some leaders use digital tools to capture and organize their thinking. Others use private blogs, shared documents, or internal platforms to reflect and invite feedback from others.

Used thoughtfully, technology can make it easier to:

  • capture insights in real time
  • revisit past thinking
  • and, in some cases, get input from others

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5. Think out loud with trusted others

Reflection does not have to be solitary. Some of the most valuable reflection happens in conversation.

A coach, mentor, therapist, or trusted colleague can help you see what you might miss on your own. They can challenge your assumptions, surface blind spots, and help you process both successes and failures more clearly.

That is one reason coaching is so valuable. Coaching creates a structured space not just to talk, but to think.

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6. Build a personal board of advisors

Some leaders go a step further and create a small group of trusted people they turn to regularly. Think of it as a personal board of advisors. These are people who know you well enough to:

  • help you process decisions,
  • remember past experiences, and
  • push back when you are overlooking something important.

In some cases, they even help you remember things you have forgotten.

In that sense, reflection does not only live in your notes. It also lives in the people around you.

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7. Schedule time to step back and adapt

Reflection is less likely to happen if it depends entirely on leftover time.

Some of the most effective leaders deliberately step away and create the space for broader reflection. They may arrive at the office early to carve out time for thinking and planning, or find other intentional ways to cultivate this space. For example, former Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski took time each year to review the prior season and think carefully about what needed to change—how the game was evolving, how players were changing, and how his own approach needed to adapt.

That kind of pause is not a luxury. It is a disciplined way of preparing for what comes next.

Leaders need to think ahead, question assumptions, anticipate change, and adjust their approach. Reflection is part of how they do that.

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The Bottom Line

Great leaders do not simply accumulate experience. They learn from it.

Reflective practitioners pause, capture lessons, revisit them, and adapt their thinking as circumstances change. They find ways to think more actively and more thoroughly about what they are doing and why.

There are many ways to do that. The key is not which method you use. The key is that you use one consistently.

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