Hey Boss: This Daily Practice Can Make You a Better Leader

New research shows how to bring your best self to work

If you’re the boss — or aspire to be — new research shows that reflecting on the kind of leader you want to be could spur your success.

“It’s as simple as taking a few moments in the morning while you’re drinking your coffee to reflect on who you want to be as a leader,” said Remy Jennings, a doctoral student in the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. Jennings, along with UF professor Klodiana Lanaj, wrote the study published in Personnel Psychology.

Researchers invited students enrolled in a weekend MBA program at a large midwestern university in the United States to join the study. Participants held a variety of jobs and received extra course credit for their participation.

When study participants did the morning reflection, they were more likely to report helping co-workers and providing strategic vision, Science Daily reported. They also felt more like leaders on the days they did the exercise, perceiving they had more power and influence at work.

To get the benefits in your own professional life, here are some prompts the researchers recommend:

• What are some of your proudest leadership moments?
• What qualities do you have that make you a good leader or will in the future?
• Think about who you aspire to be as a leader, then imagine everything has gone as well as it possibly could in this leadership role. What does that look like?
• What effect do you want to have on your employees? Do you want to motivate them? Inspire them? Identify and develop their talents? What skills or traits do you have that can help with those goals?

The practice also benefits aspiring leaders and offers them a way to have influence, even without a management title, researchers said.

“They’re not dependent on their organization to provide formal opportunities. They don’t have to wait until they have that title that says they’re a leader to take on leadership in their work,” Jennings said.

Earlier research indicates that self-reflection is also valuable in helping leaders stay motivated.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, UF’s Lanaj, along with Trevor Foulk and Arez Amir, noted that a leader’s sense of self is closely associated with their job and that they are invested in being successful in their role.

In that study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, leaders were asked to take a few minutes in the morning to write about three things that they like about themselves and that made them good leaders. Participants included personal qualities they value, skills they have, and achievements they’re proud of.

“We found that on days when leaders took a few minutes in the morning to reflect and write about aspects of themselves that make them good leaders, they subsequently felt less depleted and more engaged, and they reported having a positive impact on their followers,” researchers wrote.

The positive effects were stronger for employees in leadership positions, researchers found, noting: “These employees self-identify more strongly as leaders and may derive more benefits from interventions that tap into their identity as leaders.”

What employees — and leaders — need now

To get a handle on how the coronavirus pandemic affected work, research and advisory company Gartner Inc. surveyed more than 3,000 knowledge employees in onsite, remote, and hybrid workplaces. Also surveyed were 75 human resources leaders.

The results showed that the normalization of remote work and the increased use of technology in administrative processes are changing the traditional definition of management, Brian Kropp, Alexia Cambon, and Sara Clark wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

In addition, as companies provided more assistance during the pandemic, relationships between employees and managers “started to shift to be more emotional and supportive.”

“These three trends have culminated in a new era of management where it’s less important to see what employees are doing and more important to understand how they feel,” per HBR.

The need for support is especially acute given that a separate Gartner survey of more than 5,000 employees showed that 29 percent described themselves as depressed as a result of the pandemic. Nearly 50 percent who work for an organization that offers a mental wellbeing program participated in it in 2020.

“Managers are in a unique role — the level of burden that managers and leaders are facing is significant right now,” Carolina Valencia, vice president in the Gartner HR practice, told Tech Republic.

“They are juggling the thoughts and feelings of their direct reports while also taking care of themselves.”

Gartner recommends employers equip workplace leaders with tools that support both them and their staffers.

But even before those tools are put in place, the daily reflection is a self-care exercise any workplace leader can start, as soon as tomorrow morning.