Daily review

When was the last time you’ve reviewed all the good and bad actions of your day?

It’s probably been a while, huh?

And yet, this is the secret sauce of the best leaders in any field. Dwight Eisenhower and Benjamin Franklin are just two famous examples of leaders who’ve used this strategy to improve themselves.

The reason why it’s so powerful, is that this daily review makes you become more self-aware. What better way to know yourself, than to know how you screwed up. Every single day.

Self-awareness is the key. You need to be able to discern for yourself what are your strengths and weaknesses. And how best can you lead your team. For example: if you need to deliver feedback to your team and you’ve been procrastinating for days, then you know that you need to get better at this skill. ASAP. This kind of clarity only shows up when you examine your day in detail. Your faults have nowhere to hide.

Now you’ve probably been avoiding this daily review session because of the pain. It is painful to look at your daily mistakes and not become despondent as a leader. True.

But it’s also painful to discover that you directly were sabotaging your team’s success. Because you were blind to your flaws. You wouldn’t let a blind person lead you anywhere. So why would you do that to your team?

Make the daily review your top priority. It’s the smartest thing you can do for your team.