The 10 Most Important Questions About Your Leadership In 2020

You’re almost at the end of what might have been one of the most important years in your entire career. After all, it isn’t often that you’re presented with nearly daily opportunities to grow, adapt, and change, and for many senior leaders, 2020 offered all that in unprecedented ways.  For that reason, before you usher in 2021, take advantage of the final weeks in December and set aside a few minutes to reflect on the year you’ve just had.

If you’re in the habit of conducting an annual year in review for yourself, you may typically rely on questions that focus on your accomplishments or what you wished you could have done differently over the past 12 months. Those are good areas to continue to reflect on while you consider a few new COVID-style questions to add to the mix:

• What was the most important thing I did to improve the performance of my organization in 2020?
• What are 2-3 specific ways that COVID helped me improve as a leader? 
• When I think about how I led my team during COVID, what do I wish I had done differently?
• What did COVID teach me about what I no longer need to spend time on or be concerned with?
• What did COVID highlight about the people I work with and the leaders I follow?
• What were the best decisions I made during COVID?
• Whom did I rely on most in 2020 and why?
• What did I notice about how I handled change over the past 12 months?
• How would others have described my leadership style over this past year?
• What mistakes did I make and how did I admit my mistakes in 2020?

One of my favorite quotes, and one we often use at Bates, comes from the late American philosopher John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” Nobody could have predicted the kind of year that 2020 turned out to be (except, maybe, Bill Gates), so before it comes to a close, take advantage of the fact that you’ve just experienced something extraordinary. Our most powerful experiences give us great insight into our values, our character, and who we are as people. The problem is that many of us are often too busy to take the time to reflect on our experiences in any meaningful way.

As the year winds down, take time to appreciate everything you’ve had to navigate over the past year and use the questions written above to do something we hardly ever get to do as much as we’d like: Reflect and think.