Thoughtful Leadership
Reflection as a Force for Good
It wouldn’t be the new year at Culture Work HQ without carving out some time for reflection and resolution-setting.
Resolutions get a bad rap, but I’m a believer in them—not as unrealistic expectations or rigid rules, but as an opportunity to reflect, imagine, set intentions, and spark development.
Last January, I wrote about ways workplaces can support employees’ resolutions.
This year, I’m thinking about the ways reflective practice and resolution-setting can be done at broader levels.
We often think of resolutions as something an individual sets, but that’s not the only way. A couple, family, or friend group can also set resolutions. And so can a team or workplace.
For some, the new year on the Gregorian calendar is not the best time to do this—and that’s okay.
Still, building routine reflective practice and resolution-setting into our operations is essential to building healthier cultures.
Reflective Thinking
When you hear the term “reflection,” what do you think of?
For some, it may conjure thoughts of journaling, quiet time, or therapy sessions.
Reflection may feel like an unnecessary indulgence or uncomfortable process.
In the workplace, it may feel like there’s no time for it or it’s a pointless practice.
Here’s the thing about reflection: it’s a form of critical thinking about our experiences. It involves asking questions about our experiences to gain insight and inform future action.
And it’s essential to effective leadership and operations.
Valuing Reflection
Why am I such a strong advocate for reflection in life and at work?
I won’t delve into the details of childhood trauma that led me to value reflection and self-awareness as a form of abuse prevention, but let’s just say that if you’re a person dedicated to breaking generational cycles of trauma, self-reflection is non-negotiable.
And if you work with me, you know I don’t stop at thinking about these things on the individual level.
The more I learned about the dynamics of abuse through my work at a sexual assault center, the more I saw these dynamics play out at institutional and societal levels.
One of these patterns involves a lack of self-reflection and self-awareness.
As I’ve moved through my adult and professional life, I’ve repeatedly encountered institutions that are resistant to reflection around their culture and practices. Just as people may resist reflection to protect a fragile ego, far too many institutions mirror this behavior.
I want the institutions in my community and country to operate differently.
A person’s reflective practice can help them cultivate greater self-awareness and live in greater alignment with their values. Organizations can also operate with greater awareness and purpose when they normalize reflection as an organizational practice.
What are practical ways teams and workplaces can build cultures of reflection?
Below are some thoughts that may spark your own reflections (and action) in this area.
Embed reflection into systems.
Workplaces can incorporate reflective practice into operations in many ways:
Leaders can model reflective action by using regular assessments and mutual feedback loops to drive operational improvement.
Expectations of reflective practice can be included in values or codes of conduct. Staff can be acknowledged and rewarded for reflective thinking.
Reflection questions can be added to meeting agendas and performance evaluations.
Program evaluation can be done to authentically reflect, not just to check a box.
Embedding reflective practice into operations and using reflection to drive action strengthens the quality of culture and the work itself.
To this end, the genuine part is key. Many people can go through the motions without actually reflecting on a deeper level, but superficiality won’t cut it when it comes to building a culture of reflection.
Reflect on learning.
Training and other forms of education don’t automatically get applied to how we work. Much time, effort, and money gets wasted when we don’t build in processes for applying learning to operations.
Workplace learning can occur through many avenues: training, webinars, conferences, coaching, article discussions, and daily practice.
However training and learning happens in your workplace, dedicate time for teams to reflect on their learning and apply it in their work.
Reflect on feedback and criticism.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about challenges leaders face when coping with critical feedback. I also wrote about my work with teams to address conflict, where I invite people to get curious about what opportunities exist in conflict and what we can learn from it.
Like conflict, inviting feedback—including critical feedback—is an opportunity to learn, get curious, and go deeper to identify and address unmet needs on all sides.
Too many leaders neglect this opportunity. Organizations commonly conduct staff surveys as a cursory practice but stop at genuinely reflecting on the data.
However, recent research on workplace culture tells us that:
“People speak when it’s safe, when it matters, and when speaking leads to change. Culture isn’t built by soliciting feedback—it’s built by how leaders respond when that feedback is hard to hear.”
Pushing through discomfort and practicing reflection can make the difference between defensive and courageous leadership.
It’s worth asking: are our actions as leaders demonstrating more allegiance to our ego or to our organization’s values, mission, and people?
Designing data collection processes that include deep reflection and follow-through is necessary to building a culture of trust and growth. Viewing feedback as an opportunity to learn, being responsive to feedback, and using feedback to inform organizational development are practices of strong leaders.
Reflection is an avenue for healing, accountability, and growth. It’s critical to building fulfilling lives, relationships, and cultures. Genuine reflection is a force for good.
We hear a lot about thought leadership, but this year, how will we value thoughtful leadership?
What do you think about reflection in leadership?
What examples of thoughtful or reflective leadership do you see around you?
How do you embed reflection into your work?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Additional Reading
Ego Is the Enemy of Good Leadership
The Importance of Reflective Leadership in Business
The Use of Reflection as an Effective Leadership Practice
Why Self-Reflection Is Key in Great Leadership
Questions for team reflection:
What challenges did we face last year? When things went wrong, what did we learn?
What did we accomplish last year? What gave our work meaning?
Who or what are you grateful for?
What do we want to do less of in 2026? What do we want to maintain in the new year?
What resolutions do we want to set for working together in the coming year?
Whatever work-related stressors you want to let go of this year, Culture Work offers a range of services to guide you.
Want to get a better handle on emails? The Inbox Reset does just that.
Want to clarify how the work gets done? That’s what the Workflow Boost is for.
Want to build capacity for having difficult conversations? Conflict Confidence sessions can help.
Schedule a free and confidential consultation here—no strings attached.
Solid framing here. The distinction beween organizational ego and mission allegiance is so sharp and needed. I've noticed that the teams most resistant to reflection often have the loudest rhetoric about values, which tells you something about performative culture. Embeddign reflection into systems rather than treating it as optional feels like the only path to real accountability.