July 4, 2026

Read Time - 4 minutes

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” ~ John Dewey

There’s a simple cycle behind almost everyone who gets better at what they do. It has three parts.

Practice. Feedback. Reflection.

Practice is the doing. Feedback is the input from outside. Reflection is the part in between: the deliberate pause to ask what to change in our practice next time.

Here’s what’s easy to miss. In higher ed, the first two are baked in.

Leadership is a practice, and we carry it out every single day. The meetings we run. The tone of our emails. How we collect information and make decisions. That’s practice, whether we call it that or not.

Feedback arrives too, if unevenly. The annual review. The faculty survey. The occasional hard conversation. Not as often as we’d like, but it comes.

The third piece is the one most leaders skip. Reflection is on us, and it’s easy to let it slide.

That’s why a person can lead for ten years and barely improve. The part that turns experience into growth simply never gets exercised.

The research on this is blunt. In a field study by researchers at Harvard Business School, employees who spent just 15 minutes at the end of each day reflecting on what they’d learned performed 23% better on their final assessments than those who skipped it. Same training. Same hours on the clock. The only difference was the reflection. It worked as a multiplier, not extra work.

I learned this long before I ever led anything. Before higher ed, I spent years in music conservatories. Practice was constant. Feedback was everywhere: teachers, juries, audition panels, the audience itself. And still, the students who pulled ahead were not always the ones who practiced the most. They were the ones who stopped to reflect on what to do differently the next day. The rest logged their hours and stayed about the same.

Practice and feedback keep us busy. Reflection is what makes us better.

Why This Matters

It’s entirely possible to do something every day for years and not get better at it.

Think of a faculty member teaching the same course for a decade. Same lecture notes, same assignments, same exams, no adjusting to feedback or the changing needs of students. They’ve gotten efficient at delivering the course, but no more effective at teaching it. The reps pile up. The skill stays flat.

That’s leadership without reflection. Busy, experienced, and stuck.

And if we don’t protect that reflection time, the urgent will always win.

Making Reflection a Non-Negotiable

If you’re already busy, blocking time to think might feel impossible. But the truth is, reflection saves time. It keeps you from solving the same problems twice, from holding the same unproductive conversations, and from reacting to every fire instead of preventing some altogether.

Here’s how you can make reflection one of your weekly non-negotiables:

1. Time-Block Your Thinking

Protect at least one uninterrupted block each week for nothing but thinking, journaling, or reviewing your week: your leadership wins and challenges. Treat it like your most important meeting, and keep it.

2. Ask a Weekly Learning Question

Pick a few questions to guide your reflection:

• What did this week teach me that I didn't know on Monday?

• What did I avoid this week, and what is the avoidance costing me?

• Where did I step in when I should have let someone else lead?

• Did my calendar this week reflect what I say matters most?

3. Pair Reflection with Feedback

Schedule regular check-ins with a trusted colleague, coach, or mentor. Share your reflections and invite theirs. Growth accelerates when reflection is paired with outside perspective.

4. Put It in Writing

Reflection that stays in your head tends to evaporate. The leaders who actually improve write it down, even a few lines. That’s exactly what the Harvard study measured: 15 minutes of written reflection at the end of the day. The writing is what forces the thinking to finish.

Bottom Line

Reflection is not just about avoiding mistakes. It’s about learning on purpose.

Without it, you risk running harder each year without getting better. With it, you build a kind of leadership compound interest: small insights, consistently applied, that transform the way you work.

Progress in leadership rarely comes from one big moment. It’s built in the quiet, protected spaces when you stop, think, and learn. Make that time a non-negotiable, and the months ahead won’t just be busy. They’ll be the start of getting better on purpose.

Try This Before Friday

Block 30 minutes on your calendar this week for leadership reflection. Bring at least one question from above to answer. Treat it as sacred time.

Thanks for reading. Until next week.

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