At today's New York Times, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, founder and chief executive of Care.com, reflects on a lesson she learned from an executive coach after she became a vice president at a firm.
Q. So what did you learn from the executive coach?
A. The first thing she gave me advice on, and I give it to everybody, is to journal. Write things down. When you come out of a meeting, or you come out of an interview, or you just finished running a session, what’s on your mind? How did it make you feel? How did you make people feel? What’s going on? Again, it was raising my self-awareness around my management style. I think that was critical.
I haven't often seen the need for self-knowledge and reflection in leaders acknowledged so directly.