Closing the Year with Clarity: How Reflection Fuels Growth and Renewal

As the calendar winds down, many of us are eager to plan for the year ahead. But before racing into new resolutions, it’s worth taking time to pause and reflect. Reflection is more than looking back—it’s about uncovering meaning, celebrating progress, and creating the clarity we need to move forward with intention.

By definition, reflection is a deliberate act of stepping back to examine our beliefs, behaviors, and choices. It transforms everyday experiences into lessons. Without this pause, our days can blur together, and opportunities for learning slip away. With it, we build awareness, strengthen resilience, and cultivate growth.

Why Year-End Reflection Matters

Reflection isn’t just a “nice-to-do.” It is one of the most powerful tools for personal and professional development. Experiences alone don’t guarantee growth; it’s the act of questioning, analyzing, and learning from those experiences that makes them meaningful.

For leaders especially, reflection helps sharpen essential skills—decision-making, empathy, communication, and adaptability. In a world that prizes quick responses, it’s easy to forget that slowing down actually strengthens our ability to lead with purpose. Without time for reflection, we risk burning out, missing opportunities, or repeating the same mistakes.

A Framework for Reflection

You don’t need a complicated system to reflect effectively. Try this simple rhythm:

• Pause: Step back from the day-to-day rush.
• Observe: Look at the events, patterns, and emotions that stood out.
• Listen: Pay attention to the inner voice that points you toward your values.
• Decide: Identify adjustments or commitments to carry forward.

Think of it as a personal version of continuous improvement—pause, learn, and adapt.

Five Practices to Deepen Reflection

To make reflection stick, consistency matters. Here are five practices that can enhance your year-end review—and carry into the new year:

1. Practice radical honesty. Acknowledge both your wins and your struggles.
2. Spot your patterns. Identify habits that serve you—and those that hold you back.
3. Anchor in values. Clarify what truly matters so your goals align with your priorities.
4. Extend grace. Change takes time; treat mistakes as learning, not failure.
5. Capture your thoughts. Use a journal, notes app, or spreadsheet to document lessons and progress.

Questions Worth Asking Yourself

To focus your reflection, consider these prompts:

• What mattered most to me this year?
• Did my choices reflect my values?
• Where did I grow the most, and where do I still need work?
• How did I care for my health, energy, and relationships?
• What did I learn about myself this year?

Simple Ways to Build Reflection Into Your Life

Reflection doesn’t have to wait until December. Small, consistent practices are often more powerful than one long annual review. You might:

• Keep a weekly reflection journal.
• Spend time outdoors without distractions.
• Use a few minutes before bed to replay the day.
• Hold a weekly check-in with yourself—set goals Monday, review Friday.

These habits create space for incremental progress and give you regular opportunities to reset.

Moving Forward With Intention

Reflection isn’t about perfection or tallying every success. It’s about honoring the progress you made, learning from what didn’t work, and carrying those lessons forward. Even partial progress is meaningful. Every step counts.

As this year comes to a close, give yourself permission to pause. Brew a cup of coffee, open a journal, or simply sit quietly and ask: What did this year teach me? The clarity you gain may be the most valuable gift you carry into the new year.

3 Leadership Tips from Executive Coach Michael King to Start the New Year Strong

As we prepare to turn the page into a new year, leaders everywhere are reflecting on how to create clarity, build stronger teams, and drive meaningful progress. Executive coach Michael King—founder of TEAMS. Coach and host of The Level Up Leader podcast—offers powerful guidance that pairs naturally with Lean leadership principles. His message: leadership success in the coming year won’t come from doing more, but from leading with greater intention, alignment, and authenticity.

Here are three of Michael King’s top tips for leaders heading into the new year, along with how they connect to Lean and continuous improvement.

1. Lead with Clarity of Vision and Identity

King consistently emphasizes that leadership begins with clarity—clarity of purpose, of goals, and most importantly, of identity. Leaders must ask: What do I stand for? What am I trying to create? Why does this matter? Without clarity, teams operate in a haze, and improvement stalls.

This directly supports Lean’s focus on true north thinking. When vision is crisp and goals are well-defined, it becomes easier to align people, eliminate wasteful distractions, and create processes that support what truly matters. As King says, clarity cuts through chaos—and in Lean, clarity is what empowers teams to solve problems at the source.

2. Use the Power of “Nope” to Protect Focus and Flow

One of King’s signature messages is the strategic power of saying “No.” Not negativity—alignment. Leaders often create their own bottlenecks by saying yes to everything. Instead, King encourages leaders to protect their energy and focus by declining tasks, requests, or opportunities that don’t support their mission.

This is Lean thinking in action. We can’t eliminate waste if we’re constantly piling on more work, more priorities, and more noise. The ability to say “no” preserves capacity for improvement, protects the team from burnout, and ensures that leaders spend their time on the vital few rather than the trivial many.

3. Turn Failure into Fuel for Growth

King teaches that failure isn’t the end—it’s an accelerator. In his “Dreaming Through Failure” approach, he urges leaders to extract learning from setbacks, redesign their systems, and keep moving forward with resilience. Failure becomes fuel.

This mirrors Lean’s belief that problems are treasures. Setbacks reveal gaps, illuminate process breakdowns, and surface improvement opportunities that would otherwise stay hidden. Leaders who frame failure as learning—not loss—create a culture of psychological safety where experimentation, problem-solving, and continuous improvement can thrive.

Starting the New Year with Intention

Whether you’re a frontline supervisor or a senior executive, these principles offer a strong foundation for the year ahead. Lead with clarity. Protect what matters most. Turn challenges into catalysts. When leaders model these behaviors, teams follow—and organizations unlock the conditions for continuous improvement.

How to Set Team Goals that Drive Success

Most managers know how important it is to set goals for themselves and their teams. Without some form of direction, teams will meander and just deal with the urgent things that crop up every day.

As leaders, the crucial task of team goal setting falls on your shoulders — it’s your responsibility to establish what needs to get done, what tasks to delegate to whom, and how to bring everyone together to meet every objective. 

When employees have a clear understanding of company objectives and how their work collectively contributes to reaching these, they become an aligned, motivated, and higher-performing workforce — exactly what drives business success. 

With goals to aim for, teams work together to attain something that psychologists call ‘subliminal directives. That is, they have a direction to take that they don’t have to think too deeply about…it just becomes a natural tour-de-force. 

But how should these goals be set? Here are some tips to ensure they are inspiring for the team: 

Few in number: This focuses the mind, so people aren’t pulled in all directions 

Stretching: This makes people work smarter and takes their thinking ‘out of the box’ 

Focused on outcomes: This ensures results are focused on, not activities 

Captivating: They make people desire the outcomes, hence putting more discretionary energy into them 

Valuable: Goals are seen as important to all stakeholders inside and outside the team 

Aligned with values: They are seen as taking the team in the direction they wish to go 

Reduce silo mentality: Goals need collaboration and co-operation from people and teams outside the confines of the department 

These seven components help the team to buy-in to the concepts of teamwork, as they help them achieve and attain something of a higher nature than just doing a job. Relate goals to what will make the team feel successful about themselves, creating a willingness and desire to go out of their way to work smarter. 

The best goals are aimed at providing results that have a real meaning for team members, helping them on the direction towards the vision and mission of the department or organization. That’s a powerful reason why people should be wanting to achieve the goals you set. 

By implementing these tips, teams can enhance performance, foster collaboration, and maintain motivation and engagement. Remember, the journey to achieving successful team goals is continuous and requires dedication, adaptability, and a supportive environment. 

Achieve More with WHYSMART Goals

Many people are effective at setting goals but not as many people are effective at accomplishing their goals. It’s important to set goals, but the step that many may miss is the ability to develop the detailed plan needed to achieve the goal. Goals, whether personal or professional, need to be written, harmonious, yours, specific, measurable, attainable, realistically high, and time bound. 

Many of us spend a considerable amount of time and effort when planning for a vacation. We will figure out exactly where we want to go and what type of things we want to do while we are there. We’ll make reservations, schedule appointments, and prepare a list of all of the appropriate things we need to pack. This planning is usually very detailed, somewhat tedious, and time consuming. But because we want the trip to be hassle free we will plan these occasional trips right down to the very last detail. 

When you think about your life, your daily journey, how well do you plan and organize it? Your life’s journey is the MOST important trip you will ever take. Why is it that we spend so little time planning our lives? Many of us have little or no idea where we are going! 

It’s important that as you dream about the things you want in life that you set up some criteria to make sure that those dreams come to fruition. 

Your goals will provide direction and motivation and serve as tools for measuring your results. For maximum effectiveness and accomplishment, make sure your goals meet the criteria of WHYSMART. These goal-setting guidelines will help you stay on target as you continually work on the accomplishment of your goals. 

Your goals must be: 

WRITTEN 

Put your goals in writing to help ensure that they are clear and specific. As the W represents in WHYSMART, writing down your goals forces you to clarify your thoughts. Written goals have permanence that promotes accurate, sustained action. 

Do you want to dramatically increase the likelihood of meeting your goals? One of the simplest yet most powerful actions you can take is to write them down. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of everyday life that it then becomes all too easy to forget about your goals. I think the saying is, “When you are up to your rear-end in alligators, it’s easy to forget that your original intention was to drain the swamp.” 

Put your goals down on paper. Keep them where you will see them every day. Doing this will prevent you from saying around this time next year, “Oh yeah, I remember those …” 

HARMONIOUS 

Harmonize your goals with your personal vision and purpose in addition to your other goals, so that all elements of your plan are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Unaligned goals pull you in different directions, hampering productivity and creating tensions. 

YOURS 

You will be most motivated to achieve goals that reflect your important personal desires and values. Resist the urge to conform to the expectations of others. If your goals are not your own, you can’t own them. Be aware of what motivates you and tailor your goals to fit your personality. 

SPECIFIC 

Vague goals cause confusion and frustration. In order to provide clear direction and strong motivation, make your goals specific. Stating your goals positively will help create the mental picture of you doing what you want to do. 

MEASURABLE 

Measurable goals provide benchmarks for gauging progress and evaluating performance. Attaining annual sales of 4 million dollars is a measurable goal; developing a goal of increased sales is vague and not at all measurable. Go out to dinner once a week with my spouse is measurable goal; however, spend more time with my spouse is not. Goals that are not measurable lack direction, value for motivation, and celebration. If they are not measurable, it is impossible to know when and if you have achieved them. 

ATTAINABLE 

Attainable goals spark excitement and action. Goals that are beyond reach produce frustration and discouragement. Attainable goals should also provide a challenge, so the rewards remain worth the effort. 

REALISTICALLY HIGH AND RESULTS ORIENTED 

Challenging goals stimulate creativity and commitment. Goals that are set too low result in underachievement and apathy. Be clear about the end result your goal is designed to accomplish and focus on results, not just the necessary activity. 

TIME BOUND 

Dates for accomplishment are critical for planning, decision making, operational coordination, and evaluation. Goals that do not specify target dates have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle of business and life. “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” – Diana Scharf Hunt 

If you do not set “achievement dates” for your goals, you’ll get caught in the trap of “someday.” As in, “Someday, I’ll do that.” 

Take a look at your calendar. You will find: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. What you will not find is Someday. So not only does someday never come, but it also doesn’t exist! 

WHYSMART is an excellent criterion to make sure that you are maximizing the goal setting process to your professional and personal advantage. Make sure that all of your goals, tangible and intangible as well as short or long-term, are evaluated against WHYSMART, and you will see a distinct difference in your ability to accomplish anything you desire.

 

7 Steps to Realize Your New Year’s Resolutions in 2025

Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, hoping to spark positive change. The recurring themes each year include a more active approach to health and fitness, improved finances, and learning new things for personal and professional development. 

Making resolutions, or goal setting, is like having your own personal cheerleader, rooting for you to succeed! When you set goals, you're making a promise to yourself and your dreams. It's all about being accountable and taking ownership of your actions. With goals in place, you create a structure that keeps you on track and motivated. 

Deadlines and milestones become your trusty sidekicks, reminding you to stay focused and disciplined. By sticking to your plan and putting in the effort day in and day out, you develop habits that pave the way for your growth and success, whether it's in your career or personal life. 

Despite the best of intentions, once the glow of a fresh new year wears off, many people struggle to make good on their plans. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 46% of people who made New Year’s resolutions were successful. That means over half of the people who set a goal for the new year will fail! 

Naturally, we don’t want to be in the camp of folks who fail to achieve their aspirations and dreams for 2024, so we’ve put together an exhaustive plan for following through on your resolution. 

If you want to realize your New Year’s resolution this year, follow these 7 steps: 

1. Mentally prepare for change 

Changing ingrained habits is no easy task, so before diving head-first into your New Year goals, it is important to take a step back and get ready for that impending change. 

The first breakthrough in change is taking a personal inventory. Being that it’s the end of one year and the beginning of the next, it’s perfect timing to take stock of the past year’s accomplishments. Think about the following: 

1. What did I set out to do in the past year? 

2. Where did I make progress? 

3. Where didn’t I see progress? 

Naturally, your resolution may focus on areas that lack progress, but don’t forget to savor the progress made and find some small way to celebrate. Those happy feelings are useful! If possible, try to associate them with an object or word related to your accomplishment. 

You will want to keep upbeat with your new resolution, so you can use that positive association with last year’s accomplishments to remind you of those good feelings when you are feeling challenged. 

As you start thinking about the changes you want to implement, make sure to do the following: 

• Stay positive 

• Try not to make big/quick changes 

• Change should be gradual 

• Build on smaller changes 

• Allow a little room for error 

2. Set a goal that motivates you 

You would be surprised how often people set goals that are not for themselves. These goals could be dictated to or coerced by a manager, spouse, or parental / peer pressure. 

While it’s nice to have some external support, if you don’t share the same passion, the resolution has a small chance of succeeding and could even be dead on arrival. 

To do this, you need to make sure the goal you set is important to you and only you and that there is value or benefit for you in achieving the goal. It is these two things that will provide the reason and willingness to take action. This is also known as motivation! 

Thus, it’s a safe bet if your resolutions align with the following: 

• Your goals 

• Your priorities 

• Your dreams 

• Your aspirations 

Not only should you align around your innermost desires, but you should also make sure the resolutions align with your top priorities. This will lead to a “must do” attitude. 

If your goals are career-centric creating your own professional development plan is a great way to stay motivated on the path toward your goal. 

3. Limit resolutions to a manageable amount 

A common mistake in resolution-setting is having too many and spreading yourself too thin. We all want to learn 25 different languages, 15 new job skills, and eliminate 5 bad habits, but we are not superheroes. We only have so much attention span we can dedicate to self-improvement, so having too many resolutions is a great way not to achieve the many goals you have set out for yourself. 

Thus, you should make a short list of resolutions that you can manage in the upcoming year. Knowing that short list of priorities is the hard part. The key here is understanding how to prioritize. 

Here is an exercise that you can undertake to help you figure out what is most important in your life. All you need is a post-it pad, a pen, and a wall. 

1. Write anything you want to accomplish for self-improvement purposes on a post-it 

2. Each post-it only gets one discreet tactic 

3. Place each post-it on the wall 

4. Go crazy - use as many post-its as possible 

5. Group together similar post-its 

6. Place the topics you feel strongly about at the top of the wall 

7. Put the topics you feel “meh” about on the bottom 

8. Spend a lot of time thinking about the order of the first 3-5 post-it (groups) 

As you might suspect, #8 is the most time-consuming because it will determine what resolutions you are going to take on this year. 

The final piece of the puzzle here is knowing your limitations and personal bandwidth. With that in mind, you should focus on your top priorities while balancing how much attention you can honestly devote to a resolution. 

Final thought: It’s better to tackle one resolution well than multiple resolutions poorly. 

4. Be specific 

When it comes to setting resolutions, it’s easy to set bad goals that could lead to poor follow-through. Fortunately, the SMART goal-setting framework can help you craft better goals. 

SMART goals are: 

• Specific - Articulate the resolution as clearly as possible. For example, quitting smoking is better than being healthy. While “being healthy” is great, the wording can be interpreted in many ways.   

• Measurable - Quantify your resolution if possible, i.e., I will lose 10% of my body weight. 

• Attainable - Choose a goal within the realm of possibility yet challenging. Making 100 friends this year would be amazing but probably pretty hard to do. On the other, making 10 new friends is doable. 

• Relevant - Keep it relevant to your priorities and goals. See the motivation section above! 

• Time-sensitive - Give yourself a time frame in which to achieve a goal. A deadline will instill some urgency and provide a time when you can celebrate your success. 

Bottom of Form 

5. Break up big goals into smaller goals 

A lot of us tend to be over-eager and grandiose when it comes to resolutions. We have the best of intentions and may accidentally take on a goal that is too big to achieve. Thus, it’s helpful to divide a big goal into smaller goals that are more achievable. 

Now chunking up a big goal is easier said than done. Here are a few tips to help you make your massive goal more achievable: 

• Create a list of sub-tasks 

• Prioritize and order them 

• Use a visual map to display 

• Assign milestones to each task 

• Decide how much time each task requires 

• Allocate resources accordingly 

• Focus on the next step, not the big goal 

 

6. Review your resolution regularly 

Let’s face it, if you are not thinking about your resolution regularly, you are not going to follow through. Thus, a crucial part of realizing your goal is a regular review. 

At a minimum, this review should be monthly, but the more frequent, the better. 

Here’s one way to build goal review into your routine. 

1. Schedule a monthly “big picture” review during the first week of each month. This will serve as a planning meeting where you distribute smaller tasks and goals to different weeks throughout the month. 

2. Do a weekly check-in to check progress on the monthly goal. 

3. Set a daily reminder for smaller resolution tasks. 

It may seem a little crazy to think about your resolution every single day, but it is those smaller incremental steps that lead to massive changes over the course of a single year. 

7. If you fall off track, get back on quick 

Rome was not built in a day. 

We’ve established it will take time for your resolution to become a reality, and we know change is difficult. In fact, we’ve already established we should leave some room for mistakes and setbacks. 

Keep the following ideas in mind: 

• Skipping an intermediate task is not a complete failure 

• Missing a goal by 10% or even 80% is not a complete failure 

• Finishing a task late is not a complete failure 

• A moment of weakness is meaningless in the grand scheme of things 

Setbacks can happen, but so long as they are handled correctly, they will not impact the big goal. The key is to avoid a defeatist attitude at all costs, i.e., “Well, I screwed up once, why should I even try to do this anymore.” 

And if there is a setback, it’s important to understand what led to that moment and how you can avoid a similar situation in the future, i.e., "If I play video games after work, I will not go to the gym. Don’t play video games after work!" 

Once a mistake is made, own it and move on to the next thing. For example, if you skipped a study session, make it up tomorrow, and keep on moving. A few small mistakes shouldn’t spoil your resolution for the year! 

Remember, you can’t keep your New Year’s resolutions without persistence. The journey toward improvement is not a sprint but a marathon, and with the right mindset and preparation, you can turn your resolutions into permanent habits. Your chance of success will skyrocket if you can successfully turn your resolutions into lasting habits. Embrace the opportunity for growth. Let’s be different this year. 

A Fresh Start: 7 Tips for Making the Most of the New Year

At the end of each year, I set aside a little time to reflect on the past year, clear mental and physical clutter, and set some juicy new goals for the year ahead. I love the beginning of a new year because it offers the chance to start fresh and give some new energy to the parts in your life that need a little love and attention. 5 tips to kickstart your new year coming right up…

Reflect and celebrate.

Take time to mentally review the past year. What do you wish you had done differently that you can change next year? Maybe you spend way more time on your phone than you’d like (my hand is up!), or got sucked into the endless news cycle, or didn’t spend as much time as you’d like on the things you value most. It’s human nature to want to focus on setbacks, disappointments, and challenges, so after I’ve grieved any losses, and clarified where I’d like to improve, I make sure to write down what I’m really proud of. Even during the most challenging years, we can all find bright spots if we look for them.

Celebrate your own personal triumphs. What are you proud of? What did you accomplish in spite of the many challenges of the past year? Jot down all of your large and small victories and celebrate your accomplishments of all sizes.

Declutter your life.

There’s never a bad time to declutter, but the new year is a great motivator to get rid of the stuff that is no longer serving you. There are various things you can declutter from your life for a fresh start to the new year.

Decluttering your physical space can help you enter the new year with renewed focus, clarity, and awareness. It can encourage creativity and critical thinking, making it easier to tackle new projects, pick up new hobbies or revisit old ones.

And it can even improve your physical health, eliminating hiding places for dust and dirt that can exacerbate allergies and other conditions.

While your physical space might be the most obvious one to declutter, it isn’t the only thing you should consider.

Decluttering your digital space can also work wonders on your mental well-being.

Reflect on the progress you made over the last year – and the goals you didn’t achieve.

Looking back on all you’ve accomplished – and what you didn’t – is a great first step to take when giving yourself a fresh start.

While it may not be pleasant, it’s a good idea to recognize where things didn’t go the way you wanted. You shouldn’t approach this with a mindset of failure; instead, it’s important to focus on the opportunity for growth.

Not only will this give you some inspiration for what you might want to focus on in the year ahead, but understanding how you fell short can help you make the adjustments needed to thrive in the new year.

It’s even more important to celebrate your wins – little or big. What good things happened during the year? Did you move states, buy a house, or change your job? Start a new relationship – or step away from one that was toxic?

Material or not, these wins are worth recognizing and reflecting upon. It’s a great way to give yourself some positive momentum as you move into the new year, ready to tackle a whole new set of goals, changes, and challenges.

Pick a theme to focus your energy on in the new year.

Try picking a theme or a word to focus your energy on for the new year that resonates with your personal and specific goals, values, and priorities. Visualize what you want to create, and hone in on how you want to feel. Popular options include: simplicity, abundance, wellness, creativity, connection, and ease. This word or theme can serve as a guide as you make decisions in the new year. When faced with a decision you can ask yourself, “Does this contribute to my feeling of (your word or theme here)?”

Set some specific goals for the year ahead.

While vulnerable and scary, when I write down and share my big goals, I feel much more committed to making them happen. If goal setting for an entire year feels daunting, try setting smaller goals for the first quarter of the year. Three months is a good chunk of time to set some brave goals, and to make a lot of progress towards achieving them. Ask yourself what you want to be different in your life by the end of 2025. What do you want to do or accomplish? How do you want to feel? What do you want to contribute? What specific and measurable things will you need to do to get there?

Identify meaningful steps you can take to achieve those goals.

If you’re committed to making your dreams and goals become a reality, it is imperative that you break down each big goal into tiny micro steps, and schedule each step in your actual calendar. You can make sure that your calendar supports your priorities and goals by scheduling not only professional commitments, but also social plans, time off, self care, spiritual practices, and exercise. Sometimes I block out an hour on my calendar that literally says “Focus Time.” When it comes to goals and habits, it’s also helpful to commit to a minimum baseline you will commit to – even on your hardest day. This is how I started working out everyday after years of failing.

Give yourself some grace.

Changing old habits and routines is easier said than done.

While the new year might be a great motivator for making big changes, shifting your outlook, and setting new goals, it’s important to recognize that it’s hard to change everything overnight.

Keep this in mind as you approach the new year and give yourself grace if you slip up or stumble. Resist taking an all-or-nothing approach as you work towards your goals.

Give yourself a break and let it be ok to have an off day or two. Recognize what happened and refocus on what you want to achieve to help yourself get back on track.

Continue taking small steps toward your goals and don’t give up. Failure only occurs when you decide to stop trying. Every day can be a fresh start and a chance for a new beginning.