The best question for a Monday morning

Ask yourself this to change your perspective on the week

Welcome to the Monday Mojo email, where I hope to set you up for a productive week in leadership, with supportive yet challenging insight and questions, based on my coaching approach.

This week’s email is short and sweet. What I’m about to ask you to do will take you 10 minutes, and it can be done at your desk or out in the field, on the walk or transport to work. Or even over breakfast or a shower.

But I promise you it will change the way you view your upcoming week. You might be facing down a challenging week for one reason or another, or preparing for a big event, or just dealing with the typical ebb and flow of life as a leader. I don’t know what you have in your diary or on your calendar.

What I do know is this.

That what you think this week is going to look like, is almost certainly not what it will turn out to be.

And this can be a good thing. Part of the skill of transitioning to leadership is learning how to let go of rigidity and perfect schedules, and embracing the flow of events that will inevitably happen (sometime without rhyme or reason) in any modern organisation.

One of my favourite new Substack writers, Molly Graham, wrote about this in an article about calendar management for execs and founders. She calls it “chaos time” and it’s a really apt title. It will happen!

As Molly says, “time is emphasis”. Where you put your time and attention matters. But that emphasis may need to shift in tune with the organisational need. And yet, you still need to lead. You can’t just abdicate that role because it’s a busy week. Leadership is a constant.

So my question for you this Monday morning is this: