The Art of Reflection

Sheila Lirio Marcelo is founder and CEO of Care.com. Her firm helps people find health care, child care and other services. She discusses several leadership lessons learned from a mentoring coach that she had the opportunity to work with:

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 an interview, or you just finished running a session, what's on your mind? How did it make you feel? Again, it was raising my self-awareness around my management style. I think it was critical.

And then she taught me about meditation. It's about how you talk to yourself. And it's getting to know yourself. It's learning to kind of manage my mind and create the stability. You wouldn't think an executive coach would provide that, but at a young age when I was a V.P., it was the most valuable piece of advice I got.

Engineering and "self-awareness" - - words one typically never sees in the same sentence, probably the same book. But reflecting is an important element of the management and leadership process. In fact, self-reflection is one of the great gifts a person can have (the ability to see things as they are, without blinders, is an even greater one). Reflecting on the past typically takes a backseat to looking ahead - - while attempting to contemplate the future gets foreclosed on by pressing events in the present. Like Thoreau - - find yourself a "Walden Zone." Someplace offline and completely disconnected - - a place that you feel comfortable thinking and writing.