How small habits can transform your leadership style

I know I should meditate more. And that doing it – even for five minutes – would benefit me.

But, I say to myself… I don’t have the time. It seems too hard. I can always start tomorrow.

This is all a fairly accurate – if candid – view of how I really think about meditation.

Yet, the evidence of how it supports people’s wellbeing is clear. And my own experience – taken from long stretches of my life where I’ve practiced daily – further back this up.

Still, even doing five minutes a day just feels hard. Hard to remember to do it. Hard to find the motivation. And, according to my thinking in those moments, hard to find the time.

But it’s all rubbish. And a creative exercise in clever story telling to make peace with my inaction.

Yet, brushing my teeth – which takes five minutes given all the befores and afters – is something I do without thinking at all or without relying on any motivation. I just do it. And twice per day. And I’ve been doing it for decades.

What’s the difference then? Why does brushing my teeth for five minutes twice per day come so effortlessly when meditating doesn’t?

The answer is in the power of habits. Doing something regularly forms a habit. And the more habitual something is, the less motivation and mental effort required to do it. Eventually, these things just go on autopilot and we stop thinking about it and just keep doing it.

The same is true of small leadership acts.

Even the smallest act of leadership – the things we know we should do, but don’t do – can feel like a bridge too far. Even if it only takes five minutes. Even if we could carve it out of a morning’s procrastination without materially affecting anything. Even if all this is true, we still don’t do it.

That’s why we need to make small acts of leadership a daily habit.

When we first start, it’ll feel awkward and difficult. Or will require discipline and motivation.

But every time we do it, it will get a little bit easier. Until one day we don’t think about it anymore, and – just like brushing our teeth – we just do it without thinking.

Don’t know where to start? Try our Random Acts of Leadership card deck: it includes 52 actionable prompts that can be done in 15 minutes or less. They’re small actions with big impacts.

Order the card deck here.