I have a question for every professional reading this: Do you consider yourself a leader?

If your answer to that was “No”, it might be time to re-think how you approach your job and your career.

There’s one practice that will add richness and depth to your work life, empower your team members and enhance your productivity and that of those around you. It can be developed and learned, and it’s cheap.

We’ve all heard of mindfulness and its benefits to health and wellbeing, but to me, mindfulness is most useful as a foundation for a truly productive habit that will be enormously beneficial to your career. I’m talking about embarking on the difficult but highly rewarding journey of creating the habit of reflection.

You may have heard the saying: “meetings are places where good ideas go to die”. I’d add that in the leadership development space, death by a thousand PowerPoint slides is a prevalent crime.

There is however a growing desire to revisit the way many organisations approach leadership development, and for good reason. The traditional ‘chalk-and-talk’ method, where participants sit for hours trying to absorb theoretical information, is often time wasted. Without practical coaching on how to apply learnings in the workplace, the knowledge doesn't always stick.

Nothing is more important to an organisation’s long-term health and success than choosing the right people to lead it. But without a reliable way to gauge leadership potential, too much is left to chance.

Assessing for the leadership capabilities your organisation most needs – using methods that are proven to predict performance outcomes – takes away much of the uncertainty. But too often companies fall short on the follow-through.