Leadership Horizons

The Power of Remembrance

• Lois Burton • Episode 38

Share episode

Most leaders can recite every misstep but struggle to name what they did right. That imbalance isn’t a personal flaw; it’s the brain’s negativity bias. We dig into how that bias distorts self-perception and culture, and we offer a practical, repeatable way to rebalance your attention so you can lead with clarity and confidence. 

Lois shares her path through 25 years of leadership coaching, including lessons from early mentors who shaped her belief that real growth depends on what we remember. 

Using the lens of remembrance, we explore why focusing only on mistakes creates a skewed narrative, how it erodes resilience, and why teams mirror the leader’s attention. 

Then we get tactical: a three-question journaling practice that takes ten minutes, turns reflection into action, and builds an evidence base you can revisit when doubt creeps in. 

You’ll learn how to capture specific wins, examine challenges without self-criticism, and translate insights into next steps.

We also map the payoff of journaling over time: clearer success patterns, stronger decision-making, and a culture that celebrates progress while addressing gaps. 

Expect concrete examples of phrasing entries, a weekly review ritual to surface themes, and guidance for using your notes in coaching, performance conversations, and strategic planning. 

If you’re ready to move from replaying problems to replicating what works, this conversation will equip you with a simple tool to shift your leadership trajectory.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with a colleague, and leave a quick review to help more leaders build strengths-based habits. Tell us: what win will you write down tonight?

Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Horizon. I'm Lois Burton and I'm so glad you're here today. Before we dive into today's topic, I first of all want to thank everyone who's been sending in their leadership questions for my special question and answer session, which will be going out on the 26th of November. It's brilliant to hear from so many of you, and there's some really great questions coming in, so I'm so looking forward to that session. If you haven't submitted a question yet, it's not too late. So if you've got a question you would like to submit, just email me on Lois at LoisBurtonOnline.com or contact me via DM on LinkedIn. There will also be some more reminder posts going out on LinkedIn and via the email. So please jump in if you have a question. I really want to hear from you. So today's topic. And for context, I want to share a little bit about my journey into leadership coaching because it's shaped everything I believe about how leaders learn and grow. My career in leadership development has spanned over 25 years now, and I've been privileged to accrue over 30,000 hours of individual coaching and more than 5,500 hours of team coaching. But here's what I find most meaningful. In the early days, I had the extraordinary opportunity to work alongside some of the pioneers of coaching in the UK, including the late Sir John Whitmore, author of Coaching for Performance, and Peter Blocker, first chair and co-founder of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. Working with these pioneers taught me something fundamental. Leadership isn't just about where you are, it's about where you're going and crucially how well you learn from where you've been. And that's exactly what we're exploring today. Tuesday was Remembrance Day here in the UK, and I've been thinking deeply about that powerful phrase that we're here a lot at this time of year, lest we forget. Yesterday, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, millions of people posed to remember, to honour sacrifice, and to ensure that the lessons of history aren't lost. And it struck me this act of remembrance isn't just about honouring the past, it's about learning from it. It's about ensuring that what we've experienced shapes who we become. But here's the thing I see consistently in my work with senior leaders and executive teams. We're often remarkably poor and remembering and learning from our own leadership journey. Let me explain what I mean. Our brains, remarkable as they are, come with some interesting wiring. And one of the most powerful patterns is what neuroscientists call the negativity bias. Here's what this means: our brains are actually hardwired to pay more attention to what went wrong than what went right. Think about it for a moment. You deliver a presentation to your board. Nine people give you positive feedback, one person offers a criticism. Which comment keeps you awake that night? For most of us, it's that single criticism. That's the negativity bias at work. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Our ancestors who played close attention to threats, the rustle in the bushes that might be a predator, were the ones who survived. So we're descended from the worriers, not the optimists. But in leadership, this bias can become a significant problem. Over my years of coaching, I've worked with CEOs, managing directors, and senior leaders who can give me a detailed forensic analysis of every mistake they've ever made, every project that didn't go to plan, every difficult conversation that went sideways. But when I asked them, tell me about your successes, what did you do brilliantly this quarter? What works exceptionally well, they often struggle. It's not that the successes didn't happen, it's that we haven't paid attention to them. We haven't remembered them. Lest we forget, indeed. Here's what happens when leaders only learn from what went wrong. First, you start to see yourself through a distorted lens. Your self-perception becomes skewed toward your weaknesses rather than your strengths. And this matters because authentic, confident leadership, the kind that builds extraordinary teams and resilient organizations, requires you to know and leverage your strengths as well as what has challenged you. Secondly, you miss the patterns of your success. You can't replicate what you don't recognize. If we're not studying what works, we're constantly reinventing the wheel, never building on our proven capabilities. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, you model this pattern for your team. If you're always focused on problems and failures, your team learns to do the same. You create a culture of what's wrong rather than what's possible. But there is another way, because we can retrain our dream, our brains. And it starts with a practice that's both ancient and remarkably powerful: journaling. Now, before some of you switch off thinking this sounds too soft for serious leadership, let me share something. In all my work with both leaders and coaches, I've seen the most sceptical, analytically minded people become converts to this practice. Very recently, it's a practice I've introduced with my current Leading with Resilience cohort. And though, and although a few people said at the beginning they had resistance to the practice, everyone is now fully engaged with journaling. Why? Because it works. Here's what I recommend to the leaders I work with and what I practice myself. At the end of each day, or at least at the end of each week, spend just 10 minutes with three questions. Firstly, what went well? What am I proud of? Not what was perfect, not what received applause, but what genuinely went well. Maybe it was how you handled a difficult conversation. Maybe it was a decision you made under pressure. Maybe it was simply that you stayed calm when chaos erupted around you. Write it down, be specific. Don't just write good meeting. Write, I asked Sarah the question that unlocked the whole team's thinking. Or I stayed curious instead of defensive when challenged about the budget. Second question. What challenged me? What didn't go as I'd hoped? Yes, we do need to look at this too, because we don't want to just be Pollyanna-ish, unrealistically positive. But notice we're doing this second, not first. And we're asking it alongside success, not instead of success. Be honest here, but also be curious rather than critical. This isn't about beating yourself up, it's about learning. Third question: what did I learn? What will I do differently, or what will I do more of? This is where reflection becomes action. This is where the past shapes the future. And here's the really powerful part of journaling that many people miss. Regular journaling creates the record you can return to. It builds an evidence base of your growth, your patterns, your evolution as a leader. I can't tell you how many times I've had a coach he say to me, I feel like I'm not making any progress. And then we look back at their journal entries from three months ago, six months ago, and the growth is undeniable. You can see where you were struggling with delegation, and now you're building a high-performing team. You can see where you were uncertain about your strategic thinking, and now you're confidently shaping your organization's direction. Lest we forget how far we've come. But there's something else journaling does that's particularly powerful for learning from success. When you write down what went well and why, you start to identify your success patterns. You begin to see, actually, I'm really effective when I take time to prepare. When I rush, things go sideways, or I'm at my best when I trust my intuition alongside the data. These aren't abstract insights, these are the unique strategies that make you effective as a leader. One of my core coaching values is helping people become the best they can be. Not the best someone else is, not a carbon copy of another leader they admire, the best version of themselves. And you can't become the best version of yourself if you don't know what works for you. Journaling helps you discover and remember your own leadership genius. So today let me invite you to remember your own journey. Remember the challenges you've overcome, yes, absolutely. But also remember the successes you've had. Remember the moments you led with courage. Remember the times your influence created positive change. Remember the resilience you've shown. Lest we forget that leadership isn't just about what we need to fix, it's also about what we can build upon. Here's your action step for this week. Start a leadership journal. It doesn't need to be fancy, it can be a notebook, a document on your computer, even voice notes on your phone. At the end of each day this week, spend just five to ten minutes with those three questions. What went well, what challenged me? What did I learn? And here's the key. Force yourself to write at least as much about what went well as about what challenged you. Balance the lens, counteract that negativity bias. Then at the end of the week, read back through what you've written. Look for patterns, look for growth, look for the evidence of your leadership in action. Great leaders learn from both success and challenge. They remember not just the difficult moments but also the triumphant ones. They build on their strengths while addressing their development areas. And they do this intentionally and systematically through practices like journaling that create space for genuine reflection and learning. Because here's the truth: the way we led yesterday is not going to lead us into tomorrow, but the lessons we've learned from both our successes and our challenges absolutely can, lest we forget. Thank you for joining me today on Leadership Horizons. I'd love to hear about your experiences with journaling or other practices for learning from success. You can connect with me at LoisBurtonOnline.com or find me on social media. Until next time, keep pushing your leadership boundaries, keep learning from your whole journey, not just the difficult part, and keep becoming the leader you aspire to be and can be. This is Lois Burton, and I'll see you next week. Thank you.