Something I discovered along the way: the skills that got you promoted won’t be the ones that keep you effective as a senior leader. There’s an invisible curriculum at play: a set of competencies that separate those who thrive in senior roles from those who simply survive them. And it all starts with something deceptively simple: your habits and routines.
Can I say I wish this wasn’t true? Surely the foundation of success must be more academic than this!
The Morning Advantage
One pattern I’ve noticed among the effective leaders I know. Almost without exception, they’ve claimed their mornings. Not for email. Not for the first meeting that someone could squeeze into their calendar. For themselves, a kind of “strategic selfishness” that pays their organization dividends.
This isn’t about becoming a morning person if you’re not one naturally. It’s about identifying when your mind is clearest and protecting that time like your impact depends on it, because it does.
Whether you decide to get up at 5 AM so you can think without interruption, or you block the first 90 minutes of your day, the idea is to create space for important work before the urgent work finds you.
The Lost Art of Thinking
Some of your most valuable work happens when you’re not visibly working at all. You’re staring into the middle distance, walking your dog, or cradling your head on your arms. This isn’t the best look in the office, but it should be.
The best senior leaders I know schedule thinking time like they would any other critical meeting and they protect it just as fiercely.
This feels uncomfortable at first. We’re conditioned to equate activity with productivity. But the problems you’ll face at senior levels don’t have Google-able solutions. They require you to connect dots that others can’t see, to identify patterns across seemingly unrelated information, to ask questions that haven’t been asked before.
Be okay with “sitting with complexity.” Instead of rushing to solve every problem immediately, carve out time to understand it first. Allow solutions to emerge rather than forcing them quickly.
The Batch Approach to Decision-Making
This is a new insight for me: not every decision needs to be made the moment it’s presented to me. (Gasp!) In fact, better decisions often come from grouping similar choices together and addressing them in dedicated blocks.
This approach does two things: it preserves your mental energy for the decisions that truly matter, and it allows you to see patterns across similar choices that you’d miss when handling them in isolation.
Building Your System
The beauty of habits and routines is that they remove the need for willpower. They become automatic responses that serve you even when everything else feels chaotic.
Start small. Pick one routine that addresses your biggest challenge right now. Maybe it’s protecting the first hour of your day, OR scheduling weekly thinking time, OR batching certain types of decisions, OR something else altogether. Get that one habit solid before adding others.
Remember, the goal is less about perfection than about consistency. A simple routine you maintain is infinitely more valuable than an elaborate system you abandon after two weeks.
The Compound Effect
The real power of these foundational habits reveals itself over time. The leader who spends 30 minutes each morning on strategic thinking develops dramatically different perspective than one who never creates this space. The leader who batches decisions makes better choices and has more energy for the work that matters most.
These aren’t just productivity tips; they’re the foundation upon which every other senior leadership competency builds. Without this foundation, your attempts to think strategically, influence effectively, or navigate complexity will be undermined by the chaos of reactive leadership.
The transition to senior leadership begins with taking control of your time, attention, and energy. Master this first competency, and you create the conditions for everything else to flourish. Skip it, and you’ll find yourself perpetually struggling to keep your head above water, no matter how capable you are.
The choice, as always, is yours to make.