Five Minutes, Five Questions: A Leader's Guide to Uncovering Blindspots

In the fast-paced world of leadership, our biggest growth opportunities often hide in our blindspots—those unconscious patterns, assumptions, and behaviors that shape our decisions without our awareness. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that leaders who maintain regular reflection routines demonstrate 23% higher performance in strategic thinking and emotional intelligence.

By transforming journaling from an overwhelming time commitment to a focused five-minute practice, we can remove the most common barrier to consistent reflection while preserving its most powerful benefits.

These five questions are specifically designed to uncover the most common leadership blindspots. Commit to answering just one question each workday, and you'll complete a full reflection cycle each week.

1. "What decision did I avoid making today?"

Targets the avoidance blindspot: Many leaders unconsciously postpone difficult decisions, creating bottlenecks without realizing it. This self-limiting pattern often manifests as consistently avoiding difficult conversations or habitually deferring decisions until consensus is achieved.The revelation of this blindspot often comes not from a leadership workshop or executive coaching session, but through seemingly trivial moments in our personal lives that suddenly illuminate our professional patterns.

The innocent question caught had me off guard: "Why do you always wait for everyone else to order first?" My friend's observation during our casual dinner outing landed with unexpected weight. I'd never connected my habitual "You decide" or "Whatever you're having sounds good" responses to a deeper pattern. That evening, I deflected with a laugh, but later found myself staring at my journal, pen hovering over the question: "What decision did I avoid making today?" The restaurant hesitation was just the visible tip of a much larger iceberg. As I reflected honestly, I recognized how this seemingly harmless social habit may be mirroring my approaches in other areas too. When I reflected deeply, I was using "gathering more information" as a shield against the discomfort of difficult choices. The pattern was unmistakable—whether deciding on lunch options or work priorities, I was unconsciously creating bottlenecks while telling myself I was being thorough. This five-minute reflection transformed my awareness.

Today, when I notice myself hesitating, I pause to question whether I truly need more data or if I'm simply sidestepping the responsibility of making a decision. I've implemented specific timeframes for various types of decisions, no longer allowing important choices to drift in the purgatory of "need more time to think." The results have been transformative—accelerating project timelines at work while also subtly shifting my team's perception of my leadership capabilities. This seemingly minor behavioral change symbolizes a much deeper personal development—achieved through one five-minute journal entry at a time.

2. "What emotion dominated my leadership today? What present moment was I not fully experiencing today?"

Targets both presence and emotional awareness blindspots: This question trains leaders to recognize when they're missing the present moment and builds the skill of emotional recognition without attachment. The practice becomes most valuable when we catch ourselves in real-time, creating choice points when our attention strays.

During our quarterly review meeting, I suddenly realized my mind was elsewhere. "What emotion dominated my leadership today?" The journaling question surfaced as my team discussed performance metrics. Though physically present, I was mentally rehearsing a difficult conversation scheduled for later.

That evening, I documented this realization. Anxiety about an anticipated conflict had stolen my presence from team members who needed my attention. This perspective shift revealed that my anxiety wasn't protecting me—it was dividing my attention and undermining my effectiveness. Reviewing past entries, I noticed a pattern of abandoning the present for mental rehearsals that rarely matched actual conversations.

I implemented a simple change: when catching myself drifting, I would quickly note the future concern and deliberately refocus. This "noting and returning" practice transformed my leadership presence, improving team engagement and, surprisingly, better preparing me for difficult conversations by ensuring I collected accurate information beforehand.

"The most powerful insight wasn't eliminating anxiety," I wrote later, "but recognizing when it was stealing my attention and consciously redirecting my focus." This five-minute practice taught me that emotional awareness isn't about controlling emotions but preventing them from controlling me.

3. "Whose input did I discount, and why?"

Targets the relationship blindspot:Professional relationships often reflect our blindspots most clearly, particularly in how we build, maintain, and sometimes damage connections.These relationship dynamics extend beyond the workplace, and sometimes our most profound lessons about truly seeing others come from unexpected sources in our personal lives.

One evening, as I was helping my daughter with her homework, she looked up at me with those big, curious eyes and said, "You teach me so many things, Mommy." I smiled and hugged her, but later that night, I found myself reflecting on her words in my journal. As I wrote, a surprising realization emerged on the page: my 6.5-year-old daughter had become one of my greatest teachers. I began listing all the ways she had expanded my world, and one example stood out clearly.

When we first signed her up for piano lessons, I saw myself merely as the supportive parent—the one who would drive her to lessons and remind her to practice. I had no musical background myself and assumed I would remain on the sidelines of her musical journey.

During those early lessons, I would sit quietly in the corner, half-listening while mentally planning dinner or reviewing work tasks. But gradually, something shifted. I found myself paying closer attention as her teacher explained about rhythm and timing. I watched my daughter's small fingers learning to find their place on the keys.

One afternoon, when she was struggling with a particular piece, I sat beside her on the piano bench. "Can you show me what your teacher explained?" I asked. As she demonstrated, I found myself genuinely understanding the concept of musical phrases for the first time. My daughter patiently explained to me how the notes worked together "like telling a story," in her words.

Week by week, through her lessons and our practice sessions at home, music began to make sense to me in a way it never had before. I started to hear the conversations between melody and harmony. I could feel the purposeful pause of a rest. Through her learning, I was learning too.

In my journal that night, I wrote: "How remarkable that while I'm teaching her about the world, she's opening up entirely new dimensions of it for me. I never expected to understand music through the eyes of a child."

4. "Who needs acknowledgement I haven't given? What am I grateful for in my leadership journey today?"

These complementary questions target both the feedback and appreciation blindspots. Together, they create a practice that strengthens team connections while enhancing leadership satisfaction.

My evening journal ritual had become sacred—five minutes of reflection before shutting down my laptop each day. The twin questions "Who needs acknowledgement I haven't given?" and "What am I grateful for in my leadership journey today?" had evolved from simple prompts into a powerful practice that consistently broadened my leadership perspective.

I remember one particularly challenging Thursday when everything seemed to unravel. A critical system had experienced technical failures, two key deadlines were missed, and tensions ran high across departments. As I opened my journal that evening, finding anything positive to acknowledge felt forced—but the discipline of the practice compelled me forward.

The first question revealed a blind spot I hadn't recognized. While my digital product teams regularly received praise for their user-facing innovations and visible wins, our IT infrastructure group had quietly maintained system stability during an extraordinarily complex migration. Their preventative work—averting what could have been catastrophic failures—rarely earned spotlight moments precisely because success meant nothing dramatic happened. I realized they operated in an acknowledgment desert, where their best work remained invisible by design.

I immediately committed to recognizing their team lead at our next all-hands meeting and scheduled recurring "invisible work" coffee chats to uncover overlooked contributions throughout the organization. These small actions uncovered numerous unsung heroes whose consistent efforts formed the foundation for more visible successes.

The gratitude portion initially seemed even harder on that difficult day. Yet as I pushed deeper, I found myself appreciating how a relatively junior team member had stepped up during our crisis, communicating effectively with anxious stakeholders—something only possible because of the trust and autonomy we had built in our relationship over previous months. What began as a reluctant journaling exercise evolved into genuine appreciation for growth that might have gone unnoticed.

Most revealing was reviewing past entries after several months of this practice. A clear pattern emerged—I had shifted from acknowledging only the most vocal or high-profile team members to appreciating diverse contributions across departments and hierarchical levels. The questions had systematically expanded my recognition radius, making me attuned to excellence in unexpected places.

Even on the most difficult days, this five-minute practice ensured no significant contribution went unnoticed and no growth opportunity unappreciated. The paired questions addressed both outward acknowledgment and inward gratitude, transforming not just our team culture but my own leadership experience. What initially felt like one more task on my to-do list had become the practice I most looked forward to—a daily reminder of why leadership matters in the first place.

5. "What assumption did I make that I could test tomorrow?"

Targets the assumption blindspot: Untested assumptions often become leadership facts that limit options. The power of challenging our assumptions lies not just in theory but in the transformative results that emerge when we take the courageous step to test them in real-world situations.

I once spoke with a friend who had stepped into a challenging role at a new organization, tasked with slashing costs significantly across departments. "What assumption did I make that I could test tomorrow?" became the journal question that transformed his approach. Initially, he found himself writing variations of "the team is resistant because they're protecting their budgets" in his five-minute journaling sessions. After seeing this assumption appear repeatedly over two weeks, he decided to test it directly. Rather than pushing harder on the mandate, he organized informal coffee conversations with key team members. What emerged surprised him—the resistance wasn't about unwillingness to cooperate but stemmed from genuine concerns about how cost-cutting might compromise quality and customer experience. "I realized I had been interpreting their questions as obstruction when they were actually trying to protect company values," he told me. By reframing the conversation around "smarter spending" rather than just "reduced spending," and by involving the team in identifying where inefficiencies truly existed, he unlocked enthusiastic participation. The transformation was remarkable—the same individuals he had labeled as "budget defenders" became his strongest allies in identifying unnecessary expenses once they understood the approach and maintained input on implementation. His cost optimization initiative ultimately exceeded targets while maintaining service quality. "That simple journaling question revealed my blind spot," he reflected. "I was so focused on the 'what' of cost reduction that I missed the 'how' and 'why' that would bring people along with me. Testing my assumption changed everything."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Implementation: Five Minutes That Matter

1. Choose your medium: Whether digital notes, paper journal, select what works for your workflow.

2. Schedule it: Link your five-minute reflection to an existing daily habit—before your first meeting, after lunch, or as a commute activity.

3. Practice cognitive defusion: When documenting situations, create psychological distance between yourself and your thoughts.

4. Review weekly: Spend a few minutes each Friday reviewing your answers, looking for patterns that reveal your leadership blindspots.

5. Take one action: Based on your weekly review, commit to one specific action that addresses a blindspot you've identified.

From Reflection to Results: The Leadership Connection

Moving Forward Understanding our blindspots is not about self-criticism but about growth and effectiveness as leaders. By investing just five minutes daily, you transform unconscious limitations into conscious leadership choices. Through this consistent practice, you'll create not just a record of your journey but a personal playbook for authentic, effective leadership. This emotional literacy becomes a competitive advantage, enabling better decision-making, stronger relationships, and more effective leadership. Your leadership impact tomorrow will reflect the insight you gain today.