Year in Review: Leadership Lessons Worth Carrying Forward

I think it’s important to review your accomplishments at the end of the year with a more honest question than most leaders would think to ask. It’s not “what did you accomplish” or “did you hit your goals”, but instead something far deeper:

“Who were you able to be while you were doing the work?”

Most year-in-review conversations miss this entirely, instead focusing on metrics, milestones, and outcomes- while skipping the part that actually determines how next year will go. It completely misses the leadership patterns that were reinforced under pressure.

It’s important to remember that you don’t start a new year as a blank slate. You carry forward the habits, reflexes, and identity you’ve practiced all year long. If you don’t pause long enough to see what those were, you’ll repeat them — even if your goals change.

This isn’t a blog about wrapping the year up neatly, it’s a call for you to be honest with yourself about the leadership lessons this year taught you — whether you intended to learn them or not.

Why Reflection Isn’t Optional (Even If You’re Tired)

By the time December arrives, most people are done reflecting. The fatigue sets in from the incessant amount of activities to do and complete, the apathy of the weather changes, and the dead space in the last few weeks of the year when offices are empty, and people are waiting until January to start anything new.

But skipping reflection doesn’t give you rest. It just delays clarity.

When leaders don’t reflect, a few predictable things happen:

• They overcorrect in January.
• They set goals disconnected from reality.
• They repeat patterns they swear they’re done with.
• They underestimate how much they actually grew — or how much they avoided.

Reflection isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about self-accuracy.

And self-accurate leaders make better decisions.

The Leadership Lessons This Year Was Trying to Teach You

Every year delivers lessons. Did you notice them?

Below are some of the most common leadership lessons that surface when leaders actually look  (not to judge themselves, but to understand what shaped them).

Lesson 1: Pressure Reveals Patterns

This year likely didn’t create new leadership issues. It exposed existing ones.

Under pressure:

• Did you default to control or avoidance?
• Did you communicate more clearly — or less?
• Did you hold boundaries, or absorb more than you should have?
• Did you slow down to choose — or speed up to escape discomfort?

Pressure doesn’t build character. It reveals it.

And whatever showed up consistently this year is worth paying attention to.

Lesson 2: Not everything that took energy was worth it. 

Most leaders can look back on this year and see where their time went to things that didn’t earn the effort they demanded—meetings that lingered, projects that dragged without a real return, commitments that once made sense but no longer fit. That’s not failure; it’s information.

The lesson isn’t “do more.” It’s “be more discerning.”

Lesson 3: Growth Often Looked Like Restraint

For many leaders, real growth this year didn’t look like bold action.

It looked like:

• Not reacting.
• Not rescuing.
• Not saying yes.
• Not taking responsibility that wasn’t yours.
• Not pushing when patience was required.

That kind of growth rarely gets acknowledged.
But it fundamentally changes how you lead.

 Lesson 4: Some avoidance costs you more than you want to admit. 

Every leader avoided something this year—a conversation, a decision, a boundary, a truth. And avoidance doesn’t stay neatly boxed up; it leaks into relationships, teams, and trust in ways that quietly compound. The point isn’t self-shaming. It’s noticing the pattern clearly enough that you don’t drag it forward on autopilot.

Lesson 5: You’re Not the Same Leader You Were in January

This one is easy to miss.

You have more capacity now.
More discernment.
More context.
More scar tissue.
More wisdom.

But if you don’t name that growth, you’ll plan next year as if you’re still the same leader you were twelve months ago.

And that’s how leaders outgrow themselves without realizing it.

Where Most Year-End Reviews Go South

Most reviews ask:

• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• What are the goals for next year?

Those are fine questions. They’re just incomplete.

What’s missing is the developmental layer:

• What patterns strengthened?
• What behaviors became automatic?
• What leadership identity did I reinforce this year?

If you don’t answer those, your goals will sit on top of old habits — and habits always win.

IAPS: We end our blogs with IAPs because insight without movement doesn’t change anything. Inquiries slow you down enough to see what’s really happening, actions turn awareness into choice, and practices—done consistently—are what make the learning stick in real life, not just in your head.

INQUIRIES: Stay With What This Year Was Actually Teaching You

These are not questions to answer or resolve., they’re questions to wander through, preferably with at least one other person. There is no right response or insight to land on.

 Work on staying with the question long enough for something honest to surface — without trying to steer it. To get deeper into what this year can teach you, consider:

 What did this year reveal about how I actually lead under pressure?

What leadership patterns shaped this year, whether I intended them or not?

 Notice what emerges without correcting it, acknowledging any contradictions or exceptions.  Have a conversation or inquiry with someone else at work and see what they find true for themselves, and share what you saw.

If nothing feels clear, that’s not a failure — that’s the inquiry doing its job.

ACTIONS: Close the Year Without Rushing Past It

You don’t need to do everything here, find just one action that feels, like it would make a difference, even if only in a small way. 

Name the Lesson

Have your team (or whoever is in the office this week), fill in this blank during a group meeting. 
“The leadership lesson this year taught me is…”

There’s no need to explain it, justify it, or soften it. Just see where you land after you write it. If you have more than one thing that feels true, continue writing until you feel like it’s all expressed. Have everyone share one thing they wrote. Acknowledge everyone for whatever their own personal lesson was. 

Make One Ending Explicit

Identify one thing that still feels unfinished — a conversation, a decision, a commitment, a lingering expectation, and take the action to bring it to an end before the year closes.
That means completing it, communicating it, or consciously releasing it. Clarity often comes from endings, not additions.

PRACTICES: Carry the Right Lessons Forward

These are not practices to master, they’re practices to repeat with intention.

Choose one

• Every Friday for the next 4 weeks, before you shut down for the week, complete one thing you would normally carry forward. Don’t delegate something, or call “in progress” a completion but literally finish something. Send the email, make the call, close the proverbial loop. This practice builds trust that you can finish what you start by creating visible follow-through.
• Once a week for the next 4 weeks, at the beginning of a meeting state what decision needs to be made by the end of the meeting. This practice will help bring clarity, ensure that the team is working towards a mutual goal, and reinforce the intention of the meeting with a specific measurable benchmark, not just empty talk.

What You Carry Forward Matters More Than What You Leave Behind

You don’t need this year to be perfect, you need it to be integrated. This year offers the opportunity to grow for leaders who take time to understand how you were shaped by the events that occurred, and aren’t rushing into the new year blindly. This is imperative because January isn’t actually the fresh start that you might think it is. It’s a continuation, giving you the ability to see things a little more clearly and a chance to decide who you will intentionally be next year.

That’s how you finish the year strong. Not with resolutions, but with clarity and intention.

Alex Bednar is an Executive Coach specializing in Leadership Development. Connect with Alex at www.AndreaBednar.com for more insights on conscious leadership and operational excellence.