How One Question Restored My Leadership Clarity
Three reasons every leader should reset their leadership clarity each season
“If you don’t pause to find leadership clarity, the season will re-orient you. And by the time it does, you’ll be too exhausted to lead well.”
Before the music department I led at Sittingbourne Community College was identified by OFSTED as one of the college’s four key strengths, I first had to learn what happens when you push without pausing.
In my early leadership years, I inherited a struggling music department while completing my on-the-job teaching qualification. We had just 1.5 full-time equivalent staff covering both classroom teaching and practical sessions. My instinct? Work harder. Longer hours. More ambitious curriculum. Higher standards. I believed that if I just pushed harder, excellence would follow.
It didn’t. The students grew more anxious. The staff grew more exhausted. And I grew more frustrated, convinced the problem was effort—not direction.
It wasn’t until my mentor, Penny, pulled me aside during one of our training sessions and asked “What are you actually trying to accomplish here?” that I realized I’d never paused to define it. I’d been pushing a boulder uphill without checking if I was even on the right hill.
That question forced me to stop. To step back. To articulate, in the simplest terms possible, what truly mattered: not impressive concerts, but confident students who loved making music. That clarity changed everything. Within a few years, we grew the team from 1.5 staff to 17 individuals, and OFSTED recognized us as one of the college’s four strengths. But I had to stop pushing long enough to find it.
Penny’s question taught me something I wish I’d learned sooner: leaders thrive not by pushing harder, but by pausing to re-orient. Every leader should reset their clarity at the start of each season because of three essential benefits: it prevents burnout, it aligns effort with purpose, and it creates space for sustainable growth.
Naming Reality Before Exhaustion Names You
Burnout doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates quietly—one extra commitment, one skipped lunch, one more night working past dinner. By the time you notice, you’re already running on fumes.
The problem isn’t that you’re working too hard. The problem is that you have not stopped in a while to ask whether all that hard work is still moving you toward what matters most. Research on occupational burnout shows that: lack of clarity around purpose and priorities is a stronger predictor of exhaustion than workload alone.¹ When you don’t know why you’re doing something, the what becomes unbearable.
A seasonal reset forces you to name reality before reality names you. It asks: What’s draining me? What’s life-giving? What felt urgent three months ago but no longer serves the mission? What needs to stop so something better can start?
This isn’t pessimism. It’s honesty. And honesty is the first step toward sustainability.
Ensuring Every Action Serves a Clear Direction
Most leaders don’t lack effort. They lack alignment. They’re working hard—just not on the right things.
I see this constantly: capable people pouring energy into projects that made sense last quarter but no longer fit this season. They’re saying yes out of momentum, not mission. They’re honoring commitments made by a previous version of themselves who didn’t yet know what they know now.
A seasonal reset gives you permission to ask: Does this still matter? Does this action serve the direction I’m heading, or am I just keeping promises to a past I’ve outgrown?
Clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s a leadership responsibility. When you align effort with purpose, you stop wasting energy on work that doesn’t matter and start investing it in work that does. Your team feels it. Your family feels it. You feel it.
That’s what Penny’s question did for me. It didn’t just help me work smarter—it helped me work clearer. Once I knew what we were trying to accomplish, every decision became simpler. Hire this person or that one? Which serves the mission? Add this program or cut that one? Which aligns with what truly matters?
Building Rhythms Instead of Urgency
Urgency feels productive. Rhythms feel slow. But urgency burns hot and fast, while rhythms sustain heat over time.
When I finally paused long enough to define what mattered at SCC, I didn’t just gain clarity—I gained a rhythm. I stopped reacting to every demand and started building a cadence: weekly check-ins with staff, monthly reviews of student progress, quarterly evaluations of curriculum alignment. Simple. Repeatable. Sustainable.
These rhythms didn’t slow us down. They freed us up. We stopped firefighting and started building. We stopped chasing momentum and started creating it. Within a few years, we didn’t just survive—we thrived.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant notes that sustainable high performers don’t rely on bursts of motivation; they rely on structured routines that reduce decision fatigue and preserve mental energy for what matters most.² Rhythms do that. Urgency doesn’t.
Penny’s question wasn’t complicated. It was clarifying. And clarity, it turns out, is one of the most generous gifts a leader can give—to their team, their mission, and themselves.
You don’t need a weekend retreat or a consulting firm to reset your leadership. You just need to stop long enough to name what matters most right now. Not what mattered last year. Not what might matter next quarter. Right now.
Because if you don’t pause to re-orient, the season will re-orient you. And by the time it does, you’ll be too exhausted to lead well.
Takeaway Action: This week, block fifteen minutes to answer Penny’s question for yourself: What am I actually trying to accomplish right now? Write your answer in one sentence. Let that sentence guide your next three decisions.
What would change if you paused this week to name what truly matters most?
If this resonated with you, I invite you to subscribe to The Maestro’s Dispatch for weekly clarity, encouragement, and joyful excellence delivered to your inbox.
- Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter, “Understanding the Burnout Experience: Recent Research and Its Implications for Psychiatry,” World Psychiatry 15, no. 2 (2016): 103–111.
- Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (New York: Viking, 2021), 87–89.
