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# Slowing Down Long Enough to Learn
- URL: https://watsonleadershipgroup.com/slowing-down-long-enough-to-learn/
- Published: 2026-10-21T22:35:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-28T19:38:51.000Z
- Description: A learner who moves too fast, a book read four times, and why this blog exists: to slow down, reflect, and grow by wrestling with the ideas that cross my path.
- Author: Brant
- Tags: Self-Leadership, Reflection

I’m on my fourth reading of Patrick Lencioni’s *The Advantage*. It wasn’t a book I was looking for; it was a book that found me, through an organization I work with that has built its entire way of talking about the business around it. My usual habit would have been to read it once, absorb what I could, and move on. That’s how I tend to learn: I collect ideas from books, podcasts, and conversations, and I’m usually reaching for the next one before I’ve made sense of the last.

This time I kept going back, and each read has shown me something I missed before. I won’t adopt everything in it, but on this fourth pass I’m lingering over the examples and asking how each one relates to my own work and to the leaders I work with. That kind of learning only happens when I slow down, and slowing down is something I often skip. So I’m writing to wrestle with the ideas, concepts, concerns, and situations that cross my path, and to give myself the pause I need. Some posts will start with a question I can’t shake, and others with something I got wrong.

A little about me. I’ve spent years as an executive coach, working with leaders on how they think and how they grow. What I’ve learned in that work is that the most useful thing I bring is rarely an answer. More often it’s a better question, asked at the right moment, followed by enough quiet for the other person to find their own way forward.

That conviction sits underneath my personal why: to inspire a coaching mindset in others, so we find courage and confidence, and discover joy in the unexpected.

A coaching mindset is a way of approaching people and problems. It is client-centered, curious, flexible, open, reflective, and non-judgmental. You don’t need to be a coach to have one. A manager can bring it to a one-on-one, and anyone can bring it to the private conversation they have with themselves when a decision feels heavy.

That private conversation is where this blog will spend most of its time. Self-leadership is the starting point for everything else, because the way we question our own assumptions and choose our responses shapes how we show up for everyone around us. If you lead a team, I think you’ll find plenty here that carries over. If you coach or facilitate, I hope you’ll find some company in the wrestling.

Here’s what you can expect. Each post will be about this length and will work through one idea. Each will close with a short reflection called Your Spark, a question or small experiment you can carry into your week. Over time I’ll also share some self-guided tools designed to help you build the same habit of reflection on your own.

I’m writing as someone still working this out, because reflection is where my growth happens, and I suspect the same is true for you. I’d be glad to have you along.

**Your Spark:** When did you last slow down long enough to learn from something that just happened? Pick one moment from this past week and spend five minutes with it. What did it teach you that you would have missed if you’d kept moving?