Leadership sometimes seems like constant meetings, email messages, and moments where leaders are expected to have the answer. That pace can feel isolating, which puts leaders at risk of getting stuck with the same issue circling in their head. Taking just five minutes for a “clarity reset” is a simple, repeatable way to break that spin. In five minutes, leaders can move from mental noise to the next step leaders can act on.
There are plenty of options on how to engage in a five-minute reset. Jessica Cabeen outlines this one called a 5-Minute Brain Dump. Robert Miraglia calls it a five-minute reset for leaders. There are plenty of others leaders can find through a search as well. We’d like to offer something a bit different that helps leaders become more collaborative.
Reflection
Step 1: Name the challenge in a few sentences, like an “elevator speech.”
Grab a sticky note (or your favorite notes app) and write a single, plain‑language sentence that answers this question: What, exactly, is the challenge right now? The two of us challenge each other to do this. Michael refers to it as an elevator speech.
Leaders should not write the backstory, the emotion, or who they may feel is at fault. Just the challenge. This is not easy because we often want to give more information than we should at this point.
This small constraint from writing too much helps do the heavy lifting. Clear problem statements create shared understanding, which is the first leg of collective leader efficacy, alongside joint work and evidence of impact. When teams can articulate the challenge in the same way, they align faster on what to do next.
Example: “Family-engagement nights are well‑attended, but we’re not seeing increased reading at home.”
Step 2: List two actions you already tried
Leaders take five minutes to write down two concrete attempts they’ve made. This prevents unproductive loops (“let’s email them again”) and invites focused experimentation.
This recent article from Harvard Business Review shows that leaders of high-performing organizations treat decisions as hypotheses to test, not commands to issue. Toyota’s culture, for example, builds improvement through structured experiments and ongoing hansei (reflection).
Ideas are tested with data, and even CEOs put proposals up against alternatives to see what actually works.
The two of us do this when engaging in cycles of inquiry. Not every idea will work. This mindset keeps leaders focused on learning.
Example:
- We have flipped the report card process at parent-teacher conferences, so parents get the report cards a week early and can consider questions to ask their child’s teacher about the reports.
- We piloted one family-literacy coaching session after school.
Step 3: Identify one person to get a quick perspective check
We all have a few people we can count on, and leaders do, too. They can write the name of one person who will help them think, not solve the issue for them: a teacher, coach, parent, student, or colleague in another school.
Reset
The reset is based on the five-minute clarity check. During this part of the process, leaders reach out for a perspective check. During our Instructional Leadership Collectives, which you can read about here, perspective checks are important to our process of going deeper in understanding an issue.
That Harvard Business Review article highlights top performers, like Amazon, that operationalize this habit. Amazon pushes “decision‑rights closer to the front lines, equips teams with tools (like narrative memos), and embraces ‘two‑way‑door’ decisions.”
Moreover, that culture of engaging in perspective checks encourages candid professional debate and quick learning cycles instead of perfectionism. Debate, test your assumptions, and take leadership moves with more clarity.
Example: “Melissa, can I run a quick idea by you about making home‑reading routines easier for families?”
Another school‑based example:
A principal is staring at lagging reading growth for a subgroup.
- One sentence: “Our multilingual learners show less growth on midyear reading diagnostics than peers.”
- Already tried: (1) Added after‑school tutoring; (2) Sent home generic practice packets.
- Perspective check: The leader texts their English Learners teacher leader: “Can we talk for 10? I want to rethink home practice.” In that call, the leader learns that families prefer short, audio‑supported routines over packets and that older siblings could help if given prompts.
Together, the leader and EL teacher draft a tiny change: three‑minute audio stories with one discussion prompt, sent via text twice weekly. They test it with six families, a pilot group, for two weeks and track engagement.
Over the first few weeks, the leader and their team find that participation jumps. Perhaps even a quick fluency probe shows an increase in growth, and parents report it’s doable. Maybe the leader and their team didn’t solve the whole literacy issue in 14 days, but they learned and have evidence to justify scaling the micro‑move.
Renew
From personal habit to team habit
A single leader using the reset is helpful. A leadership team using it together is transformative. Here’s how we have done it in our long-term work in order to help teams develop a shared understanding, engage in joint work, and collect evidence of impact.
- Reset meeting opener. Start leadership or PLC meetings with a two‑minute round: Each person shares their one‑sentence challenge. Themes surface quickly, and duplication becomes visible. (Shared understanding)
- Capture the “already tried” list. Keep a log of attempts, what happened, and what you’ll try next. You’ll build a record of small experiments, not just big initiatives. (Evidence of impact)
- Institutionalize perspective checks. Pair leaders across roles (principal to coach, counselor to assistant principal) for 10‑minute weekly Zooms. Rotate partners monthly to widen the lens. Over time, you create the conditions for distributed decisionmaking and faster cycles. (Joint work)
Call to Action
- Block five minutes between two standing meetings.
- Do the three steps on a sticky note.
- Send the perspective‑check text before the next meeting starts.
Leaders who consistently win didn’t just set vision, they built systems that make disciplined learning unavoidable, obsess over the right metrics, teach the tool kit, test everything, and keep decisions close to where the work happens.
