Reflection Canvas: Do what matters no matter how small it is

You have a challenging situation with your team or with a specific colleague but...

• you don't know how to handle it "best"?

• you spend way too much time thinking about it?

• you do it like you always did ?

• you are not satisfied with the results?

• you find yourself in response-only mode?

Do you know one or more of these?

Maybe you are a newly minted Engineering Manager or Tech Lead.

Maybe your role includes (even temporary) leadership responsibilities, no matter if they are formal or informal. Example roles are - amongst others - Product Managers, People Leaders, Software & System Architects, Senior Developers.

Most likely you have huge technical or business-related skillset - and you feel the need to navigate your way to professional human leadership skills yourself.

Then welcome, you're not alone, in fact you're in good companionship!

I was there myself, too. With similar roles and similar challenges.

Up to January 2026, I've coached 200+ tech leaders (and counting). With similar roles and similar challenges.

I've built the Reflection Canvas for people like them.

For people like you - and me.

More specific, it will help you with:

1. Seeing new, different options to recurring challenges or patterns especially when working together with other people

2. Building up a more versatile leadership vocabulary, e.g. for verbalizing your emotions and needs

3. Developing awareness for what (potentially unhelpful) stories you tell yourself. (we all do that from time to!)

4. Increasing your emotional intelligence

To achieve that, Reflection Canvas is structured in three sections and in each section guiding questions lead you through the reflection and thinking process. The sections are focussed on:

1. Separating observations from judgements

2. Building your emotional literacy

3. Pausing the urge to intervene & creating different options

This is how you start:

• Take YOUR current challenge or problem. Take the first one that comes to mind - there is no "right" or "wrong". You can also choose a context where challenging situations occur frequently.

• Make space in your calendar for 15-20min. 

• Sit down in a quiet space. Then you walk yourself through the three sections and let me guide you through a reflection process with my questions.