Bookmark Imagine there was an activity that every leader agreed was critical to maximizing their success and that almost none of them did. And imagine that activity cost absolutely nothing, took just 10 to 15 minutes a day, and brought obvious and even immediate benefits. Consultant and bestselling author Patrick Lencioni recently raised that formulation while addressing CEOs, but the activity he suggests and the benefits he promises apply to leaders at all levels. It’s sitting in silence, contemplating. Story continues below advertisement Such advice is far from new. We know solitary reflection can be powerful. Yet we dodge it – even in a period when we repeatedly complain about the physical isolation forced upon us by the coronavirus. “The real issue is that we no longer want to be silent; we do our best to avoid it because it makes us uncomfortable,” he writes in Chief Executive magazine. And he also sweeps aside the excuse that our attention is diverted by e-mail, social media and other demands: “It’s not that we have too much to distract us, but rather that we have come to prefer those distractions to being alone with our thoughts.”