How to Lead with Intention in Just 7-Minutes a Day

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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.201: How The 7 Minute Pivot Can Help You Stop Managing and Start Mobilizing, with Dr. Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer, using the player below, or click here.

The Power of a Tiny Pivot

Everyone feels stuck at times… stretched thin, plateaued, or sensing that they’re capable of more but unable to articulate what ‘more’ looks like. Today’s episode of Leading with Integrity is a reminder that clarity doesn’t come from waiting for the perfect moment. It comes from taking small, consistent steps in the direction you want to go.

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t have time to work on myself right now,” you’re not alone. But as Dr. Cynthia Bentzen-Mercer points out, the barrier isn’t time, it’s intentionality. And fortunately, you don’t need to overhaul your calendar, hire a life strategist, or redesign your workflows to start leading with more energy, purpose, and clarity.

You just need seven minutes.

Cynthia is an executive coach, keynote speaker, leader, and bestselling author who specialises in helping ambitious individuals and senior leaders make powerful, meaningful career pivots. As the creator of The 7 Minute Pivot, she brings a practical method for anyone who wants to move out of autopilot and into intentional forward motion.

This conversation, the final episode in our celebratory 200th episode milestone week, blends neuroscience, leadership development, personal reflection, and strategy into something deceptively simple: a daily practice that helps you stop managing the chaos around you and start mobilising yourself (and your team) toward a stronger future.

The 7 Minute Pivot: Momentum, Mindset, and Modern Leadership

Much of leadership today is spent reactively managing: calendar fires, shifting priorities, stakeholder demands, interpersonal challenges, supply chain shocks, pandemics, policy changes…. and so on and so on… and everything else that fills a manager’s day. Intentional leadership, the kind that changes your career trajectory and your organisation’s culture, tends to be squeezed into whatever time is left, which is rarely much. If any.

The beauty of Cynthia’s approach is that she doesn’t ask you to ‘find more time.’
Instead, she focuses on reclaiming a rhythm you already have, seven minutes of focused thought. The pivot is simple:

• Choose one question

• Write freely for seven minutes

• Ask “why?” three times to get below the surface

• Select one small action you can take today

• Take that step forward

• Repeat tomorrow, build momentum

What makes this powerful isn’t the journaling itself but the psychological shift that occurs when you deliberately step out of autopilot. For leaders, that shift does three things:

1. Reclaims agency: Great leadership requires intentionality.

2. Creates psychological momentum: Tiny pivots compound.

3. Clears mental space for better decision-making: Neutralise the stress-loops and mental clutter.

The result? Leaders make better decisions not by working more hours, but by thinking more clearly.

Why Leaders Get Stuck and How to Move Again

Cynthia’s own career story illustrates how easy it is for even senior leaders to find themselves in roles that no longer fit. After decades in HR and C-suite leadership, a sudden organisational shift forced her to confront a major crossroads.

What made her transition successful wasn’t luck, it was preparation. Long before she left her corporate role, she had already begun investing in skills and opportunities that supported her ‘aspirational next.’ She didn’t wait until crisis, she built options early.

There’s an important lesson here for leaders: A career doesn’t have to be something that just happens to you. It can be something you shape, ideally long before circumstances require it.

In many organisations, we encourage leaders to develop succession plans for their teams, but rarely to create succession plans for themselves. Cynthia flips this perspective: work your job well today, but also design your future deliberately.

Leadership Limits & The Invisible Barriers We Don’t Notice

Another important thread in the conversation is how leaders unintentionally restrict innovation and growth. Often the obstacle is subtle, outdated assumptions about talent, experience, or generational traits. During our conversation, Cynthia and I call out several of these patterns:

• Prioritising years of experience over capability

• Mistaking visibility for readiness

• Rewarding the loudest voices

• Overlooking quiet high-potential talent

• Simplifying people into generational stereotypes

• Confusing enthusiasm with leadership potential

• Treating human capital as a cost, not an investment

Leaders who prioritise convenience over curiosity, who choose the easy signals instead of the meaningful ones, end up building teams that look the same, think the same, and stagnate in the same ways. The challenge is clear: dig deeper than job titles, tenure, or ‘personality and fit’.

Look for strengths, learning agility, for people whose thinking elevates the room, not just the ones who take up the most space in it.

Make Your Leadership More Intentional This Week

Here’s a practical way to apply Cynthia’s approach immediately, no special tools required.

Pick one of these prompts:

• What is one thing standing in the way of where I want to be as a leader?

• What am I avoiding because I fear the outcome?

• What challenge keeps resurfacing because I haven’t addressed its root?

• What relationship at work needs more attention from me?

• What’s one strength I’m not fully using right now?

Set a seven-minute timer, think and write freely, then ask yourself:

What is one small thing (tiny, simple, achievable) that I can do today to move one degree in the right direction?

If you do that every day for a year, you won’t just lead differently, you’ll think differently.

Stop Managing, Start Mobilising…

Leadership isn’t measured by how much pressure you can withstand or how many tasks you can juggle, but by the direction you’re moving, the people you lift along the way, and the clarity you bring into the spaces you lead.

This conversation is a reminder that you don’t need more hours or more capacity; you need more intention. And intention can begin in just seven minutes.

Small pivots create big transformations over time. Because they’re deliberate, not dramatic; and that’s the heart of effective leadership.

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Give the full conversation a listen now: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-201-how-the-7-minute-pivot-can-help-you-stop-managing-and-start-mobilizing-with-dr-cynthia-bentzen-mercer

Or if you prefer video, then here’s the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/T5HQGyGuBB8

And if you’d like to catch up on any of this week’s 4 episodes, here’s a handy playlist link: https://podcast.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/playlist/200th-episode-week

I hope you’ll be reading again next week, as normal weekly service resumes, and I’ll be talking about my next guest, Sir Evans, Keynote Speaker, Consultant, and Founder of the Superpower Planner.

Thanks for reading, and until next time: Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful businesses.

If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter as a leader, the Integrity Leaders community offers tools, conversations, and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you. Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉

Here’s the link: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.