How to Design the Week You Want and Cultivate a Leadership Mindset

Updated: Sep 11

As a leader, your week doesn’t just happen to you—it’s something you actively design. The way you start Monday sets the tone for the rest of the week. Step in with clarity, intention, and focus, and your days will follow in alignment.

Instead of reacting to challenges as they come, you can lead your week with purpose. When you do, you create momentum that lasts beyond Monday and cultivates a mindset for sustained leadership growth.

Step 1 – Pick Your Focus

The first step in designing your week is clarity. Ask yourself: What is the ONE thing that matters most this week?

Once you’ve identified it, protect your energy: block dedicated time on your calendar for this focus before everything else fills up.

Anchor your mindset daily by reminding yourself of the leader you are becoming. When you step into your week with intention, small decisions align naturally, creating consistent progress.

Action Step: Write down your one main focus for the week. Decide exactly when you’ll work on it and honor that time as non-negotiable.

Step 2 – Awareness: What’s Growing in Your Mind?

Think of your mind as a garden, and your thoughts as seeds. Some thoughts grow into strong, nourishing trees that offer clarity, confidence, and inspiration. Others sprout into weeds that drain your energy and limit your potential.

Coaching Insight: Awareness is the first step toward transformation. Notice the thoughts you repeat daily. Are they empowering or limiting?

Action Step: Write down three recurring thoughts in your “Thought Seeds Workbook.” Ask yourself: Are these the seeds of the forest I want to walk through?

Step 3 – Replant: Choose a New Seed

Once you identify a thought that depletes you (“I’m not good enough”), it’s time to replace it with one that nurtures your growth: “I am learning and growing every day.”

Coaching Truth: Don’t just stop negative thoughts—replace them with positive affirmations. Repetition strengthens the new seed until it takes root and the old one fades.

Action Step: Pick one thought to replace today and record it in your workbook. Commit to repeating it each time the old thought appears.

Step 4 – Cultivate: Feed What You Want to Grow

Positive thoughts need nourishment. Like sunlight for a tree, affirming thoughts thrive when reinforced.

Coaching Insight: Create daily rituals to nurture your affirming thoughts—morning mantras, journaling gratitude, or surrounding yourself with uplifting voices. These small actions compound over time to strengthen your leadership mindset.

Action Step: Choose one daily ritual to reinforce your new seed and track it in your workbook.

Step 5 – Harvest: Walk Through Your New Forest

Visualize your mind as a forest. After a week—or a year—of planting positive, empowering seeds, what does it look like? Peaceful, confident, and purposeful? Are you noticing more opportunities and clarity in your leadership?

Coaching Truth: Every thought contributes to your leadership growth. Begin embodying your future self today—speak, act, and decide as if you are already the leader you aspire to be.

Action Step: Visualize your future forest and write down what it looks like in your workbook. Make choices today that align with the leader you’re becoming.

Why Leaders Need to Cultivate Their Thoughts

Leadership is not just about strategy or results—it’s about mindset. The thoughts you plant today shape the confidence, clarity, and influence you carry tomorrow. By designing your week intentionally and cultivating empowering thoughts, you can: