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Tip 52 – A Time for Reflection
The end of one year and the start of the next is traditionally a time for making resolutions. What do we make resolutions about? Perhaps it’s time to look back over the year?
We build up understanding through our experience in the world. But until we reflect – ie, engage in explaining not just what we do, but why we do what we do – the understanding remains intuitive - something we do on auto-pilot. Being on auto-pilot can be dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to have more awareness of why we do what we do? That’s a good reason to reflect – and maybe much more often than once a year. Making reflection part of our approach to work and life can have many benefits. However, a reflection in a mirror is an exact replica of what is in front of it. Intelligent reflection gives back not what is, but what might be, an improvement on the original.
A Reflective Practice approach can help you: strengthen family, work and colleague relationships; celebrate your accomplishments; evaluate your skills; use your strengths more efficiently; and continue to set and attain goals. A Reflective Practice approach can also: enhance professional and personal growth; increase supervisory and administrative capacity; support the quest for continuous quality program improvement and the integration of mission and values in the work place.
There are many models of learning – see for example Kolb who provides one of the most useful (but contested) descriptive models available of the adult learning process
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All learning models as in the above have a major element of reflection. We can use reflection on the process itself by asking ourselves: How far round the cycle am I? Am I in a cycle?
Keeping a diary about your own experience helps you to reflect and learn from experience. In re-reading a diary many people find that over time they have developed strategies to deal with the problems they encounter and that these can be generalised to other circumstances. Many in-house staff development programmes take this approach and use it as part of the formal assessment. However, reflective practice is not just for people new to a role: it is also a way of continually challenging current behaviour and ensuring that performance is developed and enhanced.
Remember though there are two types of reflection: reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet) and reflection-on-action (retrospective thinking). Some say this is differentiated by how quick you go around the learning cycle.
Maybe a New Year’s resolution could be to make a habit of reviewing/reflecting more often. It’s a bit like making an aeroplane journey. Think of a pilot crossing the Atlantic to New York, who is continually making small adjustments to keep the plane on the correct route, rather than making a big change at the end to avoid ending up in Florida instead!
Many people recommend the benefits of having someone else to assist with this reflection and learning process and this is where a coach can help, as well as in many other ways.
