“We don’t learn from experience… We learn from reflecting on our experience” John Dewey.
One thing I have noticed about high performing teams is that they make time for REFLECTION. Even when operating in fast-forward, they realise the value of pausing, reflecting on their experiences and together identifying key insights and changes to take forward. Reflection is part of the team’s ways of working and enables them to grow and learn all the time!
So, I am sharing this useful technique which is easy to include in regular team conversations and/or reviews. It facilitates awareness and accountability for how your team and/or business is doing.
Reflect:
- What are our biggest achievements? What helped us do well?
- What goals or opportunities did we miss? What got in our way?
- What were our key challenges? How did we manage these?
Learn:
- What can we learn from these experiences?
- What insights do we have about our responses, behaviours?
- What does this tell us about our perceptions, assumptions, capabilities?
Change:
- How can we think about things differently in the future?
- What do we want to do more of or less of, stop, start or keep?
- What are the specific actions we will take individually and/or as a team?
Key Reflection Skills: Robust reflection requires active listening, insightful questioning, suspending judgement and/or blame, sharing ideas and being genuinely interested and respectful of others’ viewpoints.
Why Reflect?
Reflection is simply the opportunity for individuals and teams to think about, review and better understand what they are doing (or have done), and decide what to do differently to improve. The potential benefits of reflective practice for teams are significant:
- Increased trust as challenges and different ideas are shared
- Commitment to new or better ways of working
- Critical thinking and more effective problem solving
- Understanding others’ perspectives
- Resilience and readiness for change
- Positive communication and relationships
- Ongoing personal and team development
A simple and smart TEAM habit to learn, grow and stay fit!