Reflective Practice: An Example & Call-to-Action

What is Reflective Practice?

It is essentially the practice of thinking critically about your professional experiences and identifying the lessons to be learned from those experiences

Source: The Bamboo Project


I believe in a reflective learning approach and certainly in reflection as a common practice. I'm disappointed that many leaders are focused on e-mail or other work tasks and can't guide their team through a reflective practice. However, I will say that the 11 months of my career where I worked for a manager who did have that skill was tough, but indeed it was productive.

Here's an example. Suppose you recorded your conference calls. Then, you asked your manager to listen to one or segments of two or three. Next, during your 1:1 with your manager, he/she provided a perspective on your approach. Now, the best coaching would be a kind and fair reflective approach using a short set of questions that the coached doesn't find aggressive. This is very similar to football teams watching film of another team to prepare for the big game. Interestingly, I always refer to important conference calls as "game day."

Call-to-Action: Study up on reflective learning and reflective practice. Begin to use reflection as an instructional strategy as well as a general way of conducting business.