How do you encourage reflection in your work life? Do you actively dedicate time to reflection or is it something you do when you realise you’ve made the same old mistake again?
In learning we know that reflection is the most important part of the process:
“We do not learn from experience… We learn from reflecting on experience” – John Dewey
Despite being someone who is pretty loud and proud of my own love of learning and the amazing things it can do for individuals and groups to help us accomplish great things… I’m surprisingly average about creating time for my own learning reflections.
This blog is one way I’ve tried to develop the habit and I am a bit of a journaler – but these things can quickly become inconvinient, or worse, habits, that have lost their meaning.
Part of my 2016 challenge (and the ‘year of the rocket’) has been to bite the bullet and enrol in my last paper for my Masters of Management. I’m hoping that throwing out that I’m doing this so regularly will help hold me accountable to the amount of work I’m going to have to put in to my research. But also a part of the paper that I really like (go Massey University!) is that 30% of my final mark is determined by a series of reflective journals. I’m interested to see how reintegrating reflective journaling practise in an academic sense impacts on my own process of awareness and learning.
Now I just need to cross my fingers and hope that good reflective practise helps spawn some amazing insights into modern workplace management and organisational development!
Renée Robson 