It’s all Personal… (Reflection that is)
Back in September I was nominated to share my "press pause story" with colleagues, which was an exciting opportunity to talk about how I had either taken time to "press pause" and reflect on something which delivered an improved outcome, or about something I maybe wished I had taken the time to do so. Reflection is something I consider to be of real value, and I am a real advocate of After Action Reviews (AAR) in the workplace, but this nomination also got me thinking about how I reflect and "press pause" in my personal life too.
It's easy to understand the benefits of reflection and AAR on projects, and in Agile working where this is really brought to life with a retrospective. But what opportunities do we create for ourselves to give permission to pause and reflect outside of the workplace? And can we say we make this reflection a habit or are these opportunities more likely to present themselves when we're facing challenges, self-doubt or our own unavoidable human errors. And what do we do with the outputs of this work?
But first, what is personal reflection?
For me, personal refection is about being accountable for my own effectiveness, learning and development. Now this is where I must confess I am actually (fairly) good at taking time out of each week to ask myself a few reflective questions:
Did I achieve my goals?
What went well?
What went less well?
Am I happy?
What am I grateful for?
However, in the spirit of true development, I wanted to challenge myself on what learning I was really gaining from this reflective practice and what I was doing to convert this reflection in to change, whether it be to my thinking or my behaviour. In other words, was I being accountable?
"personal refection is about being accountable for my own effectiveness, learning and development"
- Katie Allen
Measuring the impact
In order to measure this, I had the luxury of drawing from resources already collated by my colleagues in our AAR core team, and these were some of the questions I found to help:
- Do you seek feedback from others? CHECK
- Do you identify areas for improvement for yourself? CHECK
- Do you set improvement objectives for yourself? Urm…..
- Do you assess your progress against your target? Ahhh….
Immediately it was clear to me. I had begun to make good habits by including reflective practice as part of my weekly routine, but was I being accountable for the learning? Honestly, no.
This led me to get stuck in with some good old-fashioned root cause analysis. Why wasn't I applying the same thinking I would in the workplace? What was preventing me from making a commitment to myself, for things I had already identified I could be doing better?
Picture credit: pablographix - Fotolia
Key themes & Improvement Objectives
I began by going back through my weekly reflections and pulling out key themes. Why did I not achieve my goals? What things were consistently going well that I wanted to repeat? Or less well that I wanted to change, and what would that change look like? I arrived at the following:
I consistently fail to eat lunch away from my desk. This is something I was frankly terrible at when I was in the office, and now being at home with no-one else to chat to, I've just got worse. This is something I want to change, and as far as I can tell the only barrier is discipline. I have set a target to eat lunch away from my desk twice per week, every week, for one month.
When my time becomes limited the first thing I sacrifice is exercise. Like many, at the start of lockdown I was motivated to keep to a schedule and that included regular exercise. Whilst I'm still good at weekends, I consider weekdays "work time" and the boundaries of the start and end of the working day are somewhat fluid - basically I failed. Knowing what I do about myself, I have always been this way, so I need to allow some kindness within my discipline here, so I have set a target to exercise a minimum of twice in the week (with no offsetting by excessive exercise at a weekend!).
My mood at work is improved when I have time to focus, and significantly so when focusing on things that align with my values. I'm busy. We're all busy. I block out time in my diary weeks in advance, so I know I will always have time to focus and "do stuff" in each week. Then, as each week draws closer, I allow meetings and priorities to creep in to that time. Because I'm busy and it's a priority, and I can’t move anything else. Sound familiar? But if I don't protect at least some time, things won't get done. Unless I do them before or after work, or maybe at lunch… but I've just committed to exercise and eating! Oh yikes! I have set myself the objectives to schedule and keep time for either a) a specific task that I need to work on, or b) focus time amounting to a clear 2-hour block; at least once per week.
My mood at home is improved when I exercise. Reinforcement for my exercise target.
My self-confidence is impacted when I do not receive feedback. When it comes to projects, presentations, my stakeholders etc, I'm a regular feedback requester and this is good. But if I'm going to be honest (and perhaps vulnerable) where I can see I need improvement is in reinforcing my self-confidence that I'm credible among my peers and leaders. Yup, I have Imposter Syndrome too. This is clearly a bigger objective to break down, but my starting point is going to be a) dig in how I add value to person/goal/pillar, and b) get feedback to assess against my evaluations so I can reinforce or adjust.
So, what next…
In answer to my own questions I can see that, while I am doing ok at taking the time to reflect on my week, I clearly have room to improve when it comes to turning these thoughts in to real and tangible learning. I now have objectives to hold myself accountable, and to make sure I do this I have updated my weekly reflections to include:
Did I achieve my objectives and other goals for the week? (why/why not)
Lunches /2
Exercise /2
Protected time kept
Evaluations made / Feedback sought
What went well?
What went less well?
Am I happy?
What will I repeat/change next week?
What am I grateful for?
These are my thoughts and take-aways on the topic, and I would welcome any discussion, feedback or new ideas that anyone may have.