Self-Reflection for Personal Effectiveness:Insights from Literature

 

Shweta Jha

Associate Professor, Apeejay School of Management, New Delhi, India

 

ABSTRACT:

Self-reflection is a unique tool for life-long learning. It helps individuals learn from their experiences, identify problems and design and plan alternative solutions. Thus self-reflection enhances problem solving and decision making competencies among individuals which consistently lead to personal effectiveness. In organizational context, managers get things done by using these competencies. The managers, who just focus on action sans reflection, tend to commit identical mistakes time and again. Although there are not many empirical evidences to link self-reflection and personal effectiveness, the extant literature indicate a subtle connection between the two. This paper is based on existing literature on self- reflection and personal effectiveness to establish a relation. The paper provides workable insights on value, process and internalization of self-reflection as a trait which individuals may like to practice as routine in order to accomplish effectiveness in organizational, social and family contexts. Thus, this conceptual paper has tremendous practical implications for managers as well as academics. 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Reflection is ‘an active persistent, and careful considerations of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends’ (Dewey, 1933). Reflective thinking is stirred by challenging experiences that lead to a sense of confusion in dealing with an issue or a problem (Dewey, 1933).

 

In reflective thought, a person examines underlying assumptions, core beliefs, and knowledge while drawing connections between seemingly dissimilar pieces of information (Reeves, Torres and Hassan, 2017). Also, reflective processes are automatically activated when one experiences events, receive feedback, or evaluate actions that are contrary to expected outcomes or self-perceptions (Ellis, Mendel and Nir, 2006). Interestingly, conclusions prompted by reflection enable an individual to critique his/her past and current experiences for operational effectiveness in future (Daudelin, 1996; Kolb, 1984). This invariably happens because the individual consciously trains his/her mind to look for lapses in doing a particular thing and avoid them in future.

 

However, on a larger canvas of this cognitive process, self-reflection helps people in developing sensitive considerations or reconceptualization of events (Nesbit, 2012). Also, reflection is a perceptual activity aimed at scrutinizing one’s own actions in a certain situation and involving a review of the experience, an analysis of cause and effects and drawing of conclusions concerning future actions.The most useful reflection involves conscious consideration of and analysis of beliefs and actions for learning –an opportunity to pause amidst chaos, untangle and sort through observations and experiences, consider multiple possible interpretations and create meaning (Porter, 2017).  

 

Reflection as a means of learning has long been viewed as an essential precondition to effective decision making, especially in scenarios filled with ambiguity (Pee, et al., 2000).Reflective learning is a process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern triggered by an experience which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self and  which results in a changed conceptual perspective (Boyd and False, 1983). Revisiting experiences to improvise understanding or create new meaning involves a number of cognitive and affective processes, including dealing with fuzzy ideas to reconcile obscurities and inconsistencies (Maclellan, 2004). Besides, reflection can also augment self-consciousness and self-actualization (Bennis and Nanus, 1997), the two attributes necessary for higher degrees of personal effectiveness. Both self-consciousness and self-actualization unleash passionate drives to seek alternative ways of doing things, creative problem solving and accomplish results.  

 

Personal effectiveness is closely linked with self-efficacy and self-confidence. Reflection helps individuals by enhancing their self-efficacy and self-confidence in an unusual way. When individuals reflect, they demonstrate an indomitable ability and courage to endure social process to always conform to the norms, to be critical of own decisions and worldviews, to take a vulnerable positions, to ask for honest feedback, and to assess their own performance (van Woerkom, Nijhof, and Nieuwenhuis, 2002). Hence, the organizations should encourage their managers to spare time for self-reflection as part of routine so that their self-efficacy and self-confidence get a positive boost and they are able to perform their call of duties with greater effectiveness.

 

Self-reflection helps individuals in holistic development. People who regularly reflect on their experiences tend to be far more successful than those who focus on actions alone. This enables individuals to re-invent themselves time and again by virtue of their flexibility to overcome their rigid worldviews. Those who do not reflect more often are unlikely to question themselves, their own actions, or their thought processes in the wake of failures. Rather, such people look for faults outside and refuse to examine whether any internal factors led to conceptual or implementation failures. Such a scenario has a spiral impact resulting in blame games and loss of mutual trust in an organizational context where the real issues remain unresolved and may cause similar disasters in future. Hence the value of reflection needs to be understood in right earnest by the top management so that it becomes part of the organizational culture. 

 

Learning from experiences through self-reflection may also enhance the level of job satisfaction, job involvement and overall engagement with organization as it is closely related with cognitive and affective processes. Opening up from within through reflective practices may help the individuals look at the organizational practices, policies, etc. in right perspective. Although reflection is a within-person process, it is likely to generate empathy, conscientiousness, life stances, and positive outlook on organizational processes, subsystems and culture. Unfortunately, the significance of self-reflection has remained under cover in most of the organizations and as such they have failed to leverage this learning tool which indeed costs little.

    

Self-reflection Processes and Practices:

Reflective learning involves reflecting on our actions or self-concept through an objective lens (Cunliffe, 2004). It is imperative that people learn from their experiences through self-reflection in order to deal with similar scenarios effectively. Daudelin (1996) has suggested a four stage model of self-reflection process for personal effectiveness delineated as under:

·      Stage I: Individual tries to objectively recount the event as well as actions of people involved.

·      Stage II: Individual tries to analyse why things happened as they occurred and why people in the manner they did.

·      Stage III: Individual tries to understand how things could have been handled in a better way in the given situation as also whether it could have been handled in a different way.

·      Stage IV: Individual tries to figure out what should be done once the episode in question is already over i.e. he/she makes plans for future action in case identical situation arises again.

 

Self-reflection is not limited to reflective thinking alone. It involves thinking, writing, articulating experiences and finally organising the experiences so that some sense can be made out of the whole process (Gray, 2007). Self-reflection is a three-layered process: reflecting alone, reflecting with one other and reflecting in group although the first two has been considered superior to the third one in terms of learning insights (Daudelin, 1996). However, Raelin (2008) observes that public reflection helps individuals distinguish themselves from their social context. Thus, in case of differences between personal morality and social morality, individuals will save themselves from guilt consciousness.  

 

Socratic Method remains the most efficient way to stimulate reflection as structured dialogue with a trusted partner help the individuals respond to guiding questions, organize their thoughts and articulate their learnings (Reeves, Torres and Hassan, 2017). Reflecting with one other is always more productive than reflecting alone. However, one can develop a unique capability of self-reflection without any partner by adopting a structured monologue in which he/she trains self to ask some difficult questions and respond to them in an objective manner and then articulating the learnings. With practice, individuals can master the art of reflecting alone using Socratic method by playing the devil’s advocate in monologues and coming out objective assessments of complex situations. Many top management professionals have set aside time for self-reflection as routine. Organizations need to consider allocating some fixed time during the week for everyone to indulge in self-reflection as part of routine. Thus, organizations can foster a culture of self-reflection.    

 

Peltier, Hay and Drago (2005) have developed a non-reflection-reflection continuum model to explain the process of self-reflection. They assert that people move from habitual action which can be termed as non-reflection (surface learning) to understanding where learning takes place without any real-life experience to reflection and intensive reflection which result in deep learning. Table 1 provides an overview of non-reflection-reflection continuum. Reflection and intensive reflection are high order learning and change processes that are often difficult to reach (Mezirow, 1998). However, organizations need to encourage their managers and leaders to indulge in reflection and intensive reflection in structured manner for better outcomes.

 

Table 1: Non-reflection-Reflection Continuum (Peltier, Hay and Drago, 2005)

Non-reflection (Surface Learning)                                   Reflection (Deep Learning)
Habitual Action	Understanding	Reflection	Intensive Reflection
Minimal thought and engagement, correlated with a surface approach to learning –specific tasks are treated as unrelated activities, memorization is emphasized which embodies an attitudinal state of unreflectiveness	Focuses on comprehension without relation to one’s personal experience or other learning situations. Book learning as being understanding –oriented in that the learner need only comprehend the read materials. Most of what is learnt stays within the boundaries of pre-existing perspectives.	Learning is related to personal experience and other knowledge. It also involves challenging assumptions, seeking alternatives, identifying areas for improvement. Shows active and conscious engagement, characteristics commonly associated with a deep approach to learning.	Intensive reflection is highest level of reflective learning hierarchy, and learners become aware of why they think, perceive or act as they do. Learner might alter or even completely change firmly held beliefs and ways of thinking. Intensive reflection is thus seen as involving a change in personal beliefs.

 

Vince (2002) provides a comprehensive framework of coalescing practice of reflection at organizational level, thus shifting the focus from individual to collective reflection. ‘Organizing reflection’ a phrase coined by Vince implies questioning established assumptions, bringing power relations into view, contributing to a shift from individual to group, and helping to create more democratic modes of managing and organizing (Vince, 2002). Table 2 provides an overview of the framework proposed by Vince. This framework is based on involvement of the top management in facilitating a structured reflection across the organization at individual, group and organizational levels. 

 

Table 2: Organizing Reflection: Examples of Reflective Practices for Organizational Learning and Change (Vince, 2002)

	Individual	Group	Organizational
Peer Consultancy Groups	Making connections for the self: review and reflection underpinned by friendship or mutuality	Making connections with others: utilizing the impact of small groups as sites for interpersonal communication and dialogue	Making connections with the organization: reflection on the ways in which the organization has been internalized
Organizational Role Analysis	Organizational role analysis: understanding the connections between the person, the person in role, and the ‘organization in the mind’	Role analysis groups: the ways in which roles and understanding of roles interweave with the organizational dynamics enacted in a group	‘Role’ provides the framework within which person and organization meet
Communities of Practice	Involvement: providing personal experience of organizing for political action	Engagement: experience of subsystems, moving across boundaries, the importance of inter-network communication	Establishment: experience of power relations as they react/respond for or against communities of practice
Group Relations Conference	Experiencing and rethinking authority, and the consequences of leadership and followership   Relations between the person, role and the ‘organization in the mind’	Experience of defensive mechanisms, avoidance strategies, projective identification, experience of organizing into subsystems, belonging, representing, looking across boundaries   Relations across the boundaries of self/other and of subsystems	Experiencing the ways in which institution becomes established through collective emotional experience, politics, leadership, authority, and transformation   The relations between the internal and external establishment

 

CONCLUSION:

Managers need personal effectiveness in order to succeed at their respective workplace. Personal effectiveness revolves around positive psychology. It is all about the abilities to set objectives, motivate self and others, work in ambiguous scenarios, change track when things are not working out on expected lines. Personal effectiveness covers abilities of the individuals to question self and others, be responsive to both internal and external environment, and judiciously guarding their emotions. Above all, it is the competence to succeed against all odds imbued with never give-up attitude and extreme resilience.

 

Personal effectiveness, in turn, comes from self-reflection which enhances managers’ abilities to question their own rulebooks, sentiments and responses and determine their future course of actions in an appropriate manner. Individuals who fail to reflect often commit identical mistakes time and again as they simply ignore vital lessons arising out of their own experiences. Self-reflections help the managers in taking decisions in sync with learnings from prior experiences. Indeed, experiences are the most powerful tutors and we can leverage this by practicing self-reflection as habit, more as part of daily routine. 

 

It is an opportune time for contemporary organizations across the globe to take up the practice of self-reflection quite seriously and blend it with people strategies so that they are able to gain profusely from this competitive advantage. As such, conceptual skills are now in great demand. Besides, innovativeness is another game changer. Self-reflection may not only boost the conceptual skills of the employees but also enhance their innovativeness. In spite of being so valuable, it requires least investment as compared to run of the mill training budgets. Besides, it is very simple to build a culture of self-reflection in any organization. It may start at the top and spread across the organization with appropriate HR intervention so that self-reflection is practiced in true spirit and does not get stuck at the rumination stage.

 

 

 

REFERENCE:

1.       Bennis, W. and Nanus, B.(1997). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York: Harper and Row. Boyd, E M. and False, A. W. (1983). Reflective learning: Key to learning from experience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23 (2), 99-117.

2.       Cunliffe, A. L. (2004). On becoming a critically reflexive practitioner. Journal of Management Education, 28, 407-428.

3.       Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relations of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: D C Heath, p. 118.

4.       Daudelin, M. W. (1996).Learning from experience through reflection. Organizational Dynamics, Autumn issue, 36-48.

5.       Ellis, S., Mendel, R. and Nir, M. (2006). Learning from successful and failed experience: The moderating role of kind of after-event review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 669-680. 

6.       Gray, D. E. (2007).Facilitating management learning: Developing critical reflection through reflective tools. Management Learning, 38, 495.

7.       Kolb, D. A. (1984).Experiential learning.Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Maclellan, E. (2004). How effective is the academic essay? Studies in Higher Education, 29 (1), 75-89.

8.       Mezirow, J. (1998). On critical reflection. Adult Education Quarterly, 48, 185-198.

9.       Nesbit, P. L. (2012). The role of self-reflection, emotional management of feedback, and self-regulation processes in self-directed leadership. Human Resource Development Review, 11 (2), 203-226.

10.     Peltier, J. W., Hay, A. and Drago, W. (2005).The reflective learning continuum: Reflecting on reflection. Journal of Marketing Education, 27 (3), 250-263.

11.     Pee, B., Woodman, T., Fry, H., and Davenport, E. S. (2000). Practice-based learning: Views in the development of a reflective learning tool. Medical Education, 34, 754-768. 

12.     Porter, J. (2017). Why you should make time for self-reflection. Harvard Business Review, March 21, 2017. Raelin, J. A. (2008). Emancipatory discourse and liberation. Management Learning, 39, 519-540.   

13.     Reeves, M., Torres, R. and Hassan, F. (2017).How to realign lost art of reflection. Harvard Business Review, September 25, 2017. vanWoerkom, M., Nijhof, W. J. and Nieuwenhuis, L.F. M.(2002). Critical reflecting working behaviour: A Survey. Journal of European Industrial Training, 28 (8), 375-383.

14.     Vince, R. (2002). Organizing reflection. Management Learning, 33 (1), 63-78.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Received on 25.03.2018                Modified on 11.04.2018

Accepted on 30.04.2018           ©A&V Publications All right reserved