One of the main things I do as an executive coach is to help my clients think more deeply – about themselves, about their impact on those around them, about the choices they have. My goal as a coach is to help my clients to become better at noticing so that once our relationship ends, they are able and motivated to coach themselves. One way to do this is to develop a practice of regular self-reflection.
In her book, Where did you learn to behave like that? Sarah Hill offers a useful take when she says,
“In our context, we are not asking leaders to engage in therapy with us… We are simply asking them to look behind or beneath the behaviours they manifest in their leadership in order for them to develop their awareness, understanding and command of their more negative behavioural tendencies. We all know that in the absence of such reflection, leaders can easily create mayhem in the room, especially when the stakes are rising for them” (p.57)
What is reflective practice?
Simply put, reflective practice is about intentionally and regularly taking the time to think about you – your feelings, emotions, thoughts; the decisions you make, how you behave, your relationships and more.
In their development of the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS), Anthony Grant, John Franklin and Peter Langford identified three critical elements:
- We must need to and feel motivated to self-reflect.
- We must dedicate regular time in engaging in reflection.
- We need to gain some insight and clarity gained through reflection.
What are the benefits of reflective practice?
Iain McCormick cites the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) in his book, Reflective Practice for Coaches: A guidebook for advanced professional development,
“Reflective practice is seen as an essential part of skill development but it also enhances the ability of the learner to deal with stress and challenges, manage emotions, make effective decisions and develop productive relationships” (p.9)
Reflective practice might help us manage emotions
For example, in a study involving more than 400 military cadets in Italy, researchers found that self-efficacy in managing negative emotions at work was an important resource for workers in managing job-related stress (Alessandri et al, 2018). The researchers suggest that reflective learning and expressive writing are ways that can help employees manage negative emotions.
Reflective practice might improve our performance
A recent study investigated nursing students’ perceptions and experiences of reflective practice (Barbagallo, 2021). The findings suggest that engaging in high quality self-reflection can improve professional practice.
Reflective practice might boost our resilience
A study led by Monica Crane examined the impact self-reflection might have on our resilience. Reflective practice appeared to have a clear and positive impact on resilience, enabling the researchers to create a self-reflective framework to help people reflect and better understand how to navigate stressful moments. I’ve summarised this in the sketchnote below, which you can DOWNLOAD HERE
Reflective practice might support our wellbeing
A new study found daily reflective writing combined with cognitive reappraisal saw an increase in wellbeing and life satisfaction, and a decrease in psychological distress (Kam et al, 2024).
Reflective practice might help you be a better leader
A study led by Remy Jennings looked at the impact of daily reflective practice on leaders. Each morning, for 10 days, participants were asked to reflect upon the kind of leader they wanted to be. They specifically answered the following prompts each morning:
- What are some of my proudest leadership moments?
- What qualities do I have that make me a good leader, or will in the future?
- Imagine everything has gone as well as it possibly could in this leader role. What does that look like?
When leaders engaged in the morning reflection, they were more likely to report helping coworkers and providing strategic vision than on days they didn’t do the morning reflection. They also felt more ‘leader like’ on those days, perceiving they had more power and influence. This also extended to aspiring leaders.
In their book, Dancing at the Edge: Competence, culture and organization in the 21st century, Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester say,
“We now know that emotions provide an important and often sensitive and reliable compass with which to judge whether we should move towards or away from some course of action and also how to assess the appropriateness of our choices and aspirations. They are an important source of feedback about the external world” (p.103).
In summary, reflective practice can help us better process what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing. It helps us reflect on our emotions and responses to different situations. And when we understand ourselves better, it means we have the potential to be better leaders in our organisations, and better people in the world.
Different reflective practice approaches
Reflective practice using cognitive reappraisal
Cognitive reappraisal is a way for us to think differently about an event or situation that has affected us in some way. There are three essential elements to cognitive reappraisal:
- We need to challenge our interpretation of things. This means recognising potential thought distortions, such as catastrophising and all-or-nothing thinking, that usually underlie problematic automatic responses. A useful question to reflect on is, ‘what is the evidence for my belief?’
- We need to take a different perspective. This means exploring the challenge or situation from other points of view. For example, if you had a difficult interaction with one of your team, think about it from their perspective.
- We need to reframe the meaning we get. This might mean identifying the opposite meaning you originally had. For example, if your automatic response was to believe that someone was deliberately out to undermine you; you might reframe the meaning – once you’ve reflected – to instead think about the learning opportunity dealing with a challenging person gives you.
A study I mentioned in the previous section, found that daily writing and cognitive reappraisal helped people lessen their psychological distress, and improved their wellbeing and overall life satisfaction (Kam et al, 2024). In that study, the researchers asked people to:
- Write every day, no less than two hours before bedtime, for two weeks.
- Describe the most negative event they experienced that day.
- Use cognitive reappraisal to reinterpret the event so that it elicited less negative emotion, describing this in writing.
The Henley8
The Henley8 is outlined in Becoming a coach: The essential ICF guide (2nd edition), by Jonathan Passmore and Tracy Sinclair. The questions aren’t just useful for coaches. I think they are also relevant and useful for leaders. Think about a recent event or situation and answer each of the following questions:
- What did I observe?
- What was my response?
- What does this say about me personally?
- What does this tell me about myself as a coach or leader?
- What strengths does this offer?
- What are the potential pitfalls?
- What did I learn?
- What might I do differently next time?
Gibbs Reflective Cycle
The Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle was developed by Professor Graham Gibbs. It sets out a clear, step-by-step approach to reflecting on experiences to gain new insights and identify alternative ways of responding in the future. The importance of this is something psychologist, Michelle Minnikin, references in her book, Good Girl Deprogramming,
“Yet spending a short amount of time going over events can bring new learning from what has happened and help you build habits that will support you with similar situations in future” (p.73).
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle is particularly useful when reflecting on mistakes and things that failed. The model is discussed in Gibbs’ 1998 book, Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods and you can now access this for free via the Oxford Brookes University website.
Alternatively, here’s a sketchnote summary of Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle which you can DOWNLOAD HERE, if you want your own copy.
The Internal Mentor
I first came across the concept of ‘The Internal Mentor’ as a form of reflective practice, in Iain McCormick’s book, Reflective Practice for Coaches.
With this technique, you reflect by writing to your ‘wise self’ about a problem and ask for support and guidance. You then write a response back to yourself using all your knowledge, experience, and wisdom. Iain suggests the following questions can be helpful to reflect upon:
- How well am I applying what I have learned?
- How can I be a better coach/manager/leader?
- How can I keep up to date with best practice as a coach/ manager/ leader?
- How should I challenge my clients/staff when they just want to repeatedly vent?
- To what extent am I offering this organisation value for money?
The 30-minute weekly reflection
Brendon Burchard is one of the world’s best high-performance coaches. In his book, High Performance Habits: How extraordinary people become that way, he states that the best performers regularly reflect. Key is to not make it over-complicated. Instead, Brendon suggests scheduling in 30 minutes, once a week, answering the following three questions:
- What did I learn?
- What did I handle well?
- What do I deserve to pat myself on the back for?
Alternatively, you might want to answer different questions in your 30-minute weekly appointment with yourself. If so, here’s a collection of questions that I’ve collated into one place, that many of my coaching clients find helpful. If you want a copy of this sketchnote summary of questions, you can DOWNLOAD HERE.
Reflecting with others
You might prefer to reflect with others, either in addition to reflecting alone, or as an alternative. A study by Yonjoo Cho and Toby Marshall Egan looked at the impact of action learning – where we learn as part of a small group, perhaps as part of a leadership development programme.
They found that strategies such as a 10-minute “break space” at the start of an action learning set meeting, can be a useful way for members to reflect ahead of the discussion. Other strategies they identified as useful for reflection included problem exploration with others, getting feedback from others in the group, reflecting out loud in public, and being interviewed by the action learning facilitator at the end of the programme.
Creating a thinking environment
Whether you’re thinking by yourself, or you’re working with others – such as a coach, or an action learning set – the aim is to develop the quality of your thinking and observations. Time to Think, a leadership development and coaching company, believe that:
“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first.
The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking.”
They have set out the 10 components of a thinking environment, which it’s worth reading about as much of it supports helpful reflective practice.
New to reflective practice? Here are my top five tips
- Find a time and place where you won’t be disturbed
- Don’t worry about editing, or spelling and grammar.
- Write only for yourself, not for anyone else.
- Write continuously for a set amount of time. Use a timer. When first starting, it can be helpful just to do 5 minutes.
- Write about something personal and important to you. It should have meaning for and matter to you.
Why not choose one of the approaches described in this article and give it a go for a few weeks? I’d love to know what insights and learning you get from your experimentation with reflective practice.
Post author: Dr Hayley Lewis. First published on the HALO Psychology blog 10 March 2025.
Did you find this post helpful? I’d love to know, either pop a comment below or drop me a note on LinkedIn. If you have any colleagues that you feel should read this, too, please share it with them. I’d really appreciate it.
I also have a monthly newsletter which is a compilation of blog posts, helpful research, and reviews of books and podcasts – all aimed at helping managers and leaders become more confident in handling a range of workplace issues. You can SUBSCRIBE HERE
If you liked this post, you might also like these:
5 ways to ensure you get the most out of training and development
10 leadership skills all leaders need
The number one priority for a manager? Self-awareness
REFERENCES
2 comments