Reflection
“Reflection is mindful consideration of what has happened, is happening or will happen.”
Until we were impacted by the pandemic, I was lucky enough to be part of an excellent cohort at Hult Ashridge Business School exploring, in depth and breadth as you would expect, coaching supervision.
My goals were as much about continuing to enrich my coaching practice as qualifying as a supervisor although I was pleased to discover an aptitude for the latter. There is something special about a group of seasoned, experienced coaches exploring topics together. Powerful, enlightening and very, very challenging.
There are various strands of insight for me and the first one is looking at reflection and quality of reflection. I become very intrigued when we move into reflexivity, that is ‘how you reflect on your ability to reflect’. Given reflecting, and creating the space for reflection, must be a core competency for any supervisor, this seems particularly relevant.
I’m not going to try and do this justice in a short-ish blog but my feeling is that a brief exploration of reflection might be of interest to others and also gives another window onto my specific coaching practice.
I was really taken by another quote which the faculty shared with us:
“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”
“Carefully watch your thoughts…” How fascinating. To what extent do I do that? Or do you? It seems to be a route into unsullied reflection, does it not?
And which other routes might there be?
I risk diving into the world of Michael Carroll here but I’ll let you do that for yourself if you so desire, indeed if the diagram below piques your interest. I can certainly commend his thinking.
Six modes of reflection
Michael Carroll
I’m choosing instead to keep this allowably simple, as is my wont. How’s about the following as ideas for enhancing your awareness of the supervisee’s reality:
Create curiosity (just as in coaching)
Remove interference and create flow (ditto)
Choose to be confused (“explain this to me as if I’m a child”)
Flirt with different hypotheses (and prove or disprove them together)
Suspend all judgment
(Learn to) be empathetic and see events from different perspectives
Challenge yourself - not just the person in front of you
Be alert to your feelings and bodily sensations (use them as data - act on the data)
Connect items of information across the session
Allow discomfort and uncertainty to be your friends - embrace them
If a desirable goal of supervision is that the supervisor can fully picture their supervisees’ clients (i.e. the people being coached) then I am comfortable that these are excellent routes into reflection.
And if one element of facilitating true learning is ‘to reflect, critically reflect and critically self-reflect’ then these simplified ideas would seem to be worthy of exploration.
What do you think?
My best, Tony
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”