The Power of Reflection

Techniques for Personal & Professional Growth

In a world moving faster than ever, where business decisions must be made in hours (or less), the ability to pause and reflect is a superpower. Whether you’re steering a company, managing a charity, or leading a team, the power of reflection is a quiet force that fuels growth, learning, resilience, and better decision-making.

But reflection isn’t just sitting in a comfy chair with a cuppa thinking about your day (though that helps). It’s a structured process that turns experiences—good or bad—into insight and action.

Let’s explore how to do that, using evidence-based reflection techniques like Kolb’s Learning Cycle, Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, and a few other powerful tools. We’ll also explore why reflection matters and provide simple tips to incorporate it into your daily and weekly routine.

Why use The Power of Reflection?

Before we dive into the methods, let’s ask the obvious: Why bother?

Reflection:

🔍 A study by Harvard Business School (Di Stefano et al., 2014) found that employees who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day reflecting performed 23% better after just 10 days.

1. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

David Kolb believed that learning is a process where knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.

🔁 The Cycle:

1. Concrete Experience – What happened?
2. Reflective Observation – What did you notice or feel?
3. Abstract Conceptualisation – What does it mean?
4. Active Experimentation – What will you do differently next time?

🧠 Example for a Business Owner:

• Experience: A strategy session with your team didn’t produce the ideas you’d hoped.
• Observation: The energy was low, and some team members were quiet.
• Conceptualisation: Perhaps the format didn’t allow for open dialogue or psychological safety.
• Experimentation: Next time, you introduce a warm-up exercise and split the team into smaller groups.

Kolb’s model is especially useful for developing leaders and managers, as it encourages turning everyday work into a learning lab.

2. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

Graham Gibbs created this 6-stage model for deeper analysis, commonly used in education, coaching, and professional development.

🔄 The Cycle:

1. Description – What happened?
2. Feelings – What were you thinking and feeling?
3. Evaluation – What was good or bad?
4. Analysis – What sense can you make of the situation?
5. Conclusion – What could you have done differently?
6. Action Plan – What will you do next time?

🧠 Example for a Charity CEO:

• Description: You led a board meeting that went off track.
• Feelings: Frustrated, unheard, slightly overwhelmed.
• Evaluation: The pre-read papers weren’t read; a trustee dominated the conversation.
• Analysis: Your agenda may have been too ambitious; you allowed interruptions.
• Conclusion: You need to reassert your chairing boundaries and check for engagement beforehand.
• Action Plan: Shorter agenda, prep call with dominant trustee, and clear time slots.

This model is ideal for complex interpersonal or leadership reflections—and particularly helpful if emotions played a role.

3. The CLEAR Reflection Model (Designed for leaders and coaches)

An alternative to Kolb and Gibbs, the CLEAR model is practical and more informal, often used in coaching and mentoring settings:

• C – Context: What is the situation?
• L – Learning: What did you learn?
• E – Emotion: How did you feel?
• A – Action: What action will you take?
• R – Results: What outcome do you want?

It’s shorter and snappier—great for quick journaling or WhatsApp-style self-check-ins.

4. The What? So What? Now What? Technique

This simple model (originating from Rolfe et al., 2001) is great for those who don’t want to overcomplicate things.

• What? – What happened?
• So What? – Why does it matter?
• Now What? – What will you do next?

🧠 Example for a Sales Director:

• What? – I lost a major client due to a delayed proposal.
• So What? – It exposed flaws in our internal comms and CRM reminders.
• Now What? – Implement a proposal-tracking workflow in HubSpot with Zapier reminders.

Basic Tips for Self-Reflection

You don’t need to write a novel to reflect meaningfully. Here are some quick-start tips:

Making Reflection Work at Work

🟢 Business Owners & Directors:

• Run a monthly leadership reflection meeting with your SLT (senior leadership team).
• Use a shared template (like Gibbs) and take turns sharing.

🟢 Charity Leaders:

• Encourage reflective practice among staff to improve decision-making and well-being.
• Consider adding reflective prompts to annual appraisals and team supervision.

🟢 Coaching & Mentoring Clients:

• Build reflection into every session—ask clients to complete a short reflection beforehand.
• Provide a written summary that includes key insights and next steps. (Which is part of our Accountability Coaching program)

Embedding Reflection in Your Organisation’s Culture

Reflection shouldn’t just be personal—it should live in your business culture. Try this:

The Power of Reflection is a Force Multiplier

To borrow a business analogy: Reflection is like sharpening the axe before chopping wood.

Too many leaders are stuck hacking away at problems with a blunt blade. Stepping back, asking the right questions, and learning from the everyday, you sharpen not only your judgement, but also your emotional intelligence, resilience, and confidence.

In business, charity, and life, it’s not just what you do, but what you learn from what you do, that separates good from great. The Power of Reflection works.

🧰 Handy Resources & Templates

• Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI)
• Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle Template (University of Edinburgh)
• Rolfe et al.’s Simple Reflection Model (What? So What? Now What?)