We’ve covered a lot of material around communicating with others.  Communicating with yourself is equally important and reflection and feedback are essential to the process of personal learning and development.

Reflection

Professions where reflection is encouraged and incorporated into practice are largely academic and health care fields.  However, anyone interested in how to progress in their lives – personally or professionally – can benefit from reflection.

Traditionally a private experience and activity, this kind of self-analysis is part of any performance review in an employment situation.  This is more than a journal or diary of what happened; it is an opportunity to celebrate your growth and chart a path forward.

Types and Methods of Reflection

We conduct superficial reflection when we recount the events or describe an experience and stick to the details.  This is strictly a narrative of the incident with little or no opinion or evaluation of the events prior, during, or after. These are useful records for accident reports, but don’t qualify as reflective practice.

When you step back from an experience and contemplate your actions, your thinking process, and knowledge level, you are reflecting a little more deeply.  This level finds you thinking about the process, and how you felt about the experience.

To dive deeply into reflection, you build on a recount of the event by including an exploration of how the incident shaped how you think about yourself or what you do, and the impact it has on your relationship with others.

Two methods of reflection can assist you in this process.  Adapt the DEAL method (Fundamentals of Reflective Practice, n.d.), designed for critical thinking in an academic environment, and apply four steps: Describe, Examine, Apply to Learn.  Identify and describe what happened then move on to examine the factors that contributed to the event both actual and attitudes.  Use those elements to determine how you can apply the results of your reflection to learn from the experience.

Driscoll (2007) developed the “What, So What, Now What” approach for reflective practice (Fundamentals of Reflective Practice, n.d.) to streamline the process.  Determine and describe the event, explore who was involved, how things unfolded and why, what that means to you, how you think and feel about the incident, and how you will approach similar situations and work.  The “Now What” is an essential part of the strategy as it includes your plan for implementing an action for you to follow as a result of the experience.

That’s reflective practice in action.

Feedback

Like reflection, feedback is a useful element to change course in your development.  Unlike reflection, another person such as a colleague or supervisor provides feedback.  Whether you are giving or receiving, particular skills are necessary to give and receive feedback effectively.  First, you need to understand that type of feedback you are to provide: informal, formal, formative, summative.

Informal is usually verbal, light on detail or specifics, and is very brief.  When a teacher tells you after class, “You did well on that presentation”, that is an example of informal feedback.  For it to be effective there must be a generous with time, private, motivating, moving forward, type of approach.

Like the name, Formal feedback is traditionally in writing so there is a record and it is usually part of a review process.  It provides more detail and specific examples and an action plan or corrective measures with deadlines.

Shifting to a focus on the learning or development of a skill, we find Formative feedback.  This kind of feedback is instructive and aims to provide direction for improvement.  There may be no or minimal grade associated with this kind of feedback as it is meant to help in the development of your understanding and skill.

Summative feedback is that final review which is traditionally done with reference to a rubric or formal assessment.

Feedback usually follows one of three methods.  There is the Sandwich approach where you start with something good, something that needs improvement, and something the reviewer appreciated.  Another way of providing feedback is to review the action step-by-step in Chronological format.  This can be very effective when it is necessary to find where something went wrong in either action or assumption.

The Pendleton method, developed in 1984, takes a four-step approach.  After you verify the receiver wants the feedback, you use open-ended questions and reflection to reach conclusions.  Ask first what went well.  Move on to what could have been done differently.  Ask the receiver to identify what could be improved.  End the feedback with asking how – what actions – could be done to accomplish the improvements (Hardavella et al., 2017).

As with every communication situation, there are potential barriers to giving and receiving feedback.

Know your audience, context, and potential response to minimize those barriers.  Feedback should be timely; soon after an incident or at regular intervals like an annual review or part of a training process.  Feedback must be specific and clear.  Feedback needs to be respectful of each participant personally and professionally.  Private delivery of feedback demonstrates that respect, especially if corrective measures are necessary.

To Give

Make sure your feedback is well received by taking the time to plan.  Plan the meeting in advance, so the recipient is ready to talk and has time to prepare as well.  Ask open-ended questions to make the meeting participatory and listen to the answers.  Keep your comments specific, clear and goal oriented.  Limit the number of concerns or comments.  Minimize blame language and focus on future actions.  Listen to what the individuals says and what their body language says: do not continue if they are uncomfortable or distressed or have otherwise shut down.

To Receive

When receiving feedback the most important thing is to listen.  It can be overwhelming to receive any kind of negative information about your performance.  Ask open-ended questions to clarify comments.  Ask for examples or specifics. Take time to reflect on the discussion: you don’t have to respond immediately.  It is also a good practice to be pro-active and request feedback.

Examples of how to give and receive feedback can be found in reality competition shows such as The Great British Baking Show, The Great Canadian Baking Show, and the glass-blowing competition Blown Away.  The participants demonstrate how self-reflection and feedback help them improve their abilities for the next episode.

References and Resources

Essential Guide for Giving and Receiving Feedback. (n.d.) Virtual Speech.  https://virtualspeech.com/blog/advice-for-giving-and-receiving-feedback

Fundamentals of reflective practice (reflective writing). (n.d.) The Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre. https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/asc/sites/files/asc/public/shared/Fundamentals%20of%20Reflective%20Practice%20%28Reflective%20Writing%29.pdf

Hardavella, G., Aamli-Gaagnat, A., Saad, N., Rousalova, I., and Sreter, K.B. (December 2017). How to give and receive feedback effectively.  Breathe (Sheff).  13(4): 327-333. DOI; 10.1183/20734735.009917

Reflective Practice. (2022). Southern Cross University.  https://libguides.scu.edu.au/reflectivepractice/types

Reflective Practices. (2022). Skills You Need: Helping You Develop Life Skills.  https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/reflective-practice.html