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Reflective Practice: Growing in Competence and Confidence

Kristyn Carmichael and Michael Lang

Summary

  • The principal objective of reflection is to identify aspects of one's practice that are successful and constructive and those that are off the mark and unhelpful.
  • Reflective practice is a multi-step process that helps practitioners explore puzzling situations to discover potential solutions.
  • Structured questions can guide practitioners to reflect on critical moments, create hypotheses, plan strategies, and pinpoint any lessons.
Reflective Practice: Growing in Competence and Confidence
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As legal practitioners, we often believe that through experience we will gain the resources, knowledge, and tools to be effective for our clients. But there is a weak relationship between the number of years of experience, reputation, and actual observed mastery. In other words, doing something repeatedly for a long time does not automatically make you good at it. Malcom Gladwell suggests that mastery in any endeavor requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. That’s a lot of hours for golfers at the driving range, dancers in the studio, and mediators in the meeting room. Experience unquestionably sharpens our skills and deepens our knowledge. But Gladwell explains that mastery also requires regular and systematic reflection in order to learn from those hours of experience.

Relying on experience alone can be counterproductive. Michael Jordan observed, “you can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.” In fact, practitioners may find themselves on autopilot as they handle yet another case that seems much like the hundreds of cases before.

To truly find mastery as dispute resolution professionals, we must use our experiences as learning opportunities to sharpen our skills and deepen our knowledge. Reflective Practice is a critical exercise that has a practical objective: help practitioners to build competence, resilience, resourcefulness, and effectiveness.

What is Reflective Practice?

Informal reflection, in contrast to Reflective Practice, is a descriptive, wide-ranging, generally casual, and objective recounting of a practice incident or a mediation session. The principal objective of reflection is to identify aspects of one's practice that were successful and constructive and those that were off the mark and unhelpful. Any insights occasioned by reflection lead to decisions to repeatedly use the productive interventions and abstain from relying on those that proved to be ineffective. With informal reflection, there is little, if any, interest in analyzing the reasons for success or failure.

Reflective Practice is a method of learning from and through our practice. Reflective Practice is systematic, focused on puzzling experiences, structured, subjective (looking at our perceptions and reactions), and analytical. A key objective of Reflective Practice is exploring the underlying reasons for the puzzling experience and discovering techniques to respond to that experience or to a similar situation in the future. As with the mediation process, the exploration relies on the practitioner’s knowledge and experience, leading to self-generated discoveries. The resulting insights and lessons are practical, relevant, and lasting. This analytical process often involves an examination of the practitioner’s beliefs and assumptions, as well as the role of these elements in making practice choices.

Breaking out of Habitual Thinking

Mediators learn a set of responses to a predictable series of behaviors. They grow comfortable with and confident in those patterns of responses, and often these interventions are helpful and effective. There is, however, a risk that this pattern of actions becomes habitual and automatic. A sequence of mental action frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself.

When something surprising occurs, the patterns may no longer succeed. How do practitioners respond in those unexpected moments? Are they able to create a novel response to fit the circumstances? Do practitioners redouble their efforts, dismiss the event as an aberration, or find comfort in the notion that people are unique, fallible, and don’t always find agreement? Christopher Johns observed, “Reflective Practice is the antidote to complacency, habit and blindness.”

Whether in the moment or following a mediation session, reflective practitioners identify any surprising or puzzling moments, critically assess the source of the problem, reconsider why their approach was either helpful or off the mark, then use that knowledge to seek another path that might be more productive and successful. Reflective Practice can be useful in almost every profession. It is particularly valuable for dispute resolution and legal professionals who commonly work as solo practitioners or have limited access to feedback from others. The lack of practical feedback can lead to complacency and a habitual and automatic reliance on a rigid set of practice techniques and strategies. When that occurs, practice becomes stale and hackneyed.

The Reflective Practice Exercise

The process of learning through Reflective Practice is cyclical, unfolding like a spiral, continually expanding upward, building on insights achieved.

So how does the process work? Reflective practice begins by identifying a puzzling practice moment. This may include a surprising or unsettling situation, an unexpected success, anticipation of failure based on past experiences, a highly emotional party, or stubborn resistance to creative interventions. The objective is to become curious about the puzzling situation and not judge, minimize, or dismiss the surprising circumstance.

Next, a practitioner considers what is puzzling and why, identifying the practitioner’s unique take on what occurred. They should consider the general context in which the surprising situation occurred with a particular focus on interactions or behaviors that may have led to this moment. What insights could be gained from this situation, or what lessons could be learned?

Practitioners then explore whether any beliefs, values, theories, or assumptions have contributed to the puzzling moment; this involves bringing a subjective perspective to the situation, reactions the practitioner may have experienced, and the challenge it posed.

This exploration will lead to discoveries or potential solutions to the original question the experience had provoked. Will these discoveries lead to implementing practical steps, either in this specific case or in future cases, or both?

Questions for Independent Reflective Practice

When working through the Reflective Practice process individually, it can be helpful to stick with a structured set of questions. The following are questions to guide the reflective process.

Critical Moments

  • Were there any unusual, surprising, or puzzling situations?
  • What happened? and why was the situation perplexing?
  • What were my thoughts, physical reactions, and impressions?
  • Did I respond to these situations, and if so, in what way?

Working Hypothesis and Experiments

  • Prior to the start of the activity, did I develop a provisional explanation (working hypothesis) to explain the nature of, basis for, and reasons why the conflict remains unresolved?
  • If so, what was that explanation, and how did I make use of it?

Strategy and Interventions

  • What was my overall approach, and what led me to this strategy?
  • What tactics and techniques did I use to implement the strategy?
  • Were my actions helpful to the participants or off the mark?
  • What clues pointed to the usefulness or ineffectiveness of the strategy?

Lessons Learned

  • What did I learn about from the reflection?
  • In what ways can I use the lessons in subsequent interventions or in future sessions with these and other clients?

Reflective Practice Groups

Reflective Practice groups follow the same method and are occasionally self-led, though most rely on an experienced Reflective Practice facilitator. Within the group the reflective process begins when one of the group members offers to discuss a surprising moment in a mediation. The facilitator asks questions inviting the group member to describe what occurred and why the situation is unsettling. Becoming aware of these reasons is a first step in discovering answers.

At some point in the conversation, group members join in to ask questions, resisting the temptation to offer solutions or opinions, with a commitment that mirrors self-determination in mediation. Questions are meant to support the individual’s self-exploration and self-discovery, not to second-guess or judge the situation. The purpose is not to encourage the individual to do or understand anything specific. Group members are also not there for reassurance. Instead, they are meant to provide a confidential and trusted space in which the individual can use questioning and curiosity to grow their own understanding of the dilemma that puzzles them.

As in mediation, the reflective process recognizes that the most relevant and helpful solutions are those discovered by the presenting group member. The goal is to help the presenting group member engage in a process of self-exploration leading to self-discovery. The process continues until the group member discovers insights and lessons that address the practice dilemma.

Takeaways

The Reflective Practice group process can be an invaluable tool for success and growth in a dispute resolution practice, as shared by fellow practitioners. The authors’ Reflective Practice group members have found the process to be helpful in many ways, including:

  • Better ability to think or “respond” usefully in the moment.
  • Sharpening the use of available mediation tools.
  • Learning vicariously through other group members’ dilemmas.
  • Thinking through the commonalities of mediation situations and finding solutions that help across mediations.
  • Determining why the mediator did or said something in the mediation and what resulted from that action or statement.
  • Improving mental processing skills leading to more incisive and responsive actions
  • Examining and understanding the assumptions that shape practice choices.
  • Generating practice routines flexible enough to respond to surprising situations.

Reflective Practice is an invaluable tool to develop competence, confidence, and resilience, and, in so doing, to become more effective and successful practitioners. This process is useful across a variety of professions, and it can help individuals become more adept, resourceful, and effective in their work by focusing on improving the quality of their professional practice. Ultimately, systematic incorporation of this valuable practice can lead to genuine learning and ultimately to mastery.

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