[00:00:00] Rob Hills: This is the Balanced Leader podcast, the podcast that helps leaders elevate their wellbeing and create healthier workplaces. My name is Rob Hills and I’m your leadership and wellbeing coach. Welcome back to part two on reflective practice. In part one of this two part series, I introduce you to reflective practice, what it is, what the benefits are and how to do it.

[00:00:29] If you haven’t listened to part one already. I strongly recommend that you go back and check it out first. It really is a good foundation for what we’re going to be talking about today. In today’s episode, as promised, I’m going to introduce you to a more formal tool called the Gibbs Cycle, which is going to take your reflective practice to a whole new level.

[00:00:51] The Gibbs Reflective Cycle, as it is formally known as, was developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988. It’s basically a model that was designed for more structured reflection. It’s widely used in the education sector, healthcare, and for leadership development to help individuals learn from their experience. And if you remember the quote from John Dewey from part one, we don’t learn from experience, we learn by reflecting on experience.

[00:01:20] Now, if you’re a more visual learner, I encourage you to check out the image of the Gibbs cycle on my website as a reference. There is a link in the show notes to make this super easy for you to find. The Gibbs cycle basically has six stages or prompts to help guide your thinking and to ensure that you’re looking at things from all the different angles.

[00:01:40] So let’s go through the six stages first, and I’ll give you a brief description of each. The first stage is description. So what actually happened in the event that you’re reflecting on? This is where you give a factual account of the information at hand, noticing any subjective stories that are trying to come through.

[00:01:59] It’s important here to try and remain as objective as possible. So stick to the facts and basically give a recount of what happened. There’s going to be time for subjective interpretations later on. The next stage is feelings. What were you thinking and feeling, both before the event and then during it?

[00:02:19] Often we don’t look back at how our mood may have impacted the way things played out. So for example, if you had a fight with your spouse before you went into work, and the first thing you came across was this event at work, that still may be playing in the back of your mind. Maybe we couldn’t find a car park near the office, so we had to drive around in circles for half an hour.

[00:02:38] That’s going to lead to some sort of frustration, and you may bring that into the conversation. These things could have shaped your feelings during the event, even though we don’t think about them at the time. And also reflect on what you were thinking and feeling during the event. So, what are the feelings that were coming up for you?

[00:02:56] what made you react a certain way, for example. The next stage is evaluation. What was good about the situation and what was bad about it? We tend to think just because overall the situation didn’t go as well as we would have liked that everything must have been bad, but that’s not always the case. For example, the fact that you had the difficult conversation despite its outcome is a really good thing because at least now it’s out in the open.

[00:03:23] So try and jot down some good things about the situation and also the negative things as well. The next stage is analysis. What sense can you make of the situation? Here, I encourage you to be a little bit more subjective. As you try and find out exactly what happened, you can imagine yourself as a detective, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.

[00:03:43] What happened here? Why did it happen? Who was involved? Look for clues as to why the other person responded or behaved the way they did. You can spend a little bit more time in this situation just going back and forth. The second last step is conclusion. What else could you have done in the moment to change the course of the outcome?

[00:04:03] Now, if the situation was negative, What steps could you have taken to bring things back on track? I know for me, sometimes when a person starts to escalate, like emotionally, I start to escalate as well. So one of the things maybe you can think about is, could I have regulated my emotions just a little bit more?

[00:04:23] Could I have stopped in the moment and taken a breath or a pause? and try to approach the situation a little bit differently. Or could I have even said, this is probably not going that well, maybe we should come back to it when we’ve both taken the heat out of the situation a bit. The last step is action plan.

[00:04:41] And this is where you want to ask yourself, if the situation arose again, what could you do differently next time to achieve a better result? What steps could you take before the situation to make sure things turn out better? And what steps could you take during the conversation to make sure things turn out better?

[00:04:59] The idea is to use this model as a guide to write about each of the different prompts in a journal or a notepad. Each prompt is a guide for what you can write about to reflect on what you noticed about the event in each of those different categories. Let me give you an example of an event that happened in my life that maybe you can relate to and this is going to Show you how I responded to each of the prompts and hopefully help you embed the learning a little bit more so if we go back to the first prompt number one description a couple years ago now I was in a team meeting and Two of the people in the meeting Alex and Jamie not their real names Alex was criticizing Jamie’s work And being quite negative about it.

[00:05:44] Jamie responded really defensively, accusing Alex of nitpicking. The argument really escalated quite quickly and they both started to raise their voices and they kept going back and forth. I interrupted them. I asked them to calm down and then just moved on to the next agenda item without addressing the conflict.

[00:06:04] Notice how I’m not jumping into how I was feeling or what I should have done yet differently. So I’m not defending what I did, I’m just saying objectively what happened in the situation. Number two, feelings. I felt really anxious and unfortunately I was unprepared when the argument broke out. I was frustrated with both of the team members for being really unprofessional and I was a little bit embarrassed within myself that I didn’t handle the situation effectively.

[00:06:32] I also felt guilty for not addressing underlying issues sooner because this had been heating up for a while and I kind of knew about it. So I felt bad that I didn’t get ahead of it before it erupted. Number three is evaluation. So the positive thing that I took out of the situation was that I acted quickly to stop the immediate argument.

[00:06:53] I didn’t just let them go WWF style for the rest of the day, back and forth, back and forth. So I did put a stop to it. Some of the negative things, I didn’t address the root cause of the conflict, potentially allowing it to get worse before it got better. I also really didn’t demonstrate effective conflict resolution to the rest of the team.

[00:07:12] I was probably too focused on sticking to the agenda. And I kind of just got back on point and I was focused on the task instead of what I should have been focused on, which was the team. Number four, the next step is analysis. So if I really reflect back on what was going on before the meeting, the conflict probably came about because of unclear roles and communication issues within the teams.

[00:07:36] And, and definitely there was some different working styles between Alex and Jamie. I think I avoided addressing the tensions earlier, which allowed it to escalate more quickly. And I also think the fact that I wasn’t comfortable with conflict really made me ill prepared to handle the situation as effective as I could have.

[00:07:54] Number five is conclusion. I could have definitely handled the situation better. Here’s a couple of things I think I could have done better. I could have addressed the tension between Alex and Jamie earlier, before it became an issue, and before it erupted. I should have taken a moment to compose myself before intervening, and this is something that I work on all the time, particularly around mindfulness, just being a little bit more present in the situation, noticing when I can feel that tension in my body, and just giving myself a little bit of space before I respond.

[00:08:26] I could have used active listening techniques. to try and understand both perspectives a little bit better. And I should have had some clear rules or boundaries around professional behavior in team meetings. Number six, the last stage is action plan. Side note here, this is my favorite part because this is where I get to almost have a do over.

[00:08:47] I get to set my intention for if this situation arose again, how would I respond to it differently next time? So for future situations in this example, I thought about a few things. Um, One of them was scheduling regular one on ones with team members to catch potential conflicts early. This was a really big one for me, and it wasn’t just about conflicts.

[00:09:09] There are so many reasons why having those one on one conversations outside of the team meetings have proven really useful. I definitely worked on my conflict resolution skills, both formally through training, a little bit of mentorship from people I respected. But then also, just not shying away from conflict, and allowing myself to make some mistakes, but doing it anyway.

[00:09:32] And so that’s exactly what I did. I worked harder on myself, and on my conflict resolution skills. I made sure to check in with each of my team regularly, and I allowed myself time and space to sit with situations as they arose, and not necessarily respond straight away, but just give myself a little bit of space to respond more mindfully.

[00:09:51] rather than try and just sweep it under the rug. I really hope this example shows you how you can use the Gibbs reflective cycle to learn from a challenging situation and develop strategies for improvement. It may feel a little bit clunky at first, particularly for those who prefer a less structured approach, but I encourage you to give it the time and space you deserve to learn this new skill.

[00:10:12] Trust me, you won’t regret it. So that’s it for today. I hope you really enjoyed this two part episode. I will link the webpage with the Gibbs cycle image on it so you can find it easily and you can delve a little bit deeper into this space. Please reach out if you have any questions about reflective practice.

[00:10:28] I’d love to hear what your experiences are with it. Enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to speaking to you next time.

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