Reflective Practice

Martin Hill

Reflective Practice – a phrase that you may have encountered numerous times as you conduct your own coaching practice, but what does it actually mean?

Take a moment to recollect the most successful coaching interventions that you have conducted - what did the client do to make the success occur. I would suggest that what the client did was reflect on the challenges and interventions in the coaching session and then implement that learning, having adapted it to suit their own style and goals.

Julie Hay in “Reflective Practice & Supervision For Coaches” (2008) Open University Press- Coaching In Practice series  states “Supervision is the process of helping you to step back from your work so that you can take a meta-perspective or broader view of your practice….Reflective Practice refers to the same concept as supervision but without the benefit of a supervisor or colleague”

I use reflective practice as a tool to make my own supervision more effective. Indeed Hay makes the point “Prior analysis of your own practice saves supervision time and enables supervisors to operate at a higher level when they support and challenge you.”

Reflective practice needs planning on your part in order to be effective and efficient. One of the key tools that I use is ensuring that I capture my own learning and reflections from a session as soon as possible after the session whilst still fresh in my mind. In this age of technology there are a myriad of options – using a smartphone voice recorder or dictaphone; making a selfie-video – personally I prefer using a notepad. I initially simply record as much as I can recall from the session in a “stream of consciousness” flow- not taking time to reflect or review what I have captured at that stage. I then leave it for 20-30 minutes or overnight and then reflect on that as I write up my own coaching journal notes. Try to focus on what you did; what you felt or what you thought rather than capturing the content of the session. Watch out for making broad statements which simply set out the outcome – drill down to examine and reflect on what happened ; what you did - how the client and how you reacted; feelings etc. What could you have done differently? What can you adapt or improve? What made that particular tool/interaction unsuccessful?  This provides a rich seam of learning to mine to continuously improve your own practice.

When you initially start off, the reality is that you will be reflecting on what you have done in the PAST- the last session and previous sessions. Hay states “The point of reflection is how to enhance capability so time spent reflecting on how to behave in FUTURE situations allows you to identify more options and to plan for increased flexibility, with specific clients, and more generally.”

Give it a try – you’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain!!

Martin Hill LL.B (Hons), FInstLM, FISQC, MAC, EMCC Member, Coach &Coach Supervisor

Faculty Member

Programme Director for ILM 7 Coaching & Mentoring Courses

Coaches need to be coached – Oh and supervised!

Judith Barton, Director of Coaching and Mentoring

To me, running a coaching practice is similar to being in a legal or medical practice.  As a professional coach I am going on a journey with my clients enabling them to delve into their own resources so that they can develop a sense of their own potential and are supported to realise that potential through listening, questioning and challenging.  But in the end it is their own decision – as a coach it is not my place to provide guidance or advice but to draw out from clients their own understanding and enable them to make choices to develop their own careers and futures. 

Professional coaches are also practicing – practicing our skills, reviewing and reflecting on how each coaching session progressed and the interactions which took place.  Finally, a coach must create an accurate an accurate baseline. This sets out their strengths and areas for improvement and leads to a personal development plan to be actioned.  Once implemented, this plan is subject to review, reflection and further planning for improvement.  As part of this process, the coach must also recognise and celebrate their strengths and achievements. This leads me to four central tenets of running a coaching practice – which are: self-review supported by supervision, maintaining their skills base; keeping up to date with research and thinking about coaching practice; and ensuring that purchasers of coaching understand the concept of ‘coaching practice’. 

1: Self review supported by supervision is critical.  To be effective, review of practice should be carried out soon after each session is completed.  You will need to find your own balance between being to close to the interaction to be objective; and too far to be able to remember key points.  Self-review on its own however carries risks – that you will become overly self-critical or insufficiently self-aware.  In order to ensure some degree of distance and to avoid getting too drawn into feeling that you have to sort everything out on your own, the input of a supportive, challenging and knowledgeable coaching supervisor is an equally critical element of self-development.  You should choose a supervisor who understands your approach to coaching who is willing and able to be both supportive and challenging to question your assumptions and self-evaluation and provide a platform for continuous improvement of your practice. 

2: Coaches need to Coach – this may sound obvious but coaching is not something you can do once or twice a year whilst maintaining professional standards of competence. I feel that I need to be practicing my coaching skills at least twice per month. Coaching a number of people who have different issues to resolve, different learning styles and different interpersonal skills ensures that I can maintain a variety of coaching skills and the ability to deploy these skills in working with a range in types of client 

3: Keeping up with new thinking in coaching.   As a professional coach I can only provide a ‘state of the art’ coaching experience for clients if I spend time on a regular basis reading, evaluating and, where appropriate, working out how to use new techniques in my coaching practice.  I regularly read a number of journals – Coaching At Work, Edge, Management Today, Harvard Business Review – which keeping me up-to-date with not only coaching theory and practice but also management thinking.  As well as providing some coaching articles, the latter keep me up to date with the issues which may be facing my clients in their professional roles. In addition, I attend relevant conferences and CPD events.  For example, Association for Coaching conferences, Institute of Leadership and Management events and coaching network's can provide useful insights into developing my coaching practice and ensuring that my practice is evidence-based and leading edge. 

4: Purchasers of Coaching need to understand the concept of practice.  For those who purchase coaching, for themselves or members of their leadership or management teams, it is critical that they appreciate and seek out coaches who undertake regular supervision; who maintain their coaching practice, at the appropriate level of seniority, and who can demonstrate that they are up-to-date with the latest thinking and practical skills.  Purchasers have an in-depth understanding of what they are purchasing and what they hope to achieve for both individuals and the organisation.  I will be further sharing my thoughts on ‘Selecting the Right Coach’ in future blogs.

www.britishschoolofcoaching.com