Reflections

I was up ridiculously early this morning. At 5:30am I was laying in bed wide awake, with the all the activity of the past week playing out in my head. Everything I managed to achieve, all what I didn’t get done, and most importantly all the things I could have done better. The usual when I have a busy week.

This week has been very delivery heavy for me. Which has meant that I have been away from the office either providing training or facilitating team sessions. I really enjoy delivering training and facilitating team development days. They are activities that I have been doing for years, so I am very comfortable talking in front of people and getting them thinking differently. When I say I enjoy it, I mean that I am confident that I can do it, as I am well practiced and I have a routine that puts me in the right headspace, and ensures I am prepared and know what I am delivering. It requires a lot of effort mentally to get myself into the right headspace and keep me there for the whole session. I am naturally introverted so summoning up the courage to put myself into an extravert mindset takes a lot of emotional labour. Then there is the time post session when I second guess and critique my performance afterwards. In the moment I really enjoy facilitating and delivering training, before and afterwards not so much. For 4 out of five days I have been training or facilitating team development. I have not done that much delivery for months, and I am definitely out of shape.

My role now means that I just don’t have the time to do this amount of delivery. Most of what I was doing this week were commitments I had made sometime ago and needed to be honoured, and one was to cover a member of the team. This has however meant that I am taking time away from other pieces of work that need doing. So when I would normally have a bit of down time to reset after sessions, I have not been able to fully do this, as I have needed to attend to urgent requests or tasks that I normally would have done throughout the day, as well as prepare for the next session. When I look at next week, it is just as busy with activities taking me away from my desk, for large parts of each day. This it appears is how it is going to be for the next 6 months as our planned work is starting to ramp up and compete with our business as usual work and the reactive work that inevitably happens.

This is why I recognised this week that I need to spend time each week reflecting on how my week has gone in a constructive way, where I can review the work I have done, how I have organised myself and attended to my thoughts and feelings about my work. For me writing what I have done down helps me look at what I have done more objectively and test what unchecked assumptions I might have been making about my approaches. It starts with writing down what I have done, just what I have done. Then as I write it I pay attention to my thoughts and feelings about what I am writing. It is important to spend some time writing down the thoughts and feelings, as this starts to describe the context in which the activity has taken place, and how I make it match the narrative I have about myself, for instance I describe myself has being naturally introverted and it takes a lot of emotional labour to get myself into an extraverted space. This is how I view and describe myself. This can often lead to assumptions that make about the way I prepare for the work and reset after the work. I can say to myself (and often do) that I have to do it the way I do it, without questioning where this story comes from. I might be spending a lot of time and effort on activities that make no difference to what happens.

Once I have examined my thoughts and feelings and understand the origins of those initial thoughts and feelings about my week, I can decide what I could change in my approach for the coming week. It might be that the routines I have adopted are really useful, and continue, or I can adjust them to allow myself do other things that would be more useful to me and reduce the amount of pressure I feel to get what I need to do done.

My early morning ramblings probably have not described this reflective process very well. My apologies. I think I needed to get some thoughts and feelings out of my head to help me reflect on my week and make changes for next. Therefore below is a simple step by step approach to the reflective process I have tried to describe whilst reflecting (lol).

• Describe the activity. Write down what you did, when you did it and where. Write down as much detail as you can remember.
• Write down the unfiltered thoughts and feelings that you experience as you describe you activity. Include your justifications for doing what you did, what you think and feel about the activity now you write it down.
• Read back all that you have written. What have you not said? What have you glossed over? What assumptions have you made about the activities you have done? What is behind the justifications you make? Are there external influences that play a part in what you do and how you think? Can you describe you emotions differently? Is there another perspective that you could have?
• Are there any changes to make? These could be changing how you do certain activities, it might be how you view yourself in certain circumstances. Create a mini action plan with start date and time, and a time to review the changes you have made.

This approach today has been really helpful for me to reflect on the week I have had, and allow me to put all of that down, to allow me to relax and recharge before the week ahead. I also recognise that I am due my 1:1 with Janis to talk though what I have been doing and have the opportunity to have some helpful challenge and support. It is vital to have a regular 1:1 coaching/mentoring conversation to talk through your reflections and invite challenge, to ensure you are not creating a mini echo chamber with your reflections.