What is it that we do when we do what we do?
Donald Schon introduced many of us to the power of reflection in The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. He drew on earlier work by John Dewey to demonstrate how you could draw insights from experience through reflective practice. What is it? Why is it useful?
Schon defines reflective practice as the practice by which professionals become aware of their implicit knowledge base and learn from their experience. He uses three terms:
- knowing in action
- reflection in action
- reflection on action
A simple way of identifying Knowledge in Action is to describe it is when you do something without thinking about it, or without consciously having to think about the various steps and actions that you need to take. For example, riding a bike. Once you have learned the skill you can generally ride a bike without thinking about what you need to do to ride the bike. This is sometimes referred to as tacit knowledge. In a business sense, this can relate to running the meeting about a particular topic, without thinking about what you are doing. The more experience you have the more tacit knowledge that you develop.
We all know however that doing things without appreciating what is happening around you, or how others are reacting can lead us into problems.
Reflection in action is to reflect on behavior as it happens. Sort of like thinking on your feet. In this process, you consciously think about what you’re doing as you’re doing it. For example, a meeting might not be going as well as you expect, so you make some adjustments as you go. You might try additional ways to present a topic. You might stop talking and ask questions and seek feedback. In the more contemporary sense, this is similar to what we are taught in mindfulness – staying in and being aware of the present.
The third term that Schon introduces is Reflection on action – reflecting after the event, to review, analyze, and evaluate the situation. This involves making observations about the actions you took, and how effective the process was in achieving your objectives. You reflect on what you did. You identify what worked and what didn’t work. You observe the reactions at others had to your actions and the impact that you had on their behaviours. And you identify what you would do differently next time. Reflection on action requires you to take some time and make the space to reflect on the whole activity.
How are these concepts useful in practice? If we continue to work in the Knowledge in Action mode, then it is likely that we are not identifying opportunities for improvement and growth, and perhaps more importantly we do not observe when things are not performing as well as they could. In some activities, this may be fine, but in any organisational, group, or team activity where we are working with others, tacit knowledge alone is rarely sufficient to enable effective work to occur.
Being aware, or conscious, of what we are doing and what impact it is having, particularly on others, by Reflecting in Action we can make adjustments to ensure that we achieve what we want to do. This allows us, for example, to achieve more effective group processes, or team discussions, or access other ideas, or change direction promptly. It, however, may not lead to any fundamental changes in the way you work. You could get stuck in the mode of continually having to take corrective actions.
Reflection on Action, however, provides an opportunity for you to rethink and reset fundamental behaviours so that you can be more effective in what you do. You can identify corrective actions that need to be “designed into” your future actions or behaviours. The fundamental question here would be what can you do differently next time so that you could be more effective.