Reflective Practice @ Elevate

At Elevate, we have a core value around learning. This often shows up in our external work with clients where we collaboratively learn with partners and actively look for ways to augment learning through the work we do and the deliverables we produce. Learning also plays a central role in the internal work we do as an Elevate team, and reflective practice is one tool we use to learn and grow together. 

Reflective practice is used in multiple professions, particularly those in service industries. While there are multiple frameworks and structures for how to engage in reflective practice, at its core reflective practice is a process of learning through and from our experiences to gain new insight about how we show up in our work. The underlying purpose is to think about our experiences, learn from them, and ultimately use that learning to inform our future actions.

Reflective practice can be done individually or as a group. At Elevate, we engage in team reflective practice using a modified version of Driscoll’s “What” Model. This model is a simple one based on three key questions: What? So what? Now what? 

• What?: Exploring the “what” allows us to fully describe the situation we experienced and the context surrounding its occurrence.

• So what?: Exploring the “so what” encourages us to reflect on what we learned as a result of the experience.

• Now what?: Exploring the “now what” pushes us to consider the actions we will take or behaviors we will change (or not change) for similar situations in the future.

While we are still new to reflective practice and are iteratively learning what structure works best for our team, we have discovered some considerations that make the process a better experience for us:

• The experiences that are shared for reflection don’t just have to be problems! We also find it useful to reflect on experiences that were “wins” or situations that were just plain new.

• Not all experiences merit a change in action and sometimes when sharing an experience we have had we are looking for empathetic listening instead of active problem-solving. It’s helpful for reflective practice participants to explicitly ask for what they are looking for from the group.

• Developing a set of team guidelines for how to engage in learning spaces like reflective practice helps build a trusting container for learning.

Driscoll, J. (ed.) (2007) Practicing Clinical Supervision: A Reflective Approach for Healthcare Professionals. Edinburgh: Elsevier.