Reflective practice for wellbeing at work.

Reflective practice is critical and deliberate inquiry into professional practice in order to gain a deeper understanding of oneself, others, systems, and the meaning that is shared among individuals. This can happen during practice/work (mindful in action) and after the fact (on action) and can be done alone or with others. - Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.

REFLECTIVE SUPERVISION FOR TEAMS - how does it work?

I use a reflective and systems approach when working with teams, providing a space in which practitioners can develop their reflective professional practice as well as collaborate to explore the issues important to them. My work is informed by an extensive background in industrial relations and human rights, management, governance and integrative wellbeing as well as social work training that was formative in developing my own reflective practice and supervision skills.

In its essence, reflective practice is the ability to step away from the work we are doing and identify patterns, habits, strengths and limitations in our work and/or within the system/s we are operating.

Reflective practice is process, not outcome oriented. It is about seeing connections, maintaining curiosity and appreciating different perspectives. It can help assist in  recognising and building upon successful actions while  challenging or questioning what is not working. By building collaboration and connection reflective practice fosters sustainability and resilience while recognising and honouring vulnerability.

Reflective Team Supervision is applicable broadly to professional practice where an organisation wishes to:

• support the wellbeing of their people and to  build a culture of trusting relationships

• strengthen personal effectiveness and relating skills developing access to the combined knowledge and skills of the group, thus harnessing insight that is typically only available by looking at situations from multiple perspectives

• improve collaboration, workflow and outputs

• facilitate the early identification of risks or issues that may be impacting on the group members (including performance/productivity and safety issues such as vicarious trauma or burnout), although it is not a particular forum for management to address these.

Reflective supervision can bring a diversity of views and opinions to the group and can assist in holding a space while challenges including divergent or creative ideas are shared and explored. Teams engaging in reflective supervision might be multi-disciplinary or might be a group within a profession.

My role is to create a welcoming and safe space that is and comfortable with limited distractions. I am guided by the key steps of The Circle Way in structuring a session while maintaining the capacity to:

• create a psychologically safe space making it safe to share perceptions, understandings and challenges

• recognise when a participant needs a higher level of support or a referral

• promote and keep confidentiality at all times

• build and role model trust through empathic listening

• model curiosity and appreciative enquiry

• keep a process oriented focus for the group not focusing on outcomes or accomplishment

• guide people through the steps in the process moving participants through sense-making toward clarity.

How does a session run?

Depending on the wishes of the group, a first session is designed as a “get to know the group” using appreciative (including playful) enquiry and curiosity, exploring emerging, consistent or divergent themes as well as forming agreements about working together.

 Subsequent sessions typically include:

• check in and review what is happening for people at work, acknowledging the diversity and uniqueness of group members while considering common themes around emerging or systemic issues (including current challenges, social justice issues, equity etc)

• affirm agreements about process, collaboration and decision making

• enable a reflective space (looking back and looking forward) to recognise the significance and impact of the work being done 

• identify obstacles or challenges for effective work and plan for continuous improvement and innovation

• build in practices that make work sustainable, keeping people replenished to be able to do the work they do

• set goals for between sessions such as informal peer debriefs, wellness check-ins and keeping an agenda to work through in a coming session

• check out and close.

The three key principles ( credited to The Circle Way ) are; to listen with attention, speak with intention and tend to the wellbeing of the group - people usually embrace these fairly quickly and it can be great for supporting deep listening (which can be quite a new experience for people to listen and be listened to with full attention) and steering the group away from distracting cross chats or irrelevant topics. It is also a great framework for supporting cultural and psychological safety.

 Ideally groups are teams who work together or will be working together in the future