Reflecting upon reflection
The importance of reflective practice in Community Organising
My wife (drowning in the NHS system) pulls a face when I tell her how much time we commit to reflection in Community Organising. She doesn’t have time to tie her own shoelaces (which is why you see so many healthcare workers wearing slip ons). She does appreciate the importance of reflection, something so valuable in all our lives, though finds it unfortunate that not all practitioners are able to dedicate time to this during their working day.
Reflection is key to Community Organising (and probably pretty much every avenue of life) because if you ain’t reflecting, then you ain’t learning.
When do we reflect?
The short answer is pretty much always. The long answer is…
We reflect on 1–1’s to better our individual practice. We pull out ‘magic questions’ that enable the person we are speaking with to create a clear vision of their goal (if you can’t see it, you can’t work towards it). We make a note of questions that shifted someone to think differently and moved them from apathy to curiosity, from disbelief to excitement. We reflect on how our energy, previous experiences, and biases (we all have them, whether we look them directly in the eye or not), may affect the conversation. We reflect on our asks and how they were delivered. Could we have gotten to a different outcome, if we had asked more directly, or broken down the ask, or spent more time shining up the vision? Maybe or maybe not. It’s not about giving ourselves a hard time, it’s about noticing, and learning to trust our gut.
We reflect on our house meetings to better understand the team dynamics and structure, to get a sense of which tools feel powerful and which concepts we might need to tackle differently. Do we have the right people in the room, does everybody understand why they are there, who are we missing, is the energy low, how do we bring it up to keep people showing up? Are we thinking about the bigger picture or getting stuck in the small stuff? So many things to think about! The answers will impact the success of what you are doing, so skip over them at your peril.
We reflect on actions, my word, it’s not an action unless you have your eye on the learning. Who showed up? Who didn’t & what does that say about our relationship? Did our oversized props bring wanted attention or make people take us less seriously? Reflect as a team, and ask the people who showed up for you what they thought. Collective reflection allows you to see different perspectives and learn from people who aren’t as deep into the work.
It’s a practice that we make sure to pass on to everyone we work with, we reflect with our teams and with our leaders, and we strongly encourage our leaders to make time for it. A prompt to ‘reflect’ can feel vague so we break it down in efforts to get the 4 points easily in people’s heads:
1. What went well?
We always start with the positives — people will tell you the smallest thing that didn’t go as planned before offering what went smoothly. We are often slow to celebrate ourselves and share our part in the success, but if we don’t celebrate the small wins, even if the overall action didn’t go as planned, people get tired and lose energy. Even if your action went down like a lead balloon, highlight what did go well. Did the team come together well to plan and prepare? Did you make some new shiny resources that you can use next time? Did it create a new connection or new way of thinking? Celebrate that!
If the action has gone really well, what was your part to play in that? Did the team have targeted 1–1 conversations beforehand, did you choose a great location, was your approach perfect for engaging passers by? Don’t allow people to brush it off as fate or coincidence. If we understand why something has gone well we can understand how we might recreate and amplify those conditions to give more power to our next action.
2. Even better if?
Or, what would you differently in the future?
Alongside telling ourselves how great we are, we also have to knit-pic about what didn’t go so well & more importantly, how to do it differently in the future. Usually this is a long list but there are also those who say that everything happens for a reason and don’t acknowledge when things could have gone better. I love their positivity, but if you don’t want to look too hard at your team or your actions, then you are not going to succeed. It’s not about blaming people or self depreciation, it’s about developing yourself and your team to ensure that your collective time is spent more effectively. This is not the work of sugar coating and brushing issues off — this is the work of those who are willing to dive deep and learn at every turning.
3. Who was developed?
This question takes us back to the heart of Community Organising — developing leadership. We do our best to design opportunities for people to develop at every action, responsibilities that take people just enough outside of their comfort zone that they will grow into it. This question reminds us to notice how far we have come as individuals and that, whilst our goal is important, keeping our relationships and collective development at the heart of it, is key to achieving and sustaining it. If your action has made a big impact, but one person has done all the work, it’s not successful organising.
4. How are we more powerful as a result?
Or, how has doing this gotten us closer to achieving our mission?
This question reminds us of the bigger picture. Working as a collective is exciting and as we build our connections, sometimes they will share an ask that is slightly related but takes us off track in achieving our goal. Sometimes an opportunity will arise that feels too good to miss, but turns out to be a red herring. By planning strategically around why we are doing something, and reflecting on how each action has gotten us slightly closer to our goal, we are less likely to get caught up in focusing our energy on activity, which is often fun but doesn’t develop our mission.
Does this all sound like a drag? Once you get into the groove of adding reflection to your day, it becomes second nature, and takes less time than it frees up. Ultimately, reflection is about tuning into yourself and those around you, the environment that you are in and the systems that impact your relationship. Making time for it & taking it seriously will better your practice (and probably your life, just saying). Scheduling collective reflection time as a team will enable you to better understand the work and each other, and allow you to act with more power in the future.
If we can’t see it, then we can’t change it, so tie your shoelaces tight and schedule in regular time for reflective practice.
Check out my work with Connecting for Good at www.connectingforgoodcov.com
