The power of reflection to develop long-term motivation and capacities (and suggested ways to do so)
Randall Smith | January 2024
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Hahrie Han's book, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century¹, is one of the books that's had the most influence on how I think about organizing.
When the book was first published, I was such a fan that I bought a dozen copies at a time and gave them away at retreats, trainings, and conferences. Ten years later, I still give away copies as raffle prizes for Nerdy Movement.
I found the book fascinating and incredibly helpful because it "compares organizations with strong records of engaging people in health and environmental politics to those with weaker records" based on in-person observations, surveys, and field experiments. Although I'd never worked in similar organizations, the organizing practices that distinguished the high-engagement from the low-engagement organizations rang true.
The most significant impact was that it helped me identify a set of practices I should incorporate much more. One of those practices is supporting members to reflect on their actions. Han states, "Formalized reflection is a key means by which associations develop long-term motivations and capacities."
Why reflect?
Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author, describes the additional benefits of reflection as follows:
Through reflection, activists begin to understand how their work helps develop power for the association. Reflection is crucial for helping leaders understand how their actions fit into the bigger picture, and to develop their skills in navigating the complexities of political action. Reflection also helps leaders understand what they are doing well and what they are doing poorly. It plays a crucial role in coaching, in which coaches lead their mentees through a process of reflection on their actions, to help them identify situations in which they could have done something differently. This kind of feedback is important; only by having knowledge of the results do people begin to develop a sense of agency. They see that their actions have consequences, and they understand that consequences can be both positive and negative. Reflection is the process through which associations help activists see connections between their actions and the results. Finally, reflection helps tie people’s work to their individual identities. Providing support to the activist is not only about achieving a particular objective but also about helping the activist develop an understanding of who he or she is in the context of the work.
This might be off-brand for me, but my view of the importance of reflection is also informed by Gary Wolfe’s assertions about the value of reflection. Wolfe, a teacher and writer about education of healthcare professionals, writes the following:
Reflective practice was originally conceived as a radical critique of technical rationality, and was based on the premise that knowledge generated by practitioners reflecting on their own experiences is of at least equal value to knowledge derived by academics from empirical research.
Grace Lee Boggs, a philosopher, organizer and writer, might be the most influential advocate of reflection on the left. She’s said:
There are times when expanding our imaginations is what is required. The radical movement has overemphasized the role of activism and underestimated the role of reflection.
How do we do it?
I don’t know the “best” method, but I’ve seen the following five sets of questions work well for members and volunteers to reflect on their experiences. The prompts can be answered individually in writing or as a voice note, considered with a peer, organizer or coach, or conducted with a team.
#1 What's something you did well recently? What can you learn from it?
This is the opening question for many of my 1:1s instead of making small talk. The question and response only take 3-5 minutes.
People are often grateful for this question because it's easy to focus on what didn't go well and ignore what did. Likewise, this question helps people identify and surface the factors that matter so they can use the same approach in the future. That could be acknowledging their fears, trying a new facilitation technique, or finding a better way to manage their time or other insights.
#2 What new thing did I try today²?
These six questions work well as a brief self-reflection at the end of the day. Once you've answered them several times, it takes 5–10 minutes.
What new thing did I try today?
How did it go? What worked well, and what didn't?
What's the most useful thing I learned today?
What opportunity did I miss?
What am I most grateful for?
What one thing will I do tomorrow to stretch my comfort zone?
#3 How much progress did I make last week? How satisfied am I with that?
The following three questions work well to guide weekly self-reflection in ten minutes:
How much progress did I make last week? How satisfied am I with that?
What do I need to focus on in the coming week?
Where are my key opportunities to further my learning and development?
#4 Before and After Action Reviews
This format works best before, during, and at the end of a project, typically within a team. The After Action Review questions are as follows:
What was our intended result?
What were our actual results?
What caused our results?
What lessons should we take forward for next time?
The process takes 15 minutes to an hour to complete. Running frequent and brief Before Action Reviews (BAR) and After Action Reviews (AAR) is better than infrequent and long ones.
The highly successful member teams I've observed often have a regular cadence² of Before Action Reviews (BAR) and After Action Reviews (AAR) to align their purpose, draw on the group's wisdom, evaluate progress, and make timely course corrections. This cycle of action and reflection can deepen and speed learning while increasing team members' well-being and improving project outcomes.
Learn more about the practice and why they should be done amid the work, not solely at the beginning and end of a project.
#5 Gibbs's Reflective Cycle: Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Action Plan
This framework can be used for reflection with a partner or team after a significant chunk of work has been accomplished. Graham Gibbs, the author of Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, describes the six stages as follows:
Description: What happened? Don’t make judgments yet or try to draw conclusions; simply describe.
Feelings: What were your reactions and feelings? Again don’t move on to analysing these yet.
Evaluation: What was good or bad about the experience? Make value judgments.
Analysis: What sense can you make of the situation? Bring in ideas from outside the experience to help you. What was really going on? Were different people’s experiences similar or different in important ways?
Conclusions: (general) What can be concluded, in a general sense, from these experiences and the analyses you have undertaken?
Conclusions:(specific) What can be concluded about your own specific, unique, personal; situation or way of working?
Personal action plans: What are you going to do differently in this type of situation next time? What steps are you going to take on the basis of what you have learnt?
This format accomplishes many of the same outcomes as an AAR and takes a similar amount of time. If I had to choose only one, I'd go with the AAR. If I could do both, I might do the Gibbs cycle in a 1:1 with team leads, and they would lead an AAR with the team. Some people prefer the Gibbs cycle because it includes a step to discuss feelings. One critique of Gibbs is that it can feel overly structured. Try Gibbs and an AAR and see what works for you.
Try it out
Just doing a thing doesn’t guarantee learning or improved performance. Gibbs writes:
It is not sufficient simply to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations that allow new situations to be tackled effectively.
Reflection is an effective method to develop long-term motivations and capacities while valuing the knowledge people build while doing the work and expanding our imaginations.
Short cycles of action and reflection is how people doing new things in interdependent, uncertain and complex environments accomplish extraordinary outcomes.
Reflection isn’t complex. Anyone can do it.
It just takes a little time, a willingness to honestly examine ourselves, our actions and results, and focused attention.
An easy way to start building a reflection habit with members is opening your next 1:1 with, “Can I ask you what might seem like an odd question? The purpose of the question is to reflect on our experiences and draw lessons from them to make us more effective.” If they say yes, “What’s something you did well recently? What can you learn from it?”
Let me know how it goes if you try any of these reflection questions.
¹ Get the first chapter of How Organizations Develop Activists here.
² The questions from #2 and #3 are adapted from David Peterson’s reflection calendar.
³ The cadence ranges from daily, weekly, or monthly to every six weeks. Daily BAR/AARs are for those times when a delay, miscommunication, small mistake, or other problem can put a whole project at risk (e.g., the final days before an election, a mass mobilization, or a day of action).
Randall Smith is a director at PowerLabs, where he helps organizations design and run people-powered campaigns.
Organizations he has worked with include Courage California, Free Press, IfNotNow, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Movimiento Cosecha, Pilipino Workers Center, Missouri Organizing and Voter Engagement Collaborative, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Sunrise Movement, and United for Respect.