Critical Reflections: How Groups Can Learn from Success and Failure

Ernst, Martin

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781882197934
• eBook ISBN: 9781604916775
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

When people work together over time, certain key events stand out as having the potential to teach lasting lessons for the future. Leaders can use the Critical Reflections process to help their groups learn these lessons, whether the key event was a great success or a wretched failure. The goal is to affect future outcomes in similar situations: either to repeat the current success or to avoid repeating the same mistake.

Advanced Options

The basic Critical Reflections process is short and simple: exploring, reflecting, projecting. As with learning almost any other process, it’s good to begin with the basics, repeat them, and master them. After you’ve done that, you may want to consider some more advanced options. What follows is a description of some of the activities that can be used in more extensive versions of the Critical Reflections process.

Activities for Exploring

The following activities are useful in the exploring stage of the process.

Personal story writing. The purpose of this personalizing activity is to get group members to show candor about their individual perceptions of the key event. In this activity, each member of the group is asked to write a short story that represents his or her individual experience of the key event.

Story-Writing Ground Rules

1. Start by thinking about the question and then begin writing. Write anything that comes to mind, without judging your writing. Just keep your hand moving.

2. Write down words, images you see in your mind. Take one word and write it down. Write all your thoughts and meanings around it.

3. Trust yourself; don’t try too hard. Let it flow and, again, don’t judge while you are writing.

The story should include answers to these five questions:

• Where was I when the event occurred?

• How did I feel about the event?

• What did I think about the event?

• How did I react in response to the event?

• What did I personally lose or gain as a result of the event?

Story writing is a personal, reflective exercise, and—if the key event was negative—it can bring pain, discomfort, and even embarrassment for some individuals. In leading your group members through this activity, stress that they are not obligated to share their stories. The stories frequently are useful when dealing with difficult topics, and they require a certain degree of candor from group members. Guaranteeing anonymity and confidentiality opens the door to the candor the group needs at this point.

CCL’s experience shows how liberating and even cathartic this activity can be when group members know in advance that it is a safe, private process. It may be the first time that they have allowed themselves to think openly about the event, particularly if it was a negative experience. It can prepare group members for moving from a private, guarded understanding to a public space from which they can draw shared lessons.

Creating Endings

This is a good follow-up activity to use with personal story writing. Place the group members in a circle and invite them to share one emotion, thought, or reaction they are letting go of to allow the group to move forward. Then have them throw their stories away.

Collage. The purpose of this imaging activity is to allow each member to better understand the perspectives of the others in the room. In this activity, each group member is asked to select an image to put in the middle. These images can come from all kinds of sources, including old magazines, printed artworks, postcards, and so on. It is important to have a broad and varied selection of images to accommodate the many possible perspectives of group members. Members of the group are asked to select pictures that speak to them about how they felt during the event. Instead of or in addition to a picture, group members can employ famous quotations or actual objects. Any of these mementos can help group members reveal to themselves and to one another how they view the earlier experience.

For example, one member might choose a photo of the earth from outer space, showing a lar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Leading with Critical Reflections
• First Things First
• The Basic Process
• Advanced Options
• Leadership and Organizational Learning
• Suggested Readings
• Background
• Key Point Summary