The Importance of Self Reflection

Growing up, I always wanted things to happen quickly and to learn as much as I could about new things, skills and to experience new things that I could use to improve myself and grow both personally and professionally.

At times, I found myself wondering whether I was doing enough to soak in the new thrills, knowledge, or experiences and see if indeed these collective things were making me a better person. We tend to think that there’s only one life to live, you’ve got to grab life by its horns, and live every moment as if it was the last. As I have gotten older and perhaps a little wiser, I’ve learned that these mottoes can often lead you to miss a very important aspect of growth and that is self-reflection.

Self-reflection is essential to your success both at work and life. It’s useful in helping you assess how well anything you have experienced or learned has affected your personality, emotions, thinking, behaviors, social skills and competencies. People who practice self-reflection are more self-aware, and can more easily assess their own behaviors objectively without bias to continuously evolve and improve.

I learned self-reflection from interactions with mentors in my workplace. At first, I didn’t quite understand it conceptually and I challenged myself to learn it by applying it to daily things. There are several tools available out there if you want to get started, for example personality type tests, competency skills tests, and methods to interact with others. There’s also books on the subject. While these are very helpful, doing your own self-assessment presents you the biggest opportunity to pause, reflect, and connect the dots on how things from your day to day improve or deter you from reaching your goals.

Self-reflection and assessment has helped me realize that while I can learn information about myself, I can also be resourceful enough to learn other types of information from others’ perceptions of me. I have done this effectively when working with various teams in leadership or individual contributor roles to improve my leadership effectiveness. When I have found that things may not be going as planned or could be going different, I’ve sought feedback directly from others to improve. I’ve also asked them to observe my interactions and share their thoughts directly with me. I’ve learned to appreciate feedback and take it openly and in a non-judgmental manner.

Having a mentor with whom to focus on self-reflection and assessment has been tremendously helpful. One thing that I have particularly been effective at is partnering with my mentor on specific things I want them to share with me. The more specific the better. And guess what, it works! Over time, this feedback from ongoing conversations and my own self-awareness has helped me build upon strengths and improve my weaknesses.

3 Helpful Tips

Here’s some tips to get started on building the skill of evaluated self-reflection and assessment:

1. Identify what you want to improve upon – Are you working on being a better presenter? Have someone observe you and share input. It can be your leader or a peer.

2. Recognize hidden or private traits upon which to improve – These are things that may not be visible to others but you are somewhat or very aware of. Maybe you have some social anxiety which affects how you present or a deep fear of public or enclosed spaces. Jot those down and research information, ask others to help, complete a free assessment to build a baseline, etc.

3. Work on your blind spots – These blind spots may be things you are unaware of but others, like your co-workers can easily observe them. It can be that you pace around the room nervously or use an extreme amount of filler words (e.g., um, so, etc.) while presenting. Ask for feedback openly to gain that deeper understanding and do so from a variety of sources to the input is helpful and well-rounded to help you make the best of it.

Self-reflection and awareness takes time. It’s in the little things, done well, persistently, consistently, over a long period of time that helps create the habit of regularly assessing improvement for yourself. You can start small, taking bits and pieces at a time and checking your progress periodically. And once you see the benefits, you may just decide to stick to the habit. The choice is yours.