The reason for reflection

I’m on holiday this week, trying to avoid all but essential work, but also trying to finish the third article exploring Social Leadership (which doesn’t count as work!). I also took a look at the Blog stats and realised how many people we have in this community now and, out of nowhere, i got stage fright. Normally i tell people that i write the blog for myself: sometimes i try to develop ideas that i use professionally, whilst at other times it’s just a reflection on something that’s excited or inspired me, just always circling around the subject of learning to one degree or another. My only ‘secret‘ for success is never to plan it, just to mirror my own thinking and reflection.

Which is why, this morning, when i was worrying about what to write on Social Leadership and whether i could do it justice, i realised that i’d forgotten the reason for the blog: to reflect. It’s the space to iterate ideas, to share them with a community, to work out loud on refining them, but not to be too precious about it all. It’s a reflective space, not a publication.

This week i’ve been inspired by many things: seeing how a team came together to create a festival, with emergent structures of authority and feedback. I may write something on that next week! I’ve been learning to use my new GoPro camera and engaging in new community spaces for performance support around this, seeing how people take different roles and produce resources to support this fully social learning. That’s interesting too.

So i abandoned the article half complete and wrote this instead, after which i’m heading out on my kayak in the sunshine.

Reflection is where we develop ideas, where we relate new learning to old, where we refine our notions of what’s true and what’s worth fighting for. It’s a work in progress. Do you take enough time to reflect?