hello and welcome to today's lesson where we're looking at Gibbs reflective cycle your experiences have shaped who you are but to grow as a person experience alone isn't enough you need to learn from those experiences to get better at your job and this is where a Gibbs reflective cycle comes in it's a simple six step process to help you reflect on your experiences in the workplace you'll learn what went well as well as what could have gone better and put together an action plan to address your weaknesses as you can see the model is circular starting with description and this circular nature lends itself to learning from experiences over time so you can get better and better at something now the first three steps of the model focus on what happened during the experience you are analyzing and the second three steps focus on how you can improve your experience for future similar situations now you can obviously use the model to evaluate your performance in the workplace but it's also a great tool to use if you're coaching a subordinate or colleague to improve their skill in a particular area so let's take a look at the six steps in a little bit more detail so the first step is description and in this step you simply describe what happened be as factual as you can so don't draw any conclusions yet you will do that later so all you're trying to do is set the scene and provide some context so that you get a better understanding of the experience so some questions that can help you here are ask yourself what happened when and where did it happen why were you there what did you do how did people react what happened at the end the second stage is feelings so in this step you describe feelings you felt during the experience you shouldn't try to judge or evaluate your feelings just simply state what they were so again some questions include things like how did you feel before during and after the experience what do you think others felt during the experience how do you feel thinking about the experience now and how do you think others feel about the experience now the third step or the third stage is evaluation and in this step we objectively evaluate the experience so here we're trying to determine what went well and what didn't go so well and it's really essential to be honest as honest as possible to get the most out of this process so some questions again that can help you what went well what didn't go so well was the situation resolved afterwards if not why not what positive or negative thing did you contribute and what positive or negative thing did others contribute next we move on to step four analysis and in this step you describe what you think might have helped the situation so the aim is to explore the options that might be available to you if you encountered a similar situation again now this step is an excellent opportunity to conduct some research looking at say academic models or tools that might have helped you so for example if you were doing a presentation and it didn't go so well then a tool such as Monroe's motivated sequence might have helped you put together a better presentation step 5 is conclusion so now you've analyzed the different options available to you it's time in this step to focus and to draw some conclusions so using the information you've collected in your analysis ask yourself what skills tools could help you do better next time can use these skills right now or is it something you need to develop what will you do differently next time if there were negative outcomes last time how can you avoid these happening again and what else could you do to make this a more positive experience for everybody involved and finally the final step is number six create an action plan and here you're trying to plan based on conclusions how you'll position yourself so that you can better handle similar situations next time and it's crucial you commit and take action on your plan so that real change occurs so if you're coaching someone else through the reflective cycle then this step is about agreeing on a date to speak again and review progress on the plan so let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of this reflective cycle so there's several advantages including the model is easy to understand and it's pretty easy to use it allows you to learn over time based on your experiences through practice and over time it gives you a more balanced and accurate judgment there are some criticisms of the model including it's a reactive rather than proactive approach to improving your skill set it can be a superficial reflection as there is no real critical thinking involved nor is there look any sense of looking at the situation from a different perspective and it can be difficult for many people to open up and discuss their feelings during the feelings step so let's take a look at a really simple example and in this example imagine you gave a presentation to your senior leadership team and it hasn't gone so well so retrospectively using the model your analysis might look something like you see here in this table so last Monday I was giving a presentation to the board the purpose of the presentation was to provide an update on my department's progress in the previous quarter I only got to slide three before the whole thing fell apart the finance director asked me a question on the figures and I got flustered he already didn't agree with the direction of my presentation a big debate ensued and I didn't even complete my presentation so next we have feelings how did I feel so in the lead up to the present I felt very nervous as it's not every day I give a presentation to the leadership team I felt panicked when asked the numbers question I felt like an idiot when my time was up and I hadn't made it past the introduction of the presentation so next we do the evaluation well on the positive side I've heard from my boss that this kind of thing happens all the time in those meetings afterwards I just felt sad though that I'd messed up and a little bit mad with the finance director for interrupting me in terms of analysis then on reflection I probably should have sent a copy to the presentation to each member of the leadership team in advance I also should have followed up with each of them in person to check they didn't take issue with what I was about to present this would have also helped to calm my pre presentation nerves as I would know I have I'd have experience of going through it with everyone in conclusion I realize that these things happen and it's not the end of the world to have a presentation go wrong like this the good news is that I can see a way to go forward which has a good chance of a better outcome next time so what are we going to do to make things go better next time what's our action plan well one we're going to distribute the presentation to key stakeholders in advance and two we're going to run through the plan with everyone who might have an issue with it this will also serve as a practice run at performing the presentation to calm nerves so in summary Gibbs reflective cycle provides a six step circular process that you can use to help you learn through practice and experience the first half of the model helps you callate what happened during a previous experience while the second half helps you understand the improvement options available and helps you to take action so that you improve in any similar situations you encounter in the future so that's it for me really hope you enjoyed this lesson and I look forward to speaking to you again soon