Michelle Lucas
Oxford: Routledge, 2023
188 Pages. Paperback £29.99; $35.60
ISBN-13: 978-1032317618
Reviewed by Petra Walker, AFBPsS, CPsychol
Reflective practice is included in the core competencies for coach accreditation by all the major accreditation bodies (EMCC, ICF, AC, BPS). In Coach training, this is usually taught in the form of reflective journaling or supervision sessions. But what if journaling is not your thing? Recognizing her own difficulty in maintaining a reflective habit when using regular journaling techniques, Michelle Lucas has compiled a range of alternative reflective prompts for coaches to try.
This book aims to introduce coaches and others to alternative techniques for self-reflection and group reflection. The author and her colleagues have tried and tested all the techniques listed, and helpfully, at the end of each chapter, there are testimonials from practitioners who have tried them out on themselves or with their clients.
While this is an applied ‘how-to’ book, it is published by Routledge, the well-known academic book publisher, so it came as no surprise that it is referenced throughout. After setting the scene by exploring what reflective practice is and how we, as practitioners, can expect to benefit from developing such a practice, the book is then divided into five more chapters, each focusing on a different processing style: cognitive, visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, and poetic.
Rather than reading the book from cover to cover, the invitation is to dip into different chapters that appeal to the individual reader, allowing time to use the tools we are reading about to reflect rather than read it from cover to cover. With twelve suggested prompts in each chapter, the author hopes, therefore, to offer the reader twelve months’ of reflection in their preferred reflective style, thereby building a reflective habit to suit the individual. Her invitation to the reader is “to gift yourself an hour” or, if that is too long, “whatever time you have” (p.2).
I recommend readers read Chapters 1 and 2 before examining the different types of reflection as they set the scene.
Chapter 1: Understanding the territory
While not styled as an edited book, the first chapter is, in fact, written by Hannah Butler, the current director of knowledge exchange at the EMCC UK. I invite all readers to start with this chapter as it sets the scene for why we, as coaches, should be reflecting on how various models have evolved. This chapter is well referenced throughout in keeping with the publisher’s reputation as an academic publisher.
Chapter 2: How to develop your reflective habit
As an experienced coach who has struggled with the traditional journaling technique of regular reflection, I was particularly interested to read this chapter. While only 13 pages long, this took longer than I was expecting as I found myself reacting to and mulling on the questions of why, when and where around reflection that the author posed along the way. I prefer to consider things while swimming rather than immediately after a session with a client, and this chapter gave me permission to acknowledge this and plan to incorporate it into my reflective habit.
Chapters 3 to 7
I will not go through all the chapters in this book individually, but these chapters gently challenged the beliefs I had about reflection, the reflective space, and the kinds of prompts that I could use for my own reflection and for my clients.
Some chapters, such as the one on cognitive prompts to aid reflection, contained many familiar tools, such as Gibb’s Reflective Cycle, Competency Frameworks, and Sentence Stems, but also introduced more novel and creative tools, with access to further resources in the references. The chapter on visual prompts again reminded me of some old favourites of mine, such as the Blobs (Lawley & Tomkins, 2000) and the use of image cards, but also had suggestions that used videos, drawings, and online tools. However, it was the chapter on auditory prompts, with the invitation to create soundscapes to reflect on or playlists, that made me stop and really reflect on my assumptions. I often go up into a meadow where there is a bench and a wide view across the countryside when I want to reflect. I tuned into the sounds around me and did not recognize that this soundscape and visuals were prompts for reflection that I was already using. These two chapters have created the intention in me to actively use these stimuli rather than passively absorb them.
By the time I finished reading the book from cover to cover, which was not the author’s intention for a reader, my copy was covered in small post-it notes: reminders to go back and look again at a page so that I could really absorb and try out that invitation to reflect. In this, I believe the book is a success. The variety of techniques it offers the reader recognizes practitioners’ diversity and preferred ways of working. There will be something new or novel for everyone, and other prompts will leave one coach potentially mystified while another will love it.
While the book is packed full of new ideas, one of my frustrations was that, presumably, to keep the book balanced in length for each tool, some of the tools, such as Patterson’s ‘Reflect to Create!’ (p.148) are described in an abridged form, referring you back to the original publication for the full description. This meant that some were not immediately accessible. Others required an internet connection to access certain images or soundscapes. This requires forward thinking to download these materials, which might create a hurdle for the reluctant reflectors amongst us. I also wondered why there were no olfactory or taste prompts with three of the five senses covered. Maybe these will appear in another edition in the future.
These criticisms, however, are minor and could even be seen by some as a bonus that at 188 pages, the book remains of a size that can be easily tucked into a bag to be used wherever the practitioner happens to be. This allows us to use it as a guide to reflect on the beach, listening to the waves, in a forest observing the light through the trees, or at our kitchen table reading a poem before the day begins.
To summarize, I picked up this book out of curiosity and a strong love of learning, and I ended up with a shift in perspective regarding how I should reflect, how I could reflect, and where my reflecting could occur. I no longer feel guilty about not spending time immediately after a client meeting, reflecting on what happened and why, but I acknowledge that sometimes it takes time for thoughts and patterns to emerge and that this is ok. Overall, this book was informative and gave me permission to try new ways of reflecting and having fun along the way. In that, I believe it fulfilled the author’s initial aims and should be recommended by coach training organizations as an alternative to reflection by journaling.
Book Reviewer
Petra Walker is the founder of Petra Walker Coaching, which offers positive psychology coaching, leadership coaching and coach supervision. She is a Chartered Coaching Psychologist, an EMCC Senior Practitioner and is accredited as PCC by the ICF.