What Makes a Great Reflection? How to Impress on Application Forms and Interviews

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Have you ever wondered why some reflections seem to catch a supervisor's or recruiter's attention and others just seem to fall a little flat? Reflections are a way to show not just what you've done, but what you've learned from those experiences and why it matters, whether it's in person or on application forms. What is the secret formula for reflecting in a way that really impresses? In this episode, I'll share my exact strategies and I'm also going to be chucking in my examples of what works and what really doesn't. Hi, welcome along. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, and it's lovely to have you here. One of the most common questions I am asked as a qualified clinical psychologist is when I'm doing the compassionate q and as for interview and application season, or when I am running my Aspiring Psychologist membership sessions, is how can I reflect in a way that really demonstrates that I am not just going through the motions?

(: 01:06

How can I do what I need to be doing at this stage of my career to be getting the green light to proceed to the next stage? So the reflecting that we're talking about is of course, the ability to be able to look at your experiences and to think about how they've shaped you and what you've learned from them, rather than just your experience of observing the processes involved in what took place. Ultimately, what we want for you is for you to be compassionate, reflective practitioners. We don't want you to be robots that aren't affected by the clients you serve, that aren't moved by their distress, and that therefore don't really help you to create meaningful, effective interventions or assessments or treatment plans that help clients to get results. And I think one of the best ways to demonstrate that is to be reflective, to really think and join up the dots of what being in this role or in these different job roles has been, like how it's shaped you, how it's affected you, what trace it's left upon you in a good or sometimes in a not so good way.

(: 02:23

So your ability to reflect both in person, in interviews, in supervision, on job applications are really going to help you stand out in these incredibly competitive job arenas that you find yourself in. It might be that you are after an assistant psychologist job. It might be that you are after a trainee job or a PWP training role, or even a qualified role for that matter, and these skills that I'm going to be outlining today could well be the difference that makes the difference for you. Okay, so let's crack on. What are the key elements that make a really great reflection? So firstly, we are going to want to describe the situation, but not in a way that is too wordy. So for example, you might say, when I was working as an assistant psychologist, I worked with a client with severe anxiety. That really helps us set the tone, the flavour, the context.

(: 03:20

We've kind of got an idea of what you're doing when and in what capacity you were working. We only need to be producing the most relevant, important information here. We don't want to be adding extra unnecessary detail. We certainly don't want to be adding identifiable client information. The next stage is we're going to be analysing what we have learned from this experience or these experiences. So this is where we are beginning to go above and beyond the building blocks of two plus two equals four. This is where we're really starting to do something special and to transform the kind of raw ingredients we've been given to something truly exceptional. So you might say, for example, this experience taught me to really use my active listening skills and how to adapt my communication skills so that the client could get the best out of the sessions.

(: 04:10

And then an area often overlooked in reflections is how we are going to build on this for the future, how it's going to connect with us so that we have a different experience also that we continue to gain from this best practise experience. So you might say, now I've had these experience of interventions working really well. It's empowered me to think about how I can really think about the importance of rapport building with clients and how to make sure effective whether we are doing regular check-ins, whether we are doing outcome measures, so that we are really getting in client feedback so that they can benefit from what we are doing. Ultimately, that's great for the client, but it's also great for our services outcome measures too. What are the common mistakes people are making when they are reflecting? Well, the first I would say is being too descriptive, just going on and on and on.

(: 05:05

And when you're listening to someone do that, it can be really hard to keep track of and you find yourself wondering where it's going and whether they're ever going to get to the point. We also really want to be avoiding just giving the nuts and bolts, the bare essentials of what happened, but never kind of offering any insight or anything like little bit of extra magic on that is just purely descriptive. That is what we don't want to do. So we don't want to be saying, I observed therapy sessions and I found them really interesting. So what we also don't want to be too over generalised here or not really making exciting, engaging, insightful comments and reflections. We don't want to just be wanging in and that's made me more empathic. So it can be really helpful to put in some theory or some models that you are using to shape your thinking.

(: 06:04

Perhaps you're linking it back to psychology theory, key studies that you've learned about in psychology. We are really trying to think about linking that theory and practise and trying to demonstrate that your knowledge isn't just surface level. Let's dive in and have a little bit of a look at some examples that aren't quite hitting the mark and some which are better. So for example, if somebody said, I observed a client session, which I found interesting and it showed me how CBT works, I would say that lacks depth. It lacks any kind of actual emotional connection. It lacks any personal insight or resonance to you as a person, a clinician, a human. Let's see if we can come up with something a little bit better. Observing a CBT session helped me understand how a structured approach can alleviate anxiety. I noticed how the therapist used Socratic questioning, which I later practised under supervision.

(: 07:04

This experience highlighted the importance of tailoring interventions to individual clients' needs. So why is that better? What are the strengths of an answer like that? I think it's got that clear learning, it's got some theory and it's got an idea of what we've taken from that experience and how it informs our learning. It shows us that that's an active process, that things aren't just happening in a vacuum, that we are being shaped and we are learning and we are growing as we go, and that is what we want. Of course, these skills in reflection don't come easily to everybody. It's so dependent on the way that we've been brought up, the kind of conversations that we have with friends, with family, with our supervisors, the kind of developmental opportunities we have had along the way. So how can we begin to cultivate these skills if it's not already part of our comfortable wheelhouse?

(: 07:59

One of the top tips I used was that I had a reflective journal and that bad boy would come out after supervision sessions, after clinical sessions, after delivering neuropsych, after team meetings, after ward round, after discussions with my peers, after lunchtime, sometimes after attending assistant psychologist meetings, it was always with me and I'd be able to just jot things down as and when they cropped up for me. I was using it to compare and contrast my current self to my future self through my past selves to think about what I want to learn, how I can further myself, how I can develop, how has what I've done compared to my previous interventions, what have I learned? What did I notice that I did differently? What did I notice that I'd like to do differently next time? Another top tip is to seek feedback that might be from your supervisor, your manager, it might be from your peers.

(: 09:03

How do they feel that you are developing as a reflective practitioner, both for your journaling and for your supervision sessions. It might be that you are asking questions like, what did I learn? What could I do better? How was I shaped by this experience? And of course, thinking about actual models for reflecting can be a really useful thing to do as well. Please do let me know in the comments if an additional video on different reflecting models might be helpful, such as the Gibbs reflective cycle as using methods like that can really help you to structure your answers and to maximise your progress. Whether you are watching or listening to this content, it would be so gratefully received if you could drop a comment or just let me know what your top tips for reflecting are. How have you been able to supercharge your skills for reflection and how are you reaping the benefits?

(: 09:58

So to summarise, a great reflection will include description analysis with the application being what you've learned and what you hope to apply in future. And really, we've got to do this super, super regularly. We've got to be weaving this in to our day-to-day moment to moment practises. It might be that you are thinking about this when you're showering, when you're cooking, when you are running, when you're on the treadmill. This could be cropping up at random times. I used to reflect a lot when I was driving stuck in traffic, and we're going to need to come back to this. It is not a one and done approach. If you've got stock answers that you use on application forms, then we're going to need to keep checking those because I honestly believe that we ought to be changing, growing, shaping, and just becoming a better and better human and clinician from day to day, week to week.

(: 10:55

So we shouldn't just be wanging in those same job applications or same kind of doctorate applications each year. I would urge you to have regular reviews and check-ins with yourself and with your supervisor because your skills and your practises across the board, including in reflection, should be advancing all of the time. I really hope that you find this content helpful. If you do, please do take a moment to like the content, to engage with it, to comment, to share, to tell your friends. It really is the kindest free thing you can do. If you did want to buy me a cup of herbal tea to say thank you, then please do check out the link in any of my social media bios. Please do also come along to my free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community, and if it's your time and you are ready for the next step, please do consider the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can join from just 30 pounds a month with no minimum term. The Aspiring Psychologist Collective and the Clinical Psychologist Collective are also really great books, which will help you to build on your reflective practise and to see how others put that into practise too. If you need to reflect on grief or on autism, then please do check out the Grief Collective and the autistic anthology.

Jingle Guy (: 12:12

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