What Is Reflexivity? Learning to Question How We Think

Written by Suzanne Conroy, M.Ed, PCC

Reflection and reflexivity are both powerful learning practices. They require self-awareness, build knowledge, shape our thinking and understanding, and create opportunities for growth. Both invite us to pause, inquire, question, and examine our own thinking.

However, there is an important difference between the two.

Reflection

Reflection is the intentional pause that allows us to examine an experience, our thinking, and our response. This pause creates a liminal zone, the space between then and now, where we can slow our thinking, open up other perspectives, and consider what we might not otherwise see (1,2).

Reflection can happen both in the moment and after the moment. In the moment, we notice what is happening, consider our response, and make adjustments as we go. After the moment, we look back on an experience to better understand what happened and what we can learn from it (2).

For example, if a leader struggles with a coworker, they may recognize during the interaction that something isn’t working and shift how they respond. Or, afterwards, we might return to the situation and explore what happened, how the leader responded, and what they can learn from the exchange.

This exploration often offers the leader new insights into themselves and the situation. From there, they can consider how that new awareness might shape what they do moving forward. What we learn through reflection becomes part of what we bring to future experiences.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity adds a deeper layer. It asks us not only to challenge our assumptions, biases, and judgements, but to question how we came to see and understand things the way we do in the first place (2).

Using that same example, the struggle with a coworker is explored through a broader lens. A leader might begin to ask:

What assumptions am I making about this person? What am I taking for granted? Why do I believe what I believe about this situation? Where might that understanding have come from? How might my experiences, role, values, culture, or perspective be influencing what I see? How might I be contributing to the dynamic? What might I not be seeing?

Our experiences, culture, roles, relationships, identities, and the systems around us all influence how we understand ourselves, other people, and the world. Reflexivity invites us to examine those influences rather than simply accepting our perspective as the way things are.

This is where reflexivity becomes particularly important in leadership. What we think influences what we see. What we see influences how we communicate, make decisions, build relationships, and lead.

Reflexive conversations challenge leaders to think beyond self, potentially unlearn old ways of thinking, and explore alternative ways of understanding and engaging with the world. Reflexivity is ongoing and relational (2). It asks us to consider ourselves in relation to other people and the systems around us.

Reflection helps us learn from our experience. Reflexivity asks us to examine how we are shaping that experience, and what has shaped what we think in the first place.

Reflexivity and Coaching

Coaching creates space for both reflection and reflexivity. Through dialogue, leaders can pause, examine their thinking, challenge what they believe to be true, consider other perspectives, and develop new understanding.

Over time, these practices can become part of how a leader thinks and learns, both within coaching conversations and beyond them. Pausing, questioning assumptions, considering other perspectives, and allowing new learning to influence what we do next becomes part of the ongoing work of leadership.

Bringing Reflexivity into the Workplace

Reflection is already part of the language of leadership and learning. I believe reflexivity needs to become part of that language too.

Building workplaces where people can question their assumptions, examine what has shaped their thinking, seek other perspectives, and consider their impact on others creates opportunities for deeper learning and understanding.

Reflexivity is also an important part of my coaching practice and its grounding in social justice. It creates space to examine not only ourselves, but the assumptions, perspectives, power dynamics, and systems that shape how we understand and engage with others.

People are never static. We are always becoming, evolving, and learning when we pay attention.

Questions or reflections? I’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to continue the conversation about executive and leadership coaching, please connect with me.

References

(1) Askey, J. D. (2020). Collaborative coaching to unlock your full potential. Feminist German Studies, 36(1), 85–99. https://doi.org/10.5250/femigermstud.36.1.0085

(2) Berger, J. G. (2004). Dancing on the threshold of meaning: Recognizing and understanding the growing edge. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(4), 336–351.

(3) Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.

(4) Lyle, E. (2017). Introduction. In Of books, barns, and boardrooms: Exploring praxis through reflexive inquiry (pp. vii–xii). Sense Publishers.