The Role of Reflection in Coaching, Human Development, and Experience Design | By Jennifer Britton

"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."
—John Dewey

In today’s accelerated world of hybrid work, ongoing change, and constant pressure to perform, reflection may seem like a luxury. In fact, reflection is the very tool that turns action into insight—and insight into growth. Reflection is how we build capacity, connection, and clarity throughout the coaching process.

This article explores the critical role of reflection across three interconnected domains: coaching, human development, and experience design. Whether you're leading a 1:1 conversation, facilitating a group, or designing a team offsite, reflection is a muscle that needs to be strengthened—intentionally and experientially.

Coaching: The Foundation for Transformative Insight

In coaching, reflection is not an add-on, it’s the foundation for being a catalyst of forward movement. Through powerful questions, silence, metaphor, and structured dialogue, coaches help clients pause long enough to identify and discern what matters most to them.

Reflection allows our clients (individuals, groups or teams) to:

• Make sense of complexity
• Learn from failure (and success)
• Identify values, assumptions, and patterns
• Shift from reactivity to intention

Even simple routines can prompt powerful reflection. Try a weekly check‑in using the Win–Learn–Focus framework:

• What was a win for you this week?
• What did you learn?
• What have you been focusing on?

Or ask: “What surprised you this week?” These micro-moments compound over time, becoming a core part of how our clients think, discern, and prioritize.

Human Development: Identity, Meaning & Growth

Reflection is the bridge between who someone is now and who they’re becoming. In human development, it is reflection that fuels mindset shifts, reveals internal narratives, and fosters resilience.

For team leaders, teams and individuals navigating uncertainty, reflection supports:

• Strengths-based identity building
• Learning agility
• A deeper understanding of purpose
• The capacity to connect authentically with others

This is where coaching questions like, “What’s shifting for you right now?” or “What strengths are you not using?” serve as doorways into growth and clarity.

Experience Design: Making Insight Stick

Reflection is a cornerstone of Experience Design and coaching. Reflection is what turns experiences into insight and action. In the rush to deliver value, content and interactive experiences, we often forget that meaning is made in the moments between the pause and action.

So, whether you’re leading a team session, a coaching circle, or a retreat, design it with reflection in mind:

Before: Use journaling prompts or visual goal maps to lay the foundation and an opportunity or spark new ideas and insights.

During: Build in pause points, debrief rounds, or metaphor-based activities like using the visual cards. When working with teams and groups our Conversation Sparker Charms have also added another doorway into insight.

After: Offer tools for integration, such as “Insight Capture” pages or peer accountability prompts

Reflection slows down the experience for participants allowing for insights to be generated and integrated.

From Thought to Action: A Reflective Framework for Change

In my work with coaches and team leaders, I have evolved the Conversation Sparker Model which we use with all of our clients. This consists of a four-step cycle namely Pause–Focus–Create–Activate cycle as a simple, repeatable approach to building reflection into any engagement:

• Pause: Create space to notice. (What are you feeling, seeing, sensing?)
• Focus: Clarify what matters. (What needs your attention most?)
• Create: Explore possibilities. (What new perspectives are emerging? What’s possible?)
• Activate: Move to action. (What’s your next step? What do you need to make it happen? What’s important about achieving this, now?)

This cycle is embedded into the Conversation Sparker Experiential Roadshow, which equips coaches and facilitators with tools that spark insight in powerful, creative ways.

5 Reflective Tools You Can Use Today

Reflection doesn’t require a full hour. Even three minutes of intentional reflection can help to reframe a decision, strengthen a connection, or spark a new commitment.

Here are five quick ways to bring more reflection into your coaching and team sessions:

1. Start-of-session question: “What’s taking up most of your mental space right now?”
2. Visual metaphor: Ask clients to pick a metaphor for their week or select a theme
3. Weekly journaling prompt: “What do you want to remember from this week?”
4. Team debrief: Use “One Word, One Learning” rounds to wrap meetings
5. Post-event pause: Have participants write down “3 insights + 1 action”

Wrap Up: Reflection as a Strategic Advantage

For both clients and ourselves reflection is no longer optional—it’s a strategic necessity. Taking the opportunity to reflect builds trust, creates connection, enhances learning, and enables more intentional leadership and action.

And for coaches, our role is to create the conditions—both conversational and experiential—for reflection to thrive.

As you look ahead to your next coaching conversation or team session, ask yourself:

"What space am I creating for reflection?
And how can I design that space to be even more impactful?"

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like:

• 6 Key Team & Group Coaching Approaches to Create Connection and Engagement by Jennifer Britton
• How to Have More Coaching Breakthroughs by Dr Marcia Reynolds, MCC
• Reflections on 65 Years of Coaching: Conversation with Lou Lukanovich by Karen Lukanovich

Contributing Author:

Jennifer Britton, MES, CHRP, CPT, PCC-ACTC, has influenced a generation of coaches in the realms of team and group coaching. You may have read her writing (she’s the author of 7 books), including Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010), the first book in the world to be published on the topic of group coaching; From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching; or her latest, Reconnecting Workspaces: Pathways to Thrive in the Virtual, Remote and Hybrid World (2021).

In 2025 Jennifer is leading a series of workshops around Coaching and Change, supporting coaches via Experiential Tools Under the Conversation Sparker Experiential Roadshow™. You can bring her in for a half-day or full day workshop.

Since 2006, Jennifer's Group Coaching Essentials (10 CCEs) and Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs) programs have become known as the must-do training in the area of group coaching. The two courses have now grown into ten distinct courses that group and team coaches can take – whether coaches want to work towards the ACTC (Advanced Credential for Team Coaching) or simply want to develop their practice.The two courses have now grown into ten distinct courses that group and team coaches can take – whether coaches want to work towards the ACTC (Advanced Credential for Team Coaching) or simply want to develop their practice. 

Focused on providing coaches with best practices in designing, marketing and implementing group coaching, these programs have helped thousands of coaches launch their own group and team coaching programs in a wide variety of settings (public, corporate, non-profit). These advanced courses dive deeper int the development of the coach, neuroscience of group and team coaching, and coaching a range of diverse clients which naturally exists in group and team coaching

Potentials Realized's ICF-CCE programs are geared for aspiring group and team coaches, especially those wanting to work toward the New Advanced Credential in Team Coaching (ACTC) with the ICF.

Also check out our neuroscience course for group and team coaches (NLE-A), Team Coaching Essentials  and ACTIVATE Your Team and Group Coaching Superpowers. Prefer podcasts? Listen into the Coaching Many Podcast.

Learn more about Jennifer & see all their articles here >>