The importance of reflection in early years

In this blog, experienced early years professional Jordan Tully shares his insight on being an early years leader and how reflecting and reviewing your leadership experiences can help you continuously improve.

1. Reflect

I regularly contemplate the essence of leadership, its significance within my professional journey, and how it has shaped who I am today. Although I have explored this topic previously, we must regularly revisit it as our learning is never finished and is an ongoing process.

Whenever I reflect on the influences that have shaped me and my leadership style and outlook, I often think of two specific leaders I encountered in my career. Although the two are contradictory, both allowed me to start building on my leadership skillset. One was a great leader to follow and learn from, someone I knew I wanted to be like if I was ever lucky enough to be allowed to lead my own team. The other was a leader who led in a way I personally and professionally didn't align with. Both taught me an invaluable lesson that helped shape and guide who I wanted to be as a leader.

Over time, I realised that both taught me a lesson, neither more important than the other, but a lesson to create the leader I wanted to be. Through these experiences, I was lucky enough to learn how poor leadership could leave people feeling, how poor leadership impacts the entire team, and how poor leadership was never something I wanted to let happen, which is why reflecting is so important.

2. Review

Following a period of reflection, it's important to review. The reviewing stage for me is when you start to dissect your reflections and dive deeper: What went well? What areas of development have I highlighted? When you have effectively reflected and then reviewed, you can implement plans for further improvement in the future, allowing us to continuously improve. I have reflected above on a time in my life when I had experienced leadership for myself, but as I moved on to review what this means, I started to question deeper. What does it actually mean to be a leader? What does effective leadership look like to me? And how could this differ from person to person?

This leads to the reflection trinity's third and final stage: improve. As a leader, it is important to be open to reflecting, reviewing, and, in turn, improving, as it allows us to assess our strengths and areas for improvement. We should also assess our leadership styles and consider whether these are effective with our current teams.

We should all be adaptive with our leadership styles; over half of leaders confess they sometimes use as little as one leadership style with all their staff teams.

3. Improve

Reflecting allows us to develop and strengthen our own individual skill set, leadership styles, and ways of working. By regularly reflecting, reviewing these, and strengthening areas of development, we are able to improve. This allows us as individuals to be the best leaders and practitioners that we can be.

As we reflect on our leadership journey and strive for continuous improvement, let's all remember the profound words of Simon Sinek: 'Leadership is not a rank to be achieved; leadership is a responsibility, a responsibility to see those around us rise.' Let's embrace this responsibility by committing to ongoing reflection, reviewing our actions, and continuously seeking improvement. By nurturing a culture of reflection and growth, we can inspire positive change within ourselves and among those we are fortunate enough to lead. Reflect, review, and improve—together, we can make a lasting impact in the early years sector and the children that we care for.

Reflect, review, and improve.

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