15Five checkins
LinkedIn Post
🗝️ Unlocking Growth 🌱 Through Reflection: My Journey with Weekly Check-Ins Using 15Five
Embarking on a journey towards self-improvement, I’ve recently started forming a habit that’s already changing the way I work and grow. Each week, I dedicate time for a short, asynchronous check-in to reflect on my progress, emotions, and priorities, leveraging the powerful tool 15Five.
🌟 Self-Reflection Rhythm
These weekly reflection are a gateway to a deeper understanding of my work and myself. By sharing insights with my lead, it enabled an enriched dialogue of support and development, enhancing our trust and connection.
🔍 Weekly Reflection - 3 Components:
✪ Emotional Check-In: Starting with how I’ve felt at work, this introspection requires vulnerability and trust. It’s a step back to acknowledge my emotional state, capturing trends and fostering meaningful exchanges with my lead.
✪ Priorities Review & Setting: Reflecting on past and future priorities mirrors my focus and adaptability. It’s a reality check on where I’ve excelled and where I need support, keeping me agile and holding me accountable in our fast-paced environment.
✪ Further Reflections: Varied and optional, these questions spark deeper thought on achievements, challenges, and aspirations. They’re a source of personal growth and valuable insights for my lead on how to best support my development journey.
In summary, my weekly reflections fosters a richer connection with my lead and pinpoint areas for support, especially in a remote setting. It’s a written, asynchronous way to communicate that fits seamlessly into individual schedules and allows for thoughtful responses. In combination with on demand in person one-on-one’s it is a great extension that provides flexibility.
So, are you giving yourself the space to reflect and grow? Are you communicating your needs effectively to those who can help?
👉 FOLLOW ME for more insights on personal development and agile+remote work.
Content preparation
I build a habit of weekly short asynchronous check-ins to reflect on how I’m doing, on my progress and for setting priorities for the upcoming week. We use 15Five for that. My reflections are shared with my lead and she can directly comment on insights provided. This supports getting into a rhythm of self reflection and helps me and my lead with expressing my development, my needs and deriving support. When we notice patterns or changes that need a more detailed conversation, we schedule such sessions on demand. Both of us bring long term experience to the table, so that on demand is working greatly. For the beginning I would recommend have One-on-Ones scheduled regularly, to not hide away from deeper reflection and to build trust and connection.
The weekly reflection consists of 3 main components. It starts with a checkin on my overall feeling by asking: How did you feel at work since your Last Check-In? For me a great starting question. I observe myself taking a step back to access my emotional state. And 15Five provides me with a longer term trend too. I love the interaction with my lead here, often asking and providing support when I flag a change. At the same time I think to answer this question requires a high level of trust with your lead. Exposing that feeling could also be misused. My approach is - trust credits first. I want to work in an environment where showing up with all my emotions is possible.
Next step is checking in on priorities from the past week and setting priorities for next week. I like that reflection point too. It provides a mirror on my focus, it shows where changes appeared and I can flag to my lead where I need support. For me it is important not to make that up. Agility is my main expertise and I welcome changes and adapt to situations. So when I did not work on my previous set priorities, that is a signal. With that signal I can reflect on it. What does it mean? Did I underestimate the topic - what happens to me still regularly. Did priorities shift? What is especially in a fast pacing environment like ours often possible. Being adaptable here is key. At the same time also challenging such shifts. Did I procrastinate? I’m aware that my appetitive for deep dives and learning is strong. These weekly reflections provide me a mirror on my behavior and nudge me to a corrections.
The 3rd part of further Questions for Reflection is well done too. Actually the questions vary for each checkin. And they are optional. Here is a list of questions this week:
- What went well this week?
- What’s your biggest challenge right now, and how can I help?
- Are there any projects you are interested to take on? What do you need from me to enable this?
- What’s something you want to be able to do in 6 months that you can’t do now?
These questions provide a great impulse for further reflection. I take what I would like to reflect on this time. And it provides thoughts for my lead, to maybe connect for a session to think more about next steps. It creates an opportunity for concrete support too. It feeds also the longer running development cycles and review talks. This reflection provides already a value by just running through that for myself. At the same time it is important input for my lead to learn about developing aspirations and anticipating next steps. What a great input to support growth.
In summary this weekly short 10-15 minutes check-in is a valuable instrument for self reflection and deriving adjustments. It provides important insights for my lead and enables richer connection and support. It is great for supporting Remote Work as I can do that in my time, it is based on written async communication and can be shared, supporting interactions directly on my inputs. In combination with on demand in person one-on-one’s it is a great extension that provides flexibility.
Posted on LINKEDIN on 2024-02-22_Thu
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