Critical Reflections: How Groups Can Learn from Success and Failure

Critical Reflections is a process that leaders can use to help their groups learn lessons from key events, positive or negative. The basic process is short and simple. It begins with a key event and includes three stages: exploring—reliving the event and sharing perceptions of what happened; reflecting—reaching an understanding of how and why it happened; and projecting—harvesting lessons for the future. The goal is to create a specific action plan that will set the stage for a productive future.

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Chris Ernst is research director, global leadership, at CCL’s Singapore campus. He is responsible for starting up CCL’s research and innovation unit in Asia and for comanaging Leadership across Differences, a global project focusing on leadership in diverse, multicultural contexts. Chris holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from North Carolina State University.

André Martin is an enterprise associate at CCL’s Colorado Springs campus. He is a lead faculty member for the Center’s Leadership and High-Performing Teams program and a key designer of the Navigating Complex Challenges program. André holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Saint Louis University.