Sharing Reflective Learning

Chrishmorris talks about Reflective Practice and suggests keeping a diary of reflections on one's work. Even better, perhaps, than writing it down in diary would be talking with others about it, while it's still fresh in one's mind.

I work in a multi-lingual environment though everyone understands and speaks English quite well. But worse than speaking different languages is speaking the same words while meaning totally different things.

This challenge is hardly limited to software development.

The problem, though, is that in communication-focused fields such as, say, peacemaking or family counseling, at least people realize that communication might not be happening.

In software development, and in the modern office in general, everyone thinks communication is happening when in fact it isn't.

The beginning of a solution is regularly starting serious conversations with the goal of explaining (reflecting on) our own experience of a particular activity, and with the assumption that we probably start out using the same language to mean very different things.

When you are convinced, through feedback in such conversations, that the other person has understood you, and vice-versa, then some real learning has occurred.