Reflective assignments unsettle a lot of MBA students. After months of being told to write impersonally, you are suddenly asked to use "I" and discuss your own performance. Many respond by writing a diary entry. Reflective writing is still assessed academic writing — it simply takes your experience as its evidence base.
The Six Stages of Gibbs' Cycle
- Description — what happened. Factual, brief.
- Feelings — what you thought and felt at the time.
- Evaluation — what was good and bad about the experience.
- Analysis — what sense you can make of it, using theory.
- Conclusion — what else you could have done.
- Action Plan — what you will do differently, specifically.
Description: Shorter Than You Think
Set the scene in a paragraph. Who, what, when, what was at stake. Resist the urge to justify yourself — this stage is not an argument, and detail added here is detail removed from the analysis where the marks are.
Feelings: Honest, Not Performative
State what you actually felt, including the unflattering parts — frustration at a team member, anxiety about presenting, irritation at ambiguous instructions. Reflections that report only noble emotions read as managed and score poorly. The point is not to confess; it is to note the emotional data that influenced your decisions.
Analysis: Where Theory Enters
This is the stage that distinguishes a postgraduate reflection. Use a framework to explain your behaviour rather than merely name-dropping one:
- Belbin team roles or Tuckman's stages — for group dynamics and why a team stalled.
- Situational leadership — whether your style matched the team's readiness.
- Goleman's emotional intelligence domains — self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy.
- Argyris' single and double-loop learning — did you fix the action, or question the assumption behind it?
- Johari window — for feedback that revealed a blind spot.
Apply the theory to the specific moment: "Tuckman would classify this as storming; the disagreement over the data source was role conflict rather than personal, which I misread at the time."
Action Plan: Specific and Testable
"I will improve my communication" is not an action plan. "In the next group project I will propose a written team charter in week one, covering decision rules and a named owner for each deliverable, and I will review it at the midpoint" is. Include a timeframe and a way of telling whether it worked.
Referencing in Reflective Writing
Reflective pieces still need citations. Cite the model you use, cite evidence for claims about leadership or teams, and cite any module readings you draw on. Check whether your brief permits first person — most reflective briefs do, but some ask for it only in the description and feelings stages.
Common Failures
- Narrative that never becomes analysis.
- Blaming others — reflection is about your own agency.
- Claiming total transformation from one seminar; small, credible learning reads as more honest.
- No theory at all, or theory listed but not applied.