The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What Makes a Great Reflection? How to Impress on Application Forms and Interviews

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. Have you ever wondered why some reflections seem to catch a supervisor's

Starting point is 00:01:05 or recruiter's attention and others just seem to fall a little flat? Reflections are a way to show not just what you've done, but what you've learned from those experiences and why it matters. Whether it's in person or on application forms, what is the secret formula for reflecting in a way that really impresses? In this episode, I'll share my exact strategies, and I'm also going to be chucking in my examples of what works and what really doesn't. Hi, welcome along. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, and it's lovely to have you here. One of the most common questions I am asked as a qualified clinical psychologist is when I'm doing the compassionate Q&As for interview and application

Starting point is 00:01:51 season, or when I am running my aspiring psychologist membership sessions, is how can I reflect in a way that really demonstrates that I am not just going through the motions. How can I do what I need to be doing at this stage of my career to be getting the green light to proceed to the next stage? So the reflecting that we're talking about is, of course, the ability to be able to look at your experiences and to think about how they've shaped you and what you've learned from them, rather than just your experience of observing the processes involved

Starting point is 00:02:32 in what took place. Ultimately, what we want for you is for you to be compassionate, reflective practitioners. We don't want you to be robots that aren't affected by the clients you serve, that aren't moved by their distress and that therefore don't really help you to create meaningful, effective interventions or assessments or treatment plans that help clients to get results. And I think one of the best ways to demonstrate that is to be reflective, to really think and join up the dots of what being in this role or in these different job roles has been like, how it's shaped you, how it's affected you, what trace it's left upon you, in a good or sometimes in a not so good way. So your ability to reflect both in person, in interviews, in supervision, on job applications are really going to help you stand out in these incredibly competitive job arenas that you find yourself in. It might be that you're after an assistant psychologist job, It might be that you're after an assistant psychologist job,

Starting point is 00:03:46 it might be that you're after a trainee job or a PWP training role or even a qualified role for that matter. And these skills that I'm going to be outlining today could well be the difference that makes the difference for you. Okay so let's crack on. What are the key elements that make a really great reflection? So firstly we are going to want to describe the key elements that make a really great reflection so firstly we are going to want to describe the situation but not in a way that is too wordy so for example you might say when i was working as an assistant psychologist i worked with a client with severe anxiety that really helps us set the tone the flavor the context we've kind of got an idea of what you're doing when and in what capacity you were working. We only need to be producing the most relevant

Starting point is 00:04:28 important information here. We don't want to be adding extra unnecessary detail. We certainly don't want to be adding identifiable client information. The next stage is we're going to be analyzing what we have learned from this experience or these experiences. So this is where we are beginning to go above and beyond, you know, the building blocks of two plus two equals four. This is where we're really starting to do something special and to transform the kind of raw ingredients we've been given to something truly exceptional. So you might say, for example, this experience taught me to really use my active listening skills and how to adapt my communication skills so that the client could get the best out of the sessions.

Starting point is 00:05:12 And then an area often overlooked in reflections is how we are going to build on this for the future, how it's going to connect with us so that we have a different experience, also that we continue to gain from this best practice experience. So you might say now I've had these experience of interventions working really well, it's empowered me to think about how I can really think about the importance of rapport building with clients and how to make sure that it's effective, whether we're doing regular check-ins, whether we're doing outcome measures, so, whether we're, you know, doing outcome

Starting point is 00:05:45 measures, so that we're really getting in client feedback so that they can benefit from what we're doing. Ultimately, that's great for the client, but it's also great for our services outcome measures too. What are the common mistakes people are making when they are reflecting? Well, the first I would say is being too descriptive, just going on and on and on. And, you know, when you're listening to someone do that, it can be really hard to keep track of. And you kind of find yourself wondering where it's going and whether they're ever going to get to the point. We also really want to be avoiding just giving the nuts and bolts, the bare essentials of what happened, but never kind of offering any insight

Starting point is 00:06:25 or anything like a little bit of extra magic on that. It's just purely descriptive. That is what we don't want to do. So we don't want to be saying, I observed therapy sessions and I found them really interesting. You know, so what? We also don't want to be, you know, too overgeneralized here or, you know, not really making exciting, engaging, insightful comments and reflections. We don't want to just be wanging in and that's made me more empathic. So it can be really helpful to put in some theory or some models that kind of you are using to shape your thinking. Perhaps you're linking it back to, you know, psychology theory, you know, key studies that you've learned about in psychology. You know, we're really trying to think about linking that theory and practice and trying to

Starting point is 00:07:18 demonstrate that your knowledge isn't just surface level. Let's dive in and have a little bit of a look at some examples that aren't quite hitting the mark and some which are better. So for example, if somebody said, I observed a client session which I found interesting and it showed me how CBT works, I would say that lacks depth, it lacks any kind of actual emotional connection, It lacks any personal insight or resonance to you as a person, a clinician, a human. Let's see if we can come up with something a little bit better. Observing a CBT session helped me understand how a structured approach can alleviate anxiety. I noticed how the therapist used Socratic questioning, which I later practiced under supervision. This

Starting point is 00:08:05 experience highlighted the importance of tailoring interventions to individual clients' needs. So why is that better? What are the strengths of an answer like that? I think it's got that clear learning, it's got some theory, and it's got an idea of what we've taken from that experience and how it informs our learning. It shows us that that's an active process, that you know that things aren't just happening in a vacuum, that we are being shaped and we are learning and we're growing as we go and that is what we want. Of course these skills in reflection don't come easily to everybody, it's so dependent on the way that we've been brought up the kind of conversations that we have with friends with family with our supervisors the kind of developmental opportunities we have had

Starting point is 00:08:52 along the way so how can we begin to cultivate these skills if it's not already part of our comfortable wheelhouse one of the top tips I used was that I had a reflective journal and that bad boy would come out you know after supervision sessions, after clinical sessions, after delivering neuropsych, after team meetings, after ward round, after you know discussions with my peers, after lunchtime sometimes, after attending assistant psychologist meetings. It was kind of always with me and I'd be able to just jot things down as and when they cropped up for me. I was using it to compare and contrast my current self to my future selves, to my past selves,

Starting point is 00:09:40 to think about what I want to learn, how I can further myself, how I can develop. How has what I've done compared to my previous interventions? What have I learned? What did I notice that I did differently? What did I notice that I'd like to do differently next time? Another top tip is to seek feedback. That might be from your supervisor, your manager. It might be from your peers. How do they feel that you are

Starting point is 00:10:06 developing as a reflective practitioner? Both for your journaling and for your supervision sessions, it might be that you're asking questions like, what did I learn? What could I do better? How was I shaped by this experience? And of course, thinking about actual models for reflecting can be a really useful thing to do as well. Please do let me know in the comments if an additional video on different reflecting models might be helpful, such as the Gibbs reflective cycle, as using methods like that can really help you to structure your answers and to maximise your progress. Whether you are watching or listening to this content, it would be so gratefully received if you could like drop a comment or just let me know what your top tips for reflecting are. How have you been able to supercharge your skills for reflection? And how

Starting point is 00:10:57 are you reaping the benefits? So to summarize, a great reflection will include description, analysis, with the application being what you've learned and what you hope to apply in future. And really, we've got to do this super, super regularly. We've got to be weaving this in to our day-to-day moment-to-moment practices. Might be that you're thinking about this when you're showering, when you're cooking, when you're running, when you're on the treadmill. You know, this could be cropping up at random times. I used to reflect a lot when I was driving and stuck in traffic. And we're going to need to come back to this. It is not a one-and-done approach. If you've got kind

Starting point is 00:11:36 of stock answers that you use on application forms then we're going to need to keep checking those because I honestly believe that we ought to be changing, growing, shaping and just you know becoming a better and better human and clinician you know from day to day, week to week. So we shouldn't just be wanging in those same job applications or same kind of doctorate applications each year. I would urge you to have regular reviews and check-ins with yourself and with your supervisor because your skills and your practices across the board, including in reflection, should be advancing all of the time. I really hope that you find this content helpful. If you do, please do take a moment to like the content to engage with it to

Starting point is 00:12:26 comment to share to tell your friends it really is the kindest free thing you can do if you did want to buy me a cup of herbal tea to say thank you then please do check out the link in any of my social media bios please do also come along to my free facebook group the aspiring psychologist community and if it's your time and you're ready for the next step, please do consider the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can join from just £30 a month with no minimum term. The Aspiring Psychologist Collective and the Clinical Psychologist Collective are also really great books which will help you to build on your reflective practice and to see

Starting point is 00:13:03 how others put that into practice too. If you need to reflect on grief or on autism, then please do check out the Grief Collective and the Autistic Anthology. with this podcast that you're sad you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist my name's yana and i'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner I read the clinical psychologist collective book I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist it just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me of confidence that

Starting point is 00:14:15 no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself so if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What Makes a Great Reflection? How to Impress on Application Forms and Interviews

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