Beyond Navel Gazing: Exploring the Concept and Payoff of Individual Reflection at Work

While managerial work is action-oriented and time pressured, this paper proposes that both individuals and organizations gain from increased individual reflection at work. While previous work has studied reflection at the team-level and as a structured organizational intervention, we conceptualize individual reflection as individuals’ general tendency to consider and examine various elements of their work in the course of their day- to-day activities. We develop a measure of individual reflection comprising four dimensions representing the different types of issues upon which individual might reflect on – goals, methods, self and relationships. We then theoretically argue, and empirically confirm, that individual reflection can be meaningfully distinguished from other related constructs, such as mindfulness, feedback seeking, social awareness and reflective pondering. Finally, we explore antecedents (e.g., intrinsic motivation, time pressure) and outcomes (e.g., learning, performance) of individual reflection. Our results suggest that people with high intrinsic motivation and time pressure are more likely to engage in reflection. We also find that when people engage in reflection, their learning and performance are enhanced. Given these individual and organizational benefits, we argue that individual reflection deserves more attention from scholars as a meaningful field of research and from practitioners as a valuable management practice.