Self-Reflection for Personal Effectiveness:Insights from Literature

Self-reflection is a unique tool for life-long learning. It helps individuals learn from their experiences, identify problems and design and plan alternative solutions. Thus self-reflection enhances problem solving and decision making competencies among individuals which consistently lead to personal effectiveness. In organizational context, managers get things done by using these competencies. The managers, who just focus on action sans reflection, tend to commit identical mistakes time and again. Although there are not many empirical evidences to link self-reflection and personal effectiveness, the extant literature indicate a subtle connection between the two. This paper is based on existing literature on self- reflection and personal effectiveness to establish a relation. The paper provides workable insights on value, process and internalization of self-reflection as a trait which individuals may like to practice as routine in order to accomplish effectiveness in organizational, social and family contexts. Thus, this conceptual paper has tremendous practical implications for managers as well as academics.