Below is a lesson from Admired Leadership on structured reflection as a leadership learning tool, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

What? So What? Now What?

By Admired Leadership

People naturally learn best from their experiences when they reflect upon them.

In 1970, educator Terry Borton recognized the power of self-reflection and developed a three-step framework to encourage students to extract practical learnings from their experiences.

This simple guide for deeper learning and insight is still used by many educators, thinkers, and leaders more than 50 years later. The simplicity of Borton's scheme is what makes it so effective.

This reflective process can be broken down into three fundamental questions: What? So What? Now What?

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Key Learnings:

• Reflection transforms raw experience into usable wisdom — without it, we repeat patterns instead of growing from them.
• Terry Borton's three-step framework — What, So What, Now What — gives leaders a repeatable structure for extracting insight from any situation.
• The 'What' step grounds reflection in observable fact: what actually happened, without judgment or interpretation.
• The 'So What' step builds meaning — leaders ask why the experience matters and what it reveals about themselves or their team.
• The 'Now What' step closes the loop with action — insight without intention changes nothing.
• The framework's staying power across 50-plus years signals that simplicity, not complexity, drives sustainable reflective habits.
• First responders can apply this framework after critical incidents, training evolutions, or difficult calls to extract lessons in real time.
• Leaders who reflect consistently develop Practical Wisdom — the ability to read situations accurately and respond with judgment rather than reaction.
• Reflection is a discipline, not a personality trait — it can be taught, practiced, and institutionalized in team culture.
• Using structured reflection after both successes and failures prevents the twin traps of overconfidence and demoralization.
• Teams that reflect together build shared understanding and a common language for growth — a foundation of psychological safety.
• Even one minute of deliberate reflection after a shift or meeting compounds into significant leadership development over time.