Reflective Colleague Assessment Tool

Many years ago, I started working on a reflective self-assessment tool designed to explore male friendships. Today, a client and I were discussion the importance of relationships in her life, and I thought of that work I had started many years ago. After taking a quick look at an old brainstorming document, I realized this might be a valuable aid toward helping academic assess the quality of their colleague relationships. I present this to you as a crude, undeveloped, certainly untested instrument that you may wish to consider as an exercise. It is a reflective tool, designed to help you consider who supports you, and who you support. Use the scale subjectively, and only as means of initial assessment and tracking, should you wish to engage in some work based upon your reflections.

Reflective Colleague Assessment

1)      List all the colleagues you currently have in your life.

2)      List the colleagues who are important to you, but are not currently part of your life.

3)      Rank the colleagues according to the categories listed below.

4)      Note which colleagues you will like to move from one category to another.

5)      Brainstorm what you might need to do to move a colleague to another category.

6)      What actions can you take to make this happen?

7)      What barriers and blocks might get in your way (internal and external)?

8)      What actions will you now commit to doing?

9)      Spend some time reflecting on this process.

Excellent	Good	Average	Below Average	Poor