Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind

by Nancy Kline

everything we do depends for its quality on the thinking we do first.

thinking comes first. It followed then that to improve action we had first to improve thinking.

I remembered that she had laughed but only with me, never at my expense.

the quality of a person’s attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.

‘We don’t take time to think about what we are doing; we are too busy doing it’,

As required in a Thinking Environment the chair opened the meeting by focusing on something positive in the team’s work together.

True to the Thinking Environment model, she went round the group, giving everyone a chance to speak before any discussion could begin.

A Thinking Environment is the set of conditions under which people can think for themselves and think well together.

typically, even when we are in groups that are brainstorming or exploring new ideas, often the unstated warning in the culture is: ‘Think the way others are thinking. Think to impress. Think to avoid ridicule. Think to get a promotion. Think to out-manoeuvre.’

boredom can set in because the person is disconnecting from the truth.

went through their entire childhood and most of their teen years learning how to fit in rather than to think for themselves.

As children we learn to look to authorities to do our thinking for us. Then from the minute we make friends we look to them for what to think. Wherever we are, we look around, check out the scene and think what we imagine others are thinking, what we are expected to think. Even at the graduate level, schools teach us ever more sophisticated ways of doing this. Most religions require it for salvation.

Doing what everyone else does, thinking what everyone else thinks is rewarded.

until we see that our real survival depends on thinking for ourselves, we will look through those teenage periscopes in every meeting and in every relationship for the rest of our life.

The Ten Components of a Thinking Environment 1 Attention Listening with respect, interest and fascination. 2 Incisive Questions Removing assumptions that limit ideas. 3 Equality Treating each other as thinking peers. • Giving equal turns and attention. • Keeping agreements and boundaries. 4 Appreciation Practising a five-to-one ratio of appreciation to criticism. 5 Ease Offering freedom from rush or urgency. 6 Encouragement Moving beyond competition. 7 Feelings Allowing sufficient emotional release to restore thinking. 8 Information Providing a full and accurate picture of reality. 9 Place Creating a physical environment that says back to people, ‘You matter.’ 10 Diversity Adding quality because of the differences between us.

The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.

The best conditions for thinking, I assumed for years, were hyper-critical, competitive and urgent. Schools, organizations, governments and families convince us of that. But in fact it is in schools, organizations, governments and families that people do some of their worst thinking.

The best conditions for thinking, if you really stop and notice, are not tense. They are gentle. They are quiet. They are unrushed. They are stimulating but not competitive. They are encouraging. They are paradoxically both rigorous and nimble. Attention, the act of listening with palatable respect and fascination, is the key to a Thinking Environment.

We think we listen, but we don’t. We finish each other’s sentences, we interrupt each other, we moan together, we fill in the pauses with our own stories, we look at our watches, we sigh, frown, tap our finger, read the newspaper, or walk away. We give advice, give advice, give advice.

You assumed, because you had been taught this almost since you could breathe, that helping people means thinking for them.

But your ideas were not their ideas. And so they were not quite as good – not quite as accurate, as rich, as just right as theirs would have been – because it was their problem, not yours.

because your ideas were not theirs, they were less likely to act on them than they would have been if the ideas had been their own.

Real help, professionally or personally, consists of listening to people, of paying respectful attention to people so that they can access their own ideas first

Usually the brain that contains the problem also contains the solution – often the best one.

Give people a chance to find their own ideas first. That chance will take more time than you probably feel comfortable with.

Surprisingly the simple question, ‘What else do you think about this?’ can usually lead them straight to more, often good, ideas.

Tailgating in this way is an insult. When you finish someone’s sentence

So sit back and let them search. The search and the saying add to the quality of their thinking, to their process of understanding, of sorting things out, of gaining insight.

And ‘staying out of their way’ nearly always takes less time and produces more.

The point is to be interested and to show it. And not to be artificial.

‘Keep your eyes on the eyes of the person thinking, no matter what.

The fact that people have stopped speaking does not mean that they have stopped thinking.

Incisive Questions remove limiting assumptions, freeing the mind to think afresh.

A question works because, unlike a statement which requires you to obey, a question requires you to think.

the mind wants to think for itself. It resists commands. It responds to questions.

It has to be a question that accurately identifies the assumption and then replaces it with the exactly right freeing one.

when you spot an assumption that is limiting someone’s thinking, you can remove it deftly with a question.

If you knew that you are vital to this organization’s success, how would you approach your work? If things could be exactly right for you in this situation, how would they have to change? If you were not to hold back in your life, what would you be doing?

If you knew that you are as intelligent as your bosses, how would you present yourself to them?

If you trusted that your excellence will not put others in your shadow, what would your goals be?

If you want to take action, but you are stuck, ask yourself, ‘What am I assuming here that is stopping me?’

Even in a hierarchy people can be equals as thinkers. Knowing you will have your turn improves the quality of your listening.

In a Thinking Environment, even in a hierarchy, everyone is valued equally as a thinker.

Organizations also intimidate people into believing that ‘the higher up you are in a hierarchy, the better you can think’.

the chance to contribute ideas and points of view is given equally in a Thinking Environment.

A five-to-one ratio of appreciation to criticism helps people think for themselves.

Society teaches us that to be positive is to be naive and vulnerable, whereas to be critical is to be informed, buttressed and sophisticated.

Appreciation of someone needs to be genuine, succinct and concrete. If you fake it, they will know. If you go on and on and on, they will go numb. If you are too general, they will not believe you.

When you have to give criticism or negative feedback, and we all do, begin and end with something genuinely positive.

You don’t have to be alive to keep teaching if you have taught your life while you lived.