Think about: Inspiring Thinking through Attentive Listening
Brad Arden February 2017
"The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first.” Nancy Kline
Thinking aloud: a term often used to describe speaking to someone to help order our thoughts and tap into our own wisdom.
Nancy Kline in her groundbreaking book, Time To Think, says: The quality of attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking”. She believes that we think best when others listen with interest to our thoughts. When people listen to us with undivided attention, it stimulates our thought process and allows us to express these thoughts out loud.
The problem, for many of us, is that we live such busy lives we often have little opportunity to really think. In addition, many of the environments in which we try and think are not optimal for quality thinking. It is important to foster the right environment where people come together, whether it is an intimate conversation, a meeting or a coaching or mentoring session is critical for healthy thinking.
Over the 30 years she has trumpeted her approach to thinking she has assembled 10 key enablers to create the best environment for quality thinking. They are:
- Attention: listening with palpable respect and without interruption
- Equality: ensuring equal turns to think and speak
- Ease: offering freedom from internal urgency
- Incisive questions: finding and removing untrue assumptions that distort thinking
- Information: supplying the facts and dismantling denial
- Diversity: encouraging divergent thinking and diverse group identities
- Encouragement: giving courage for cutting edge thinking by removing internal competition
- Feelings: allowing space for sufficient emotional release to restore thinking
- Appreciation: practicing a 5:1 ratio of appreciation to criticism
- Place: creating a physical environment that says to people, “You matter.”
The beauty of her approach is in its simplicity. Anybody can offer a listening ear and creating spaces for thinking can yield wonderful results.
0 Comments