Am I Stopping & Listening ?

Attended an interesting practical talk by Nancy Kline, Founder and President of Time to Think® http://www.timetothink.com/meet-us/nancy-kline/ in the IMI, Sandyford. 

A key message underlying her philosophy, in my view, is that the quality of our thinking is impacted by the way we are treated by others while we are thinking.  So for example, interruptions disturb our thinking, we must be mindfully present with someone when they are thinking, we must listen and be comfortable in silence which unleashes the power of the human mind.  Nancy spoke of the impact on the coaching contract and the coaching space ............ the tiny HUGE moment in coaching engagements where we can choose to respond to silence by engaging with it, rather than filling it with our words, which immediately impedes the quality of the client’s thinking.  She poses a powerful question to facilitate this choice “how do I know that what I am about to say will make a bigger difference than what the client is about to think ?”  This really got me thinking and reminded me of Tom Peters,  The Little BIG Things : 163 ways to pursue excellence and his YouTube clip of the four most important words in an organisation What do you think?

I can play my part in cultivating independent thinking in others whether colleagues, subordinates, peers, children, by listening to their words and engaging with the silence.

So the 3 actions for me to take from this event are to do more Stopping, Listening, Asking “What do you think ?”

To what extent am I creating a Thinking Environment (as defined by Nancy Kline), take a self-assessment at http://www.timetothink.com/online-assessment/

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