In my last post I talked about our desire to create environments in which leaders can really explore what is important to them. This usually means breaking away from the ‘standard’ approach to workshops and conferences, and instead giving leaders both time to reflect and time to be heard.

Many leaders find it surprisingly difficult to reflect or be heard in their working environments. Though in theory they sit ‘above’ the organisation, or their part of it, in practice they are in constant demand and frequently expected to make decisions or pass judgement with little or no warning. This situation is exacerbated in the modern era by the common perception that a ‘strong’ leader is one who makes quick decisions.

It’s our view that leadership development programs need to counteract this, which is why we use the principles of Open Space to ‘structure’ our programs, as I talked about last time. And it’s why we often, within our programs, use a framework called the Thinking Environment to give leaders the opportunity to reflect and be heard on an issue of their choosing.

The Thinking Environment was developed by Time to Think founder Nancy Kline. Time to Think was originally introduced to us by our Associate Cathy Duvel, who is the organisation’s Australian faculty representative and one of a number of qualified Thinking Environment facilitators amongst our colleagues.

The Thinking Environment is incredibly simple yet incredibly powerful at the same time. It centres on an understanding that the opportunity for a person to think for themselves, and the quality of that thinking, depends on the regard they are given by the people they are with. In a Thinking Environment, this regard is made up of Ten Components, including quality of attention, encouragement and appreciation.

There is much more to the Thinking Environment than I can explain here. For now I want to share one application of the Thinking Environment which we use within our Leadership Experiences. It is called the ‘Time To Think Council’ or, as we call it, the ‘Wise Council’.

Briefly, the way this works is that the group of leaders sits together in a circle along with ourselves as facilitators. One person is asked to explain their issue or challenge while the rest of the group gives that person their attention – without interruption, questions, comments or anything else that one usually experiences in similar environments.

Once the speaker has exhausted what they want to say, there is an opportunity for the rest of the group, one at a time, to ask clarifying questions. When there are no more questions, each person then has the opportunity to share information in relation to what they have heard: insights or wisdom drawn from their own experience. Advice is discouraged as the idea is for the original speaker to draw their own conclusions from all they have heard.

During this, one person acts as scribe and captures the information and wisdom from each person; these notes are ultimately given to the speaker. Finally, the speaker wraps up the conversation by reflecting on what they have heard. The process ends with everyone taking a turn to express and appreciate a quality they have observed in the person seeking counsel.

Part of the strength of this approach comes from the way it allows all participants to share similar but different experiences to the situation at hand. This redresses the imbalance typical of many workshops whereby the facilitator or other people in the group are seen as the ‘experts’.  The process is also very effective at prompting ‘out of the box’ thinking on the part of the speaker.

The Thinking Environment approach works very well in many different leadership situations. On our last trip to Tetepare, one of the participants was the leader of the Tetepare Descendants Association, which represents 3,000 islanders. He is not someone accustomed to leadership development environments, but he was overwhelmed by the gift of wisdom and insights he received through this process. It was very rewarding for everyone involved.

Gayle