Many years ago, exposure to the work of Nancy Kline and her Thinking Environment research transformed the way I listened. And her powerful article exploring interruption as assault on the brain swiftly curtailed my habit of interrupting others!
For someone with a natural preference for speaking first and thinking later, ‘active listening’ was always something of a challenge.
Reading Time to Think reminded me that the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. But it also provoked a deeper appreciation of how the quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking.
Nancy’s Ten Components of a Thinking Environment (see below) are proven to generate the finest independent thinking and are the core principles that underpin all my client interactions - from one-to-one meetings through to large scale leadership development programmes.
Which components you are already creating and which you could develop further? Try Nancy Kline’s personal assessment and find out!
