Nancy Kline’s central proposition is a simple one, which is that the quality of everything that we do depends on the quality of the thinking that we do first. I’m a fan of her first book on this subject: “Time to Think”, and was therefore predisposed towards this follow up. She didn’t disappoint me.
“More Time to Think” is written in the same clear, accessible and engaging style and offers practical tips to help people to get better at thinking and at encouraging independent thinking in others.
Key themes and ideas
- The first job of a leader is to help him/herself and others to generate the best independent thinking that they possibly can
- How the listener behaves has a huge impact on the quality of thinking that the thinker/talker is able to do
- Kline describes ten key components that shape the thinking environment. Key to these for me are:
- Attention (really listening as opposed to waiting to talk)
- Equality (seeing the Thinker as every bit as capable of thinking as we are)
- Appreciation (people think better when they receive sincere and specific appreciation)
Useful gems
- Ask yourself; “how far can this person go in his/her thinking before he/she needs my thinking?” The hope here is that you recognise that the other person will do their best thinking if you can school yourself to provide them with a Thinking Environment, rather than you trying to tell him/her what you think
- There’s a really nice idea here about running mentoring relationships as relationships between equals where the mentee and the mentor take it in turns to think about and explore an issue of their choice.
Why I rate this book
- Kline offers ideas for improving the Thinking Environment in one-to-one conversations; in bigger meetings; and in mentoring pairs. To support these various uses, she threads the book through with examples of thinking conversations, giving examples of dialogue that the practitioner might wish to use
- It’s refreshingly honest – Kline reflects on some of the missed opportunities and wrong turnings taken along the path as she developed her approach
- It has a significant and useful overlap with cognitive-behavioural coaching in its use of approaches to help people to identify and challenge the assumptions that are getting in their way
- Similarly, it has significant overlap with Eli Goldratt’s work on removing the conflict between two people and their opposing views by challenging the assumptions behind each person’s view of the situation and beliefs about what is possible (“breaking the cloud”)
- The piece about using these tools to improve meetings chimes very neatly with a solution-focussed coaching approach.
Visit Amazon for more reviews, and a competitive price: More Time to Think: The Power of Independent Thinking: Nancy Kline