Time to Think: How to help your team do deeper, better thinking

Throughout season one of A Curious Space, one name kept coming up: Nancy Kline. Whether we were talking about culture, trust, conflict or storytelling, her framework, the Thinking Environment, kept appearing in the background. So in this post-season deep dive, we decided to give it the conversation it has always deserved.

This episode is a proper exploration of Kline's work: where it comes from, what the ten principles actually are, and how both of us use them in our day-to-day work with teams and individuals.

What is the Thinking Environment?

The Thinking Environment is built on a simple but powerful premise: the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. And the quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking. Kline identified ten principles that, when present, create the conditions for people to think at their best. We walk through all ten in this episode:

1. Attention: genuinely focused, uninterrupted listening
2. Equality: every person's thinking is welcome and valued
3. Ease: creating the internal spaciousness to think rather than react
4. Encouragement: keeping thinking moving, even when it is uncomfortable
5. Appreciation: acknowledging the thinking, not just the outcome
6. Feelings: making space for emotion as part of the thinking process
7. Information: ensuring people have what they need to think clearly
8. Diversity: actively seeking different perspectives as a source of richness
9. Place: recognising that physical environment shapes thinking
10. Incisive questions: questions that remove the assumptions blocking deeper thought

What we talk about

We discuss why interruption is so costly (people are interrupted on average every eleven seconds, and the anticipation of it alone changes how we think), how equality in a meeting is not just about who speaks but about the conditions given to each person to think, and why ease is a performance consideration, not a wellbeing one.

We also get into the two techniques we both reach for most: thinking rounds and thinking pairs. Rounds give every voice in the room the same quality of space, with no interruption and no right of reply, surfacing perspectives that rarely make it into open discussion. Thinking pairs offer uninterrupted time to think out loud with someone whose entire job is to hold attention. The only follow-up question available is: what more do you think, feel or want to say? Maddy shares her experience of working with a regular thinking partner over the past year, and what that quality of listening has made possible.

We also talk practically: how to use rounds to open and close team sessions, why starting with a question about what is going well changes the quality of what follows, and the single simplest change you can make to your next team meeting today: rewrite your agenda headings as questions.

Recommended reading

Nancy Kline, Time to Think (1999) Nancy Kline, More Time to Think (2009)

Kline narrates the audiobook of More Time to Think herself, and having trained with her, Maddy particularly recommends this as a way into the work.

 

About the hosts

Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF.

Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations, who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com).

Get in touch

Questions, reflections, or things you would like us to explore further? We would love to hear from you. Write to us at hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com or visit www.acuriousspacepodcast.com

Thank you as always to our producer Tim Fox and to Richard Flindell for the music.