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As a Knowledge Worker you sell the Quality of Thinking you do.
As a Knowledge Worker you sell the Quality of Thinking you do. Are you doing the best possible thinking you can?
If you’re reading this, you likely call yourself a knowledge worker. In some or other way, you sell the knowledge you have acquired through training and experience. But actually, the latter only gets you through the door. What you really sell is your ability to think, and apply that thinking, in terms of your training and experience. Your success is often determined by the quality of the thinking that precedes your doing.
But there are many things that prevent us from REALLY thinking well. How can we ensure that we establish the habits and practices, and create the conditions that allow us as individuals, and as teams, to do our best possible individual and collective thinking? This article will explore – with appreciation to Nancy Kline’s Time to Think work – the 10 conditions necessary for the human brain (and heart) to do our best thinking.
As a Knowledge Worker you sell the Quality of Thinking you do. Are you doing the best possible thinking you can?
By Danie Eksteen
1. Receiving quality attention
If you spend any time with young children, you will be all too familiar with being interrupted mid-sentence. You would hope that by the time these pint-size interrupters have matured into adults and entered the workforce they would have learned to wait till others stop talking, before they speak. Well, it seems they won’t. Just observe a few conversations in your office… A speaker barely breathes and they are interrupted with the listener’s own thoughts and comments. Rather than listening to really understand the other’s thoughts, the ‘listener’ simply responds with their own. Sound familiar?
Let’s unpack this: the speaker in this scenario firstly subconsciously feels the lack of quality attention which already impacts their freedom and ability to think. Add to this the interruption, subconsciously experienced as rejection – which neuroscientists say our brains experience similar to physical pain – and we are left feeling disrespected and the quality of our thinking, severely limited. Know how that feels?
Compare the interruption scenario above to meeting with the colleague you regularly have coffee with, let’s call him Tendai. You asked to meet as you are struggling with a business challenge and you wanted to ‘think it through’. He asks what your thoughts are about the problem and then sits back and listens. You know he is listening because his eyes are continuously fixed on you. Even when yours drift away as you’re thinking, you find he is still looking at you when your gaze returns. He never interrupts you bar perhaps for a brief clarifying question, and when you are done he doesn’t jump in with his own story or a solution or advice, he waits to hear if there is more, then if you seem done he just gently asks, “is there anything else you want to add?” and waits for your response. You thought you were done, but you have more. Our brains revel in the surprising presence of quality attention – and given permission to think, we excel. You likely walk away with a solution without Tendai having contributed much more than the s-p-a-c-e to talk – and think. We all know how to listen like Tendai, but we rarely do.
Giving each other individually and in groups this type of Quality Attention is a key for our minds to do their best thinking, individually and collectively.
2. Respecting that we all have an equal ability to think for ourselves
When we introduce and practise this type of listening with the teams we work with, and people experience the benefits, they always ask: “how can we make this a habit in our teams?”. The answer lies in a second guiding principle, namely Equality.
At the core of Equality lies a respect for others’ (everyone in the team’s) ability to think as well for themselves as we can – irrespective of seniority, experience etc. With this mindset, I don’t have to always solve my team member’s problem for them, my most important role is to help them think well for themselves by giving them really good attention. And often, in this process, they will solve their challenge themselves. As Nancy says, “the mind that holds the problem or issue or question often holds the key to the solution or answer”, we simply, quietly, need to create the right conditions for that mind to think.
The way teams instill the principle of equality is through habitually giving equal opportunities to speak and contribute. The listeners don’t interrupt, and the speakers are concise and don’t go on and on (thereby averting the risk of losing others’ interest and attention). To help you achieve this in your team:
Agree to timed conversations, e.g. if there is an agenda question, give everyone two minutes to respond. The timer on your phone is a perfect tool for this; when the alarm goes the speaker STOPS. This helps teach the outspoken to be brief and gives the quiet (often introverts) the assurance that they won’t be interrupted and don’t have to fight to be heard.
Do these timed conversations in a Round format, i.e. conversations that go around the circle with the simple rule that no-one speaks twice before everyone has spoken once. This means NO interruptions at all. Participants can respond when it is their chance to speak. The process enforces equality and makes giving better attention easy.
And sometimes group conversations are simply not the optimal way to start a conversation. Rather start with what Nancy calls a Thinking Pair. Simply divide the group in pairs and give each partner uninterrupted time (say 4 minutes) to think out loud around an agenda question. The benefit is that once the group discussion starts, structured as a round, each person has already had the opportunity to voice their initial thinking.
Research has shown that teams who do this are far more productive and waste loads less time.
3. In the mind at Ease, thinking flows
Our brains don’t think optimally in fight or flight mode. High stress and high cortisol might give us a ‘zing’ but limit the quality of our thinking. Team conflict, being interrupted or expecting to be interrupted and not heard etc (also if its psychologically unsafe), is enough to create what John Gottman Calls Diffuse Psychological Arousal (DPA) and the brain simply can’t operate at its best here. The most immediate symptom of DPA is an accelerated heart rate, and Gottman says that beyond an average heart rate of 100, rational thought and conversation become restricted (!).
So as leader beware: conditions of urgency and stress might get things done – but your people can’t do their best thinking there. For that, you need to create a condition of freedom from internal rush and urgency. Sometimes we have to go very slowly – to think well – so that we can do things fast later.
4. Encourage each other to think out of the box
Now that your team gives each other uninterrupted quality attention and conversations are structured for equal contributions, leading to both individuals and the environment feeling more at ease, you have made a great start! But, innovation, learning and growth happen at the edges of our comfort zones – where we can feel very ill at ease. To think and push into the edges of our comfort zones – and to do really out of the box thinking – a team also needs to be able to encourage each other to go where it is uncomfortable (also called productive disequilibrium): to challenge the status quo; to take a point of view different to everyone else’s; to challenge the “way we have always done things” and the patterns or assumptions created by our limbic brains.
To do things differently or to be the only one in a team with a different view or opinion can make us feel uncomfortable, our hearts unsure. This can be a scary place for which we need courage – a word that comes from the French word coeur or heart. Encourage thus means to ‘stand by someone’s heart’ (when it might feel scary). So, as a habit in your team meetings, encourage each other to, “Go for it, it’s safe, let your mind think outside of the box, we will stand by your heart as you explore, and while things feel uncomfortable”.
5. Diversity challenges the limitations in our thinking
Our nationality, upbringing, education and training, cultural environment, gender etc. have all impacted and shaped our habits or assumptions about life, reality, how things work and what is right and wrong. Stored in the limbic brain, to free up pre-frontal cortex capacity, many assumptions (and the slightly more complex biases), which we carry unknowingly, influence our thinking and actions. The risk for a homogeneous team (the same gender, culture, education etc.) is obvious, you are likely to have similar assumptions and think similarly, and to have massive blind spots and not even realise it.
The best way to challenge this ‘group think’ and encourage our best quality thinking in a team, is to have a diversity of training, background, perspective and experiences. The inclusion of diversity of thought maximises the possibility of new collaborative thought. Reality in itself is diverse – and when broad reality is included or considered, thinking is better.
History has shown that most ground-breaking innovations across industries are often affected by people from outside of that specific industry. If you are unconstrained by “the rules and thinking of the industry” or “the way things have always been done”, you are far more likely to ask the out of the box questions and raise challenges that those with a history in that industry no longer do. The more diverse your team is, the higher the quality of thinking possible.
6. Feelings and emotions can hold back our thinking
At the start of our workshops we often ask a question that goes something like: “what do you have on your heart that, if you got to tell us about it, would make it easier for you to participate optimally today”. Telling others about our emotions, helps release those feelings by literally freeing up the brain space that is holding them. The effect is similar to taking a blockage out of a river’s way. The converse is equally true: when not telling others about them, the emotion keeps the thinking river from flowing.
In the same way, at the end of workshops, we often do a round with the question: “how do you feel right now?” Inevitably some people give a thinking answer rather than a feeling answer and then we gently encourage them to dig a bit deeper and identify the emotion. This is a simple way in which you can institutionalise in your team that sharing emotion appropriately is ok and helps productivity.
7. Appreciation costs nothing
We have written before on the importance of psychological safety in teams – how the basic building block of trust acts as the thread with which the fabric of human relationships is woven together. If trust establishes relationship, appreciation is some of the life blood that keeps relationships thriving – and if we thrive we think better. Chilean psychologist Marcial Losada’s research into high performing vs low performing teams confirmed that a high ratio of positive vs negative communication is one of the defining characteristics of high performing teams. Appreciation falls in the category of positive, affirmative communication and makes us feel good and feeling good gives our brains the hormones that help us think better.
So, don’t wait for a performance appraisal, every team meeting (and in-between) is an opportunity to give appreciative feedback to other team members – succinct, specific and sincere. Be prepared to be amazed at the impact of this.
8. Our environment matters
If you ask your team where they do their best thinking, some will say in the shower, others outdoors, still others perhaps at a coffee shop. The fact is, we all know where our minds think best. And you as leader, can intentionally choose spaces that assist your team in doing their best thinking.
Rooms without windows in high-rise office blocks make me miserable and make it difficult for me to do my best thinking – and I am sure I’m not alone here. So, when running a workshop, I want nature nearby, preferably a space with large windows that give lots of natural light and a view of nature or a garden.
If your team needs to do quality work and quality thinking, make sure you give attention to the venue you choose – it communicates to them that they matter – and it helps them think better.
9. Facts before fiction
Often a team needs facts and data – Information – to do their best quality thinking. Market research, client data, trends, performance stats, and usage rates are all examples of information that in certain circumstances might be critical for dismantling speculative arguments and for allowing a team to do their best possible realistic and informed thinking on a topic. Information has the ability to dismantle fluffy arguments (or show up what we might have been denying) and helps us avoid getting lost intellectually or being unintentionally dishonest.
10. Are limiting assumptions holding you back?
When you, or your team, get stuck in your thinking and there’s a sense that you can’t make progress, there may well be limiting assumptions that are holding you back. Limiting assumptions come in the form of a voice, a story, a script, a conclusion. They are often born in our subconscious minds but play out in and impact conscious actions (or inaction). For progress and optimal performance, these need to be identified, dismantled and replaced with liberating true alternatives.
Asking the right incisive question will help you identify this limiting assumption. Nancy Kline has a step by step process for unpacking this. At the core is a question that goes something like this: ‘If you knew that… (fill in: the factual opposite of the limiting assumption) how would you feel/ what would you do?’. For example: Ask yourself, ‘What am I assuming in this situation that is holding me back?’ Your answer might be, I am assuming my boss doesn’t see my potential and doesn’t think that I am good enough. Then replace that assumption with the direct opposite and form a new question e.g. If I knew that my boss saw my potential and thought I had what it takes, what would I do right now?
Let us know if you want to know more and if you would like us to come and help your team think better!? Contact us if you need more information on how we can help you.