That bloody pendulum...

My late father was both wise and acerbic. He used the phrase 'that bloody pendulum' to describe the tendency in society, in cultures, in organisations, and in individuals (and on reflection I think within himself) to swing from one extreme to another.

Until relatively recently, the pendulum in educated British circles was swung rather too far to the side of self-adulation: the Empire, the White Man's Burden, all that kind of stuff. It was certainly in need of a corrective. But now, it seems to me, that bloody pendulum is swinging rather a long way in the other direction. The mere fact of being white is seen as problematic, in some circles.

Likewise, I think that conformity to social norms was over-emphasised, to the extent of ostracising anyone who deviated (or was perceived to deviate) from them. But again, that bloody pendulum... the very idea of normal, which is in the first place a statistical fact exemplified by the bell curve of standard deviation, is seen as problematic. Whilst I am all in favour of Diversity, Inclusion and Equality (and also of motherhood and apple pie, of course) they are not absolute values as I have written previously; and I think there are risks to normalising the abnormal and abhorring the normal. 

And I find it interesting that those who denigrate whiteness and extol the virtues of indigenous cultures where skin colour is a bit darker, seem somewhat selective in which virtues they extol. For it is very common, in such cultures, to venerate ancestors; whilst the modern trend in our culture is to denigrate them and apologise for them. 

Of course they weren't perfect; but if we think either that we are better than them, or that all of their wisdom is disposable because they weren't wise in all things, then we risk throwing out several babies with the admittedly dirty bathwater. 

I'm thinking of things like: innocent until proven guilty, or even just war theory. It's not that these are perfect solutions to human problems, but they are the best we have found so far. Consider the alternatives that seem to be rearing their heads. In the first case, we seem to have innocent until someone has decided that you are offensive, at one extreme, and innocent despite courts having found you guilty (if you are powerful enough...), at the other; and in the second case, passivity when the innocent are attacked, on one hand; or unlimited use of deadly force on the other.

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Image from Mark Ross Studios via Scientific American

Thinking Partnership Programme

So this Thinking Environment… It springs from the work of Nancy Kline and is founded on a profound belief in the capacity of the human mind to think outstandingly well - given the right conditions.

This seems to me to be a core skill for a coach: to enable the person we are working with to think independently at his or her very best. Thinking independently is thinking as ourselves and for ourselves.

Kline's thesis is that we do this primarily by paying the person being coached a level of attention that is rare in daily life; and that such attention is generative of good thinking. The idea is, the quality of the individual’s thinking,  is (at least in part) a product of the quality of attention that we give them.

In Time to Think, and its successor, More Time to Think, Kline describes ten components of a Thinking Environment. 

The first, and the most important, of the components is attention. Attention of the quality we mean here is simple, but difficult - and rare. It consists of giving your whole attention to the person that you are listening to.

That means, amongst other things:

• removing all distractions (eg electronic devices with alerts…),
• refraining from taking notes whilst the individual is thinking,
• keeping a 'soft gaze' (of interest and encouragement) on the person’s face (though the person thinking may, of course, look wherever he or she chooses), 
• not thinking about how you will respond or what wise question you will ask next, 
• and above all, not interrupting.

In fact, even when someone stops talking, we refrain from interrupting the silence, as he or she may still be thinking. Thinking comes in waves, and the freshest thinking often arises after a pause. Such attention is so rare that it may feel like a luxury, or even feel uncomfortable; but it does seem to support really good thinking. 

The other nine components are equally rich, but I will not describe them all here, as it would make this a very long post. 

Coaching in this way is very different from many approaches. It takes seriously the assumption that the individual is more likely to come up with good solutions than the coach; the coach's role is to provide the environment - the Thinking Environment - in which that is most likely to happen.  I have blogged before about a specific example of this.

If you want to explore this further, I have a few places left on my next Thinking Partnership Programme (5/6 Sept and 11 Oct) here in the glorious Lake District.  Don't hesitate to get in touch if you want to know more, or have a look at my website, here.

Disclosure Remorse (again)

I have blogged previously about disclosure remorse, and  I mentioned my supervisor's excellent advice about discussing this explicitly with the client, in a pre-emptive way.

It came up again in conversation with a colleague the other day, and as we are both Thinking Environment practitioners, we were naturally considering it in the light of the ten components.

Which raised the interesting question of Equality. One of the reasons, we suspect, for disclosure remorse may well be inequality. The client may have shared so much with the coach, and yet the coach has disclosed nothing in return - which may leave the client feeling vulnerable.

That might imply that it is appropriate, in terms of establishing the relationship on a basis of equality, for us to share some vulnerability in our turn (always being mindful, perhaps, of the other cautionary advice, about scars, not wounds...)

So, how do we share a bit of vulnerability with the client at that stage, without making the conversation about us, rather than the client? 

That was the question that we arrived at, and then time ran out.  If we, (or indeed I alone) find an answer to it, I'l certainly blog about that, too.  And if you know an answer, please tell me.

Learning from my grandson

One of the things people often say to me when learning new skills (you know, the really difficult things, like listening without interrupting...) is that it doesn't feel natural. The implication underlying this, I think, is that it therefore isn't very authentic.  And we all know that being authentic is (rightly) seen as an important trait for effective leadership and good interpersonal relations. (Though I think that needs a little unpacking, as I have written previously). 

However, I think that the description that new behaviour (such as refraining from interrupting) doesn't feel natural is, in fact, inaccurate. And that brings me to the title of this post: Learning from my grandson. 

Nate is not quite one year old, and has been learning to walk. At first, he was, understandably, not very good at it - he fell over a lot, and waddled in a rather unbalanced way. It didn't look (or, I dare guess feel) 'natural' in the sense used above.  But over the last few weeks he has got a lot better and charges around after his big brother quite easily, and only falls over occasionally.

And I dare guess that most of my readers regard walking as quite natural to them - you may well stroll from one side of the room to the other without falling over, or even hike over the fells, or wander down to the pub...

The point being, of course, that it is a learned behaviour; as indeed are almost all those behaviours which feel natural to us. For natural here is really a mis-label for habitual (or at least familiar). So when people tell me that it doesn't feel natural for them to refrain from interrupting (or whatever the new behaviour is) I refer to Nate and his learning to walk.  It takes practice, but with time they will get good at it, incorporate it into their repertoire of familiar (or even habitual) behaviours, and then it will indeed feel natural.

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With thanks to DICSON for sharing this photo on Unsplash (Nate's parents prefer that we don't share his photo online).