Learn How to Facilitate Groups Brilliantly: the Thinking Environment Foundation Programme

Do you run team meetings, facilitate learning events, chair boards or executive groups, or in any other context,  get people together to think about important things?  Do you ever find that people don't contribute as well as you would hope, or that some dominate and others don't contribute?

If you wish to take your skills in running groups to the next level, and develop a set of approaches that increases participation, honest discussion and real engagement, then you will find it valuable to engage with the Thiniking Environment.

This is based on Nancy Kline's work, published as Time to Think, More Time to Think, and The Promise that Changes Everything.

At the heart of Nancy's approach, which she calls a Thinking Environment, is the belief that attention is generative; that is, the quality of someone's thinking, in my presence, is at least in part a product of the quality of attention that I give to them. (if you doubt this, consider the reverse: when you are trying to think about something and the person who is meant to be listening is clearly not attending... see what I mean?)

But in addition to a quality of attention that is in fact rare in most work contexts, there are nine other components of Thinking Environment; and there are various applications of these components that are suited to both group and one-to-one contexts.

The Foundation Programme is an introduction to this work in the context of working with groups: a precise but easeful approach to enabling all present to think outstandingly well.  I have blogged previously about this many times, ranging from my initial exploration of the process with Nancy, through to its practical application in a coaching session. (Other posts may be found by clicking here).

So I am delighted once more to be offering the Foundation Programme in the Lake District, this June (19/20). This Programme teaches you the ten components of the Thinking Environment, and a number of practical applications and findings that will transform your meetings.

If you choose to join us, you will be working as part of a small group of practitioners, jointly exploring the practice through practice!  Here's what a previous participant ha dot say about one of my programmes:

I really enjoyed the practice based approach you used throughout. Your role in the group was perfectly pitched - it felt like we were a group of equal thinkers, but you had more insight into the approach, which you shared generously with us. I really appreciated you sharing your experiences of using the approach in different contexts and also current knowledge of changes and  discussions with Nancy. This felt as if we were up to date with the latest thinking. 

This course is a prerequisite for the Thinking Environment Facilitator Qualifying Course, should you wish to take your practice to the next level.

More details are on my website, here; and of course if you wish to talk about the programme, or have any questions, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Making the Unthinkable Thinkable

Here's something I am struggling with at the moment. 

I am, by and large, in favour of people thinking, and indeed thinking for themselves (as my frequent posts about Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment testify).  Likewise, I am in favour of free speech, and deeply suspicious of those who try to stop others from saying things they do not wish to have said.

And yet... I think there are boundaries. Indeed, I am sure there are. The obvious ones about inciting to violence or criminal activity are easy. But that's not where my dilemma lies. I am thinking more about the erosion of public morals; or to put it another way, the undermining of values that underpin a civilised society. 

Until fairly recently, for example, there was a broad consensus that suicide is not good. It is not good for the individual, nor for his or her immediate family and friends,  nor for the wider society. But one of the results of the debate about Assisted Dying (and other cultural discourses about hyper-autonomy) is that that consensus is being eroded. 

The press have very strict guidelines about the reporting of suicides, because it is well-established that it can be socially contagious.  And such guidelines I believe to be a societal good. But the political debate about assisted suicide has been carried on vociferously and often intemperately.  And my point is this: that by making the unthinkable thinkable (in this case, suicide) we risk increasing the number of people who move from thought to action.

This is also (one of the reasons) why pornography is so harmful; and why we have a particular abhorrence of (and legal sanctions against) child pornography. For whilst it may be true that not all those who indulge in child pornography go on to act out their fantasies, it is certainly the case that nobody abused a child without fantasising about doing so first (I refer readers again to Gwen Adshead's excellent book The Devil You Know, about which I have blogged before).

And we have a new factor to make this problem considerably more complex: social media. Another book I have already blogged about is Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation. It is worth reading his account of teenagers presenting as having Tourette Syndrome with a very particular tic: the word 'beans' - and how that came about: social contagion from a popular TikTok star, Evie Meg Field. For more on Tourette social contagion, see this piece in The Atlantic, by Helen Lewis. 

It turns out that young people (whose brains, of course, are not fully developed) are very susceptible; and that social media algorithms effectively bombard their developing brains with reinforcing content of whatever catches their imagination.

It seems self-evident that many of the teenage girls who suddenly discover that they are transgender are in fact suffering the same kind of social contagion; and that girls who have other psychological, emotional and cognitive comorbidities are particularly vulnerable. When trans was 'unthinkable' (ie hardly any teenagers had heard of it) this population reached other self-diagnoses, such as anorexia (which also became 'thinkable' - and then socially contagious - at a particular point in time).

So on the one hand, I believe that ideas are amongst the most precious - and worthy-to-be-safeguarded - things that we have; not least in Higher Education, which is my particular field of interest.  But clearly, ideas are also potentially harmful, not just at an individual level but also at a societal level. When we make what was unthinkable thinkable, the consequences can be catastrophic.

How do we square that circle?  I don't know; and what is worse, we don't know, as a society. Censorship is profoundly distasteful to me, except in extremis; and I have particular mistrust of anyone who thinks that he or she is the right person to do the censoring.  Yet the impact of harmful ideas (and I haven't even started to discuss toxic ideologies such as Andrew Tate's, or racism, which again seemed unthinkable for the vast majority of us until very recently etc...) is profound and vastly amplified by modern technology and the booming echo chambers that it creates. 

Perhaps we need some previously unthought ideas to address this...

The Devil You Know

I am continuing to think about issues and themes raised by Gwen Adshead's excellent book, The Devil You Know, about which I have blogged previously. One of the fascinating tensions that comes through from her autobiographical reflections on her work with people who have done evil, concerns judgement and being non-judgemental (another topic I have blogged about before).

On the one hand, it is clear that listening in a non-judgemental way is extremely valuable and important in helping people to tell their stories.  And that, in turn, is very important in terms of their learning, growth and healing as human beings. 

And yet, it is also important that they reach a judgement on their evil actions (for in the context of the cases Adshead considers, that is what we are dealing with - murder, child sexual abuse etc). It seems clear that when they can name their offence rather than use a euphemism (such as 'my index') and acknowledge the evil of it, they are on the path to recovery. So the judgement is important, and a practitioner's non-judgemental listening should not collude with any denial of that. 

Carl Rogers is interesting here: as a therapist he was renowned for his non-judgemental listening and his unconditional positive regard. Yet in raising his children - and in his own private life - he held to high moral standards. Yet the non-judgemental approach, and his stance of unconditional positive regard eventually caused him profound problems, probably contributing to his breakdown later in his life; in particular when he found that for some of the therapists he was training, being 'authentic' included sleeping with clients; and they would say 'it may be wrong for you Carl, but it's not for me...' - and from his position of being non-judgemental and striving to maintain unconditional positive regard, he found he had nowhere to stand to correct them (he also confided to Bill Coulson that he was no longer competent to edit the journals he was editor of, as he was so attuned to the effort and positive intentions of those who wrote papers that he was not able to evaluate which ones were of real value, and still less able to tell some authors that theirs weren't). 

So my (somewhat tentative) conclusion is that being non-judgemental is a useful listening stance (in some situations) but we need not to allow it to become our moral stance. It is stark in Adshead's world of high security psychiatric hospitals, where the evils are so clear, but is equally important in the world of work and our domestic lives, when perhaps it is more tempting to collude in the name of kindness, or to keep the peace.

The vulnerability paradox

Vulnerability is the ability to be wounded; vulnera being the Latin for wounds. Yet so often when we are talking about emotional or psychological health, it is only in vulnerability that we are able to heal. 

This was made very clear in Gwen Adshead's excellent book The Devil You Know, which I read after listening to her completely compelling Reith Lectures.  

She writes movingly about the impact of people who have committed dreadful crimes talking with each other about their crimes, as catalytic in helping them to start to re-build their sense of themselves and their ability to function effectively in the world.

Yet all our instincts can militate against us risking vulnerability - why should we risk being (further) wounded? 

To a lesser extent, this reluctance manifests in many aspects of our social and work lives, and our completely natural reluctance to be vulnerable creates barriers between us and others, and indeed between us and ourself. 

This is where concepts like psychological safety, unconditional and uninterruptive attention, and unconditional positive regard come into play; helping to create the conditions in which people are able to explore - to take risks with - vulnerability and discover the relief and the healing that can ensue. 

As a coach, I find that there is another layer to the paradox, as well. One of the most effective ways for me as a coach to help people to risk being vulnerable is to be vulnerable myself. Yet the risk is, of course, that the focus of the conversation becomes me and my stuff, which is not helpful. This is particularly the case if the coach shares wounds, not scars, as I have blogged before. However, a degree of disclosure, followed by questions that encourage the individual to think about their stuff, not the coach's, can be an effective way to deal with that risk.

There is of course a further layer of complexity when one is facilitating a group or team; when coaching 1-1 I can be confident that I will not abuse someone's vulnerability; but when I am facilitating a group, I cannot have the same level of assurance. So I think I have an additional level of responsibility when as a facilitator I create an environment in which people are encouraged and supported to be vulnerable. 

Clear contracting is clearly a part of the solution; but with the best will in the world I cannot guarantee that everyone will honour confidentiality agreements after the event, for example. So I end up taking a calculated risk, with others' vulnerabilities, on the basis that, more often than not it is helpful and productive for the group to talk honestly about reality than to collude about unreality; and, of course, on the assumption that finally it is each individual's call how vulnerable he or she chooses to be.

And even if that does lead teams to having discussions that are not always comfortable - well, better the Devil you know...

About my Hostility...

At the end of a call earlier today, someone told me 'Of course, I really like people.'  I heard myself confessing (in confidence) that I don't.

Which is not wholly true. But there is some truth in it. 

I have blogged a few times about the Hogan psychometrics,  (here, for example) and my own profile (here, for another example...). But something that I haven't mentioned is that one of the subscales for Interpersonal Sensitivity is no hostility.  And I scored in the mid-range for that - about as much hostility as the next person...  And another of the subscales for that category is 'likes people' and I scored in the lowest quartile for that:  so I like people less than 75% of the (sampled) population.

Fortunately my overall score for Interpersonal Sensitivity ('Concerns warmth, charm, and the ability to maintain relationships') was somewhat rescued by my extraordinarily good performance in the other subscales, but even so it is my second lowest score, and only just out of that bottom quartile. Not perhaps the ideal profile for a coach, but I seem to manage to mask it, at least professionally.  If I had any friends, they might tell a different story, of course...

More seriously, it is fair to say that a low score on Interpersonal Sensitivity has some benefits as well as the obvious risks. These include being able to give negative feedback, being able to say clearly what they think, making unpopular decisions when necessary, not easily swayed by others' emotions, and being unconcerned with people-pleasing. 

Personally, however, it does raise interesting questions. Is it true that I carry a level of hostility, and that I don't like people? So, digging a little deeper, what do these subscales mean? No hostility is about tolerance; a low score may indicate someone who is critical of others, and a high score, someone who is generally accepting, and a sample item in the questionnaire about this is: 'I would rather not criticise people, even when they need it.' I can certainly recognise myself in saying no to that item.  

Likewise, Likes people is about being companionable; a low score may indicate someone who is socially withdrawn, and a high score, someone who enjoys others' company, so a sample item is 'I enjoy just being with other people,' and, not least given my tendency to introversion, I can also see myself saying no to that one - or at least, 'it depends.'

I'm also reflecting on David Rock's Your Brain at Work, in which he speculates that one of the reasons that Relatedness features in his SCARF model is that, for evolutionary reasons, we are primed to be suspicious of the stranger, whilst also needing the security of the group. That, combined with my own experience of being extensively bullied at school, might explain why my initial response to new people (particularly in informal and social settings) is a certain wariness. That is very much reduced in professional contexts where behaviours are more likely to be predictable and roles and expectations clearer. 

And, of course, I am reminded of Sir Walter Raleigh's famous verse:

I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I thought “What Jolly Fun!"

But blogging, of course, is really about sales, (so I understand) so I will conclude that if you are looking for a coach - or a facilitator, come to that - who will greet you with about average hostility, and who doesn't really like people very much, do get in touch.  I will be delighted to hear from you (but may not show it...)

The Anxious Generation

 

Over the New Year break, I read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation.

It's a compelling read, well written with a mix of statistical date and interpretation, and anecdotal examples to illustrate his thesis. It adds up to a very powerful warning to parents and others concerned with the raising of children and adolescents. 

His thesis is that the huge growth in mental instability that we are witnessing in the young at present is largely fuelled by two factors, working together to create an Anxious Generation.

One of these is a massive reduction in the amount of unsupervised play that children experience. Since the 80s and with growing rapidity, parents have been less and less willing to allow their children to entertain themselves outside the home, with friends. 

That resonates with me. Growing up in London, I was allowed pretty free rein after school till dark, and all day on Saturday, to disappear and play in the park (or less safe places, of course, unknown to my parents, such as the local empty reservoir). We got into trouble, we rowed with other local children, we fell of home-made go karts and play park equipment that would be deemed unsafe now (anyone remember the Witch's Hat?) Haidt's point is that such play, including risk-taking and engaging with strangers who may be friendly or hostile, is a very important part of growing up. We learn all sorts of coping skills and strategies, cope with knocks and bumps, and generally increase our confidence and our competence.  But parents (and other adults in influential and authoritative roles) now perceive that as too dangerous (or in many cases, too likely to result in legal action) and children are over-protected.

The second factor is the all-pervasive iPhone (other brands are available), and in particular the social media apps, which are particularly toxic for girls - who seem to be experiencing the worst of the mental health crisis. Boys, of course, are not much better off, though for them it is gaming and pornography that are the big problems. At the very least, these (by design) consume ever more of a child's or adolescent's time and attention, reducing time and attention from everything else they should be attending to in order to grow and mature.  But there are worse risks, of course, which he explores in some detail.

He may be right or wrong in his overall thesis: I don't know. But one doesn't have to buy the whole thesis to recognise the reality of the issues he is raising. So I strongly recommend that you read this, if you have any responsibility for children or adolescents; and not least as he concludes with some very practical suggestions of ways forward.

Oh, and don't forget to look in the mirror. It is not only young people who can find that they are giving their iPhone more attention than it merits: and the consequent withdrawal of genuine adult engagement from the young is another significant issue.

If you knew...

Jane and I do a Spelling Bee most days. Towards the end of the day, we often compare notes, and to spur each other on to greater success, we might ask How many words have you got starting with the letter N? And whoever has the fewer, knows that there are more to be had - and (and this is the point of this otherwise mundane domestic scene) often quickly finds a few more. 

It reminds me of an exercise I used to do many years ago, when I ran workshops on creativity for tech companies. Instead of asking 'How might we {very difficult challenge}?" I'd get them to frame the challenge as: 'Our competitors have just {very difficult challenge} - how do you think they have done it?' And again, it seemed that the knowledge that a solution is out there makes it easier (or makes us more determined?) to find one.

In both cases, it's almost as if asking the question (implied in both my examples) 'If you knew that ... how would you...?' prompts the brain to do some exceptional work.

And that, of course, is precisely the structure of an Incisive Question, in a Thinking Environment. 

Coincidence? I think not...

Therefore, if you need to clear a blockage, in your own or someone else's thinking, it's a great structure to use. As an Incisive Question, its formal job is to remove an untrue assumption and replace it with a true one.  I think that is also what happens implicitly in the other examples I cite. It removes the assumption that there are no more words beginning with N, or that there is no solution to this difficult challenge, and replaces them with an assumption of possibility, that enables the brain to break through.

So if you knew that this was a powerful structure, how would you use it?