Implicit Incisive Questions

Incisive Questions are beautifully crafted questions that help cut through (hence incisive) an untrue assumption that someone is living as true that is blocking their thinking - part of Nancy Kline's system of components that together provide a Thinking Environment.

So, for example, if someone assumes that s
he doesn't know the answer to the problem that she is addressing, we might invite her to develop an alternative credible assumption (eg that she might be able to find an answer), and then ask: if you knew that you might be able to find an answer, what might you think?

And, typically, thinking takes off.

In practice, we rarely use incisive questions explicitly, because more often than not, people find that they can continue to think usefully about the issues they are addressing for as long as we've got.

Which raises an interesting question.  The hypothesis is that the Thinking Environment works best when all ten components are sustained by the Thinking Partner.  Yet, if we rarely ask those questions in practice, how does that work? And that leads to our thinking about implicit incisive questions.

Sometimes when people are invited to think they are inhibited by unvoiced (and possibly subconscious) assumptions; that the person listening isn't really interested, or that they are boring, or that their thinking isn't of any real value, and so on.  

So the job of the listener is to listen with such exquisite attention that they are communicating, non-verbally, a series of (implicit) incisive questions:  If you knew that I was really interested... if you knew that you are not boring me at all.. if you knew that your thinking was truly valuable.... what might you think?  And if we, as Thinking Partners, get it right, thinking takes off.

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Photo by Christy Dalmat on Unsplash

Rumination (or over thinking) versus thinking

You know that feeling when you wake up having had a profound insight.  And then in the clear light of day, you wonder if it was such an insight after all...

Well, to avoid that doubt I am writing this early in the morning, before dawn.

And the insight I imagine I may have had is that rumination (or 'over-thinking') differs from thinking differs from thinking (in the sense I suse it when teaching Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment) in the same way that self-flagellation differs from doing one's exercise reps.

And as dawn breaks, I realise I may have had this insight (or something very close to it) before, as I find a blog on my sight tagged rumination, and titled Overthinking.

Ah well, repetition is good, as my physio has often pointed out...

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 Image: © frimages/Getty Images

Attention, please...

 Last week, on a Thinking Partnership programme, here in sunny Helton, one of the participants commented on the fact that her partner would sometimes be busy with other stuff while she was trying to tell him something. Yet if she challenged him with 'You're not listening to me!' he was able to repeat the last two or three sentences she had said, word-perfect.

A number of us recognised that scenario - my late mother (who, to be fair, did have eight children demanding her attention and quite a lot to get on with to keep the household going) was superb at that.

That led to an interesting conversation in which we contrasted listening to and attending to. It is no coincidence that Nancy Kline, in her development of the Thinking Environment, identified Attention as a key component, not Listening.

We further discussed the resonances of attending to, and in particular I was struck by the notion of tenderness - both the tenderness we may exhibit when we truly attend to another, and the tenderness (in the sense of painful to touch) of the issues that people may disclose when they are attended to.

So how do we pay attention, tenderly? (And in passing, isn't it interesting that we talk of paying attention? And we may ask someone to lend us their attention? The metaphors recognise the value, and perhaps even the cost, of attention...)

But to return to my question, how do we pay attention, tenderly? This is where Nancy Kline's work is particularly powerful, I think. The first and most essential requirement is to train ourselves not to interrupt: indeed, the title of Kline's latest book on the subject is The Promise That Changes Everything: I Won't Interrupt You. So simple; so difficult...

But a number of the other components of that system we call a Thinking Environment contribute to the highest quality of attention. One is ease; by which we mean a freedom from any sense of urgency. Clearly we may have limited time available for any particular interaction, but within that time limit, we should make it clear that we have time for other person (and
we all know what it communicates when we don't have time for someone...)

And there are eight more components of this system; but reading about them is probably not sufficient: this is a practice-based approach, so you'd do best to come on one of my Thinking Environment Programmes for a total immersion experience (and being based in the Lakes, I do mean total immersion!)

Using a Practice Framework

I have written previously about developing my Practice Framework - a personal model of excellence for my coaching practice.

Having worked with it for a few years now, it seemed a good time to share it with others. So I introduced the concept into a training programme for experienced coaches wishing to become supervisors that I was running with Grant Thornton, and have just trialled it for the EMCC's suite of programmes with the Bank of England's coaches, who kindly volunteered to evaluate it for the EMCC.

The feedback has been very positive in both cases. 

For the Grant Thornton supervisors-in-training, I encouraged them to develop their own supervision practice frameworks, as a way of pulling together all the things they had learned as we went through the programme, and as an aid to continued reflective practice.

I did similar with the Bank of England coaches - encouraging them to discover, articulate and capture their implicit practice frameworks. They then discussed these with each other - fascinated to see how each had approached the task slightly differently, which promoted a lot of learning. And again, they saw the benefits of these as an aid to reflective practice going forward.  As one said, 'I had been expecting to be given a framework to use; but developing our own made it much more relevant and useful.'

And as always, I learned from them. One insight I gained was how well this helps one to articulate one's identity as a coach or supervisor. As I am considering re-designing my website to reflect who I am now, rather than who I was X years ago when we last did it, that was particularly timely. Other intelligent questions and discussions led me to see a wider range of uses for the framework, and a way of using it more consistently and systematically. So as from this autumn, I will be holding one aspect of the framework under review for a period of four weeks, and then moving on to another, and so on, cycling round the whole thing every year.

And that is part of the joy of my work: I always learn from my clients whose questions, challenges and reflections both keep me on my toes and teach me my craft.

Reflections on our Thinking Environment Day of Practice and Discovery

The Delegates

Last week we had our long-heralded Day of Practice and Discovery at Durham University. We brought together 40 people who are interested in the use of Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment in the context of HE or FE. It was a remarkable day for several reasons.

The first was that we heard from a range of people in different HE and FE settings who have been experimenting with the use of the Thinking Environment; from those using it as a modus operandi in PhD supervision (which is pretty radical, when you think about it!) to those who have found that it enables and supports cultural change at the organisational level. For details of all the sessions, see here.

The second was that every session included extensive opportunities for all present to think together about whatever the presenters had shared. We used a range of Thinking Environment approaches to do this, including rounds, thinking pairs, dialogue, and a Thinking Council.

The Team

The third was that the whole day had been put together using Thinking Environment principles from the start. The organising team met and thought together about what needed to be done and organised themselves to do it. 

The fourth was that all delegates were offered opportunities, both one-to-one and group, to experience the Thinking Environment in practice, prior to the conference, to ensure they had a rich understanding of the ideas underpinning the day.

And the fifth was that the whole day was done on a shoe-string budget, so that we could offer it for £50 a head - just enough to cover the hire of the venue and the food. We (almost) broke even.

The result was a day that was buzzing from start to finish, with high levels of engagement, and loads of fresh thinking arising in every session. We are collating some of the outputs now and they will appear in due course on the TE in HE website.  And we all had a lot of fun, too.

In which I am a mug

Someone recommended that I try a strengths questionnaire, which was available free on a certain site. So I logged on, found the site did indeed offer the questionnaire free - but once completed, required a payment to see the results.  Only a small one - but also with the requirement you subscribe and pay £30/month thereafter for continued use of their services.  So I paid the fiver, or whatever it was, got my results, was unimpressed and unsubscribed, to avoid being stung for £30 a month. I thought no more of it.

It was only on reconciling my bank account the other day that I found they had been taking £30/ a month for the last three months.  So I logged on, unsubscribed again, and emailed them, explaining the situation, and asking for a refund.

They stated that I had known the terms of the deal when I signed up, and that they would only refund the most recent of the three payments, as that was what their terms and conditions allow for.

Just one of the lies...

I replied that I had read their terms and conditions, and had unsubscribed immediately. I had had no indication that my unsubscribe had failed and had had no other contact from them after the initial email giving the link to the results. So could they please re-fund the monies taken in error. 

They replied that I had known the terms of the deal when I signed up, and that they would only refund the most recent of the three payments, as that was what their terms and conditions allow for.

I asked them on what basis they thought it fair or ethical to
retain £60 of my money, given the situation, and the fact that I had not intended to use their services, and clearly had not done so. I also mentioned that if they did not answer my questions, I would entertain myself by writing up this interaction on social media as a warning to others (and to get at least some satisfaction out of my £60 expenditure).

Another lie...

They replied that I had known the terms of the deal when I signed up, and that they would only refund the most recent of the three payments, as that was what their terms and conditions allow for.

And so it went on, until I had had enough (which, I suspect, is their business model).

I have, of course, spoken to my bank about the situation, and I await the outcome of that: I am expecting that they will retrieve and refund my money (though of course they would not pre-empt their own process when I spoke to them). I think the technical term for this process is a chargeback.

In the meantime, I thought I should warn other coaches and people who might be interested in their services: if you choose to eat with personality.co take a very long spoon…

All Feedback...

"All feedback is projection." Or so I have heard.  However, with my natural suspicion of absolute statements, I tend to temper that somewhat.

The underlying idea is, I think, often sound, and it is something I sometimes discuss with clients, particularly when they have received feedback that they don't recognise and find hurtful.  So it can be valuable for them to consider what such feedback says about the person who gave it. Normally it reveals quite a lot, as what people give feedback on is the stuff they are interested in, or attend to, or (in some cases) are highly sensitised to. 

So that exploration can help the client get over their upset, and possibly learn something useful, or at least generate some hypotheses to consider. And interestingly, once the are over their anger and defensiveness, they sometimes realise that the feedback wasn't wholly irrelevant to them after all...

As a coach, of course, one can take that logic a step further. That is, one can treat what a coachee says about others as data  about the coachee.  It is often very illumintaing of the coachee's values, aspirations, fears and so forth; and exploring the questions that arise with the coachee, as objects of curiosity, can open up some insightful reflections.

And then there is the third level: as a reflective practitioner, I can ask myself: What does what I feedback (or am inclined to feedback) to a coachee say about me? Often it is things I already know (I don't like interruptions, for example...) but every now and then, that question can bring me up short, and raise further questions. And that, of course, is fantastic material to take to supervision.

So what feedback would you like to give me about this post?  And what does that say about you?...

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With thanks to Jon Tyson and Fares Hamouche  for sharing their
photos on Unsplash