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!)