The Thinking Council

This week I completed the final part of my practicum and have been duly qualified as a Thinking Environment Facilitator.  That has involved both written work (I did a piece on the relationship between the Thinking Environment and Emotional Intelligence, building on previous blog posts which my loyal reader will doubtless remember) and also practical work: running a number of workshops on the application of Thinking Environment principles to facilitation, as well as both chairing and facilitating meetings according to those principles and practices.

In all of that, the part that has proved hardest, in practice, has been the Thinking Council. The idea of a Thinking Council is to enable someone who is facing a challenge of some sort to pick his or her colleagues' brains, without being given a load of advice. Those who know Nancy Kline, or understand her work well, will appreciate that this is predicated on keeping the individual (in this case the person presenting the challenge) thinking independently, rather than relying on others' thinking.

So the process is that the challenge-holder (hereafter 'presenter') presents the challenge to a group of colleagues or friends, in the form of a question. After an initial round of clarification of the question (not interrogating the challenge, as that will be never-ending...) each participant is invited to share an experience from his or her past that, in some way, speaks to the challenge. One colleague also volunteers to take notes, so that the presenter can listen with that exquisite attention that is the hallmark of a Thinking Environment.

And of course, that's where it gets difficult to facilitate. Because however clearly one explains the purpose and the process, people's tendency is to offer advice; sometimes advice disguised as a question, and sometimes advice disguised as an anecdote. But the problem with advice is that it is likely to be either accepted or rejected (and that may be more to do with the temperament of the presenter, the relationship, and perceptions of wisdom etc than the quality or relevance of the advice itself...) - and in either case, that is less stimulating of genuine independent thinking.

So what I am trying to do, is to get people to notice the advice that they are tempted to give; and then to look behind it, to think about the experiences that inform that advice, and share one of those experiences instead; without adding (implicitly) '... and the moral of this story is...' In that way, I hope, the presenter will be able to consider the anecdote, and draw whatever learning is appropriate from it.

For completeness, the final stages of the process are the presenter feeding back what he or she is taking from the process and is going to do as a result; and then (this being a thinking environment) some appreciation of the presenter by all present.

One of the participants on one of my workshops pointed out how similar this process is to Action Learning; and indeed it is. It is noteworthy that both Reg Revans and Nancy Kline draw on the Quaker tradition to inform their work.

However, there are also differences: one is that the focus in Action Learning (at least as Reg Revans established it) is on group members asking insightful questions, to help the problem owner think differently about the issue and gain new insights (and these questions are answered in the presence of the group); whereas in the Council, experience and ideas are shared (normally prohibited in Action Learning) and any questions are taken away, not answered in live time. I think Nancy’s view is that this maintains the independence of the thinker better (though one could question that).

Another difference is that a Thinking Council is a one-off event for the benefit of one individual; whereas Action Learning is typically a series of meetings at which each participant presents and receives help. In Action Learning, there is quite a strong emphasis on reporting back on actions taken at second and subsequent meetings; there is no such requirement in the Council, and I think that is because it could be seen as infantilising, and therefore diminishing of the individual’s freedom to think independently.  Action Learning is designed as a long-term learning process (as well as a way to work on difficult issues) whilst the Thinking Council is designed to help someone to think better about an immediate issue in the short term.

As you will gather, my thinking and practice here is very much work in progress: I may well blog further on this as I learn more.

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With thanks to Christina @ wocintechchat.com and Leon for sharing their photography on Unsplash

Learning Questions

Reg Revans: Founder of Action Learning

Running an Action Learning set recently, I was reminded once again of how difficult participants sometimes find it to ask appropriate questions, particularly at the start of the process.  At the end of the first day, that is typically one of the learning points.  Participants understand the principle well enough: that the kinds of questions that are helpful in this context are questions that are designed to help the problem-owner think differently about the problem, in the hope that some insight may arise; as opposed to questions designed to help the questioner understand the problem better, or questions that are actually suggestions, posing as questions. 

For example, questions such as How many people are involved in this? will not help the problem-owner at all. He or she already knows this - it adds nothing to his or her understanding. It merely helps the questioner understand the issue more clearly. And underlying that is the strong drive in the questioner to try to help by solving the problem.  

And that leads onto the second type of inappropriate question: How would they react if you...? Clearly, that is, in fact, a suggested solution. 

So, why are such questions inappropriate?  Because they do not help the problem-owner to think differently about the problem and gain new insight. Rather, they spring from a strong habit of hands-on problem solving.

And, as I say, participants in new Learning Sets generally understand this, once we discuss it; but frequently they still find it difficult not to ask such questions; even though, as problem owners, they also recognise that the high-value questions are of another type altogether, such as What are your blind spots about this issue?

It is not surprising, of course that they are still learning the ropes, at the first meeting of the Set. And generally by the second meeting, they are getting better at formulating appropriate questions; but it is very interesting to see how deeply engrained the problem-solving approach to helping is, even in senior leaders.  However, my belief is that if they want to get the very best out of their people, questions that develop their staff's ability to think for themselves, rather than be led to solutions by their bosses, are actually very valuable.

Open Space

Yesterday we had the day on Learning and Teaching at Cardiff Futures.

We ran the day as an Open Space Event.

So the agenda at the start of the day looked like this:

Tricia Price, the PVC for Student Experience and Academic Standards set the context by telling us some of the issues that 'keep her awake at night.'

Participants then said what they felt it would be most valuable to discuss and crafted an agenda for the day, based on which of them wanted to discuss which issues.

 So a little later, the agenda look like this:

So that's what we did!

The beauty of this process is that people get to talk about the issues that they believe to be most important and interesting: it should ensure that nobody leaves feeling 'the one thing we really needed to talk about was...' and it acknowledges, honours, and draws upon the high levels of expertise that reside within the group.

Towards the end of the day, we came back together in plenary, and some highlights of the discussions were shared with Colin Riordan, the Vice Chancellor and the Tricia Price, the relevant PVC, as well as between participants.

We ended the day, as we usually do, with 'brief Action Learning' in the small sets that have been running throughout the programme.

This is the penultimate day of the programme: we have a final day of reflection and celebration in June; and then kick off a new programme with a new cohort in the autumn (book early to avoid disappointment!)

Cardiff Futures

Following its success at Newcastle and Essex Universities, it was not surprising that Colin Riordan, the new VC at Cardiff, should launch the Futures Programme there more or less on arrival.

It was, after all, his brainchild at Faculty level in Newcastle (where it was shortlisted for Times Higher Award in 2008, and where a programme for professors using a similar philosophy and approach has just won a THE Award this year); and it was he who ran it at a University Level at Essex.

Despite this history of success, both he and I were aware that Cardiff would be different. For a start, it is a much larger institution than Essex (or Newcastle's HASS Faculty), and also much more diverse.  Previously we had had delegates almost entirely from a humanities background: this time we are including medics and scientists.

So we were delighted to see the consolidated feedback from participants for the first module, which was as positive (or indeed more positive) than any we have previously seen.

We have just run the second module, focussing on Finance: that always has the risk of being a bit dry, but thanks to great presentations from our guest speaker Gill Ball, FD of Birmingham University, and participative sessions run by Cardiff's own FD and the Deputy VC, all participants seemed to engage and find the topic both relevant and interesting.

We also launched the Action Learning Sets, which form an integral part of the programme, and they seemed to go well, too.  Due to time constraints, we use what I would term Brief Action Learning, but the methodology stands up very well even in very short sessions.

Needless to say, I await the feedback summary from this second module with interest.

Action Learning Conference

I went to the one day conference on Action Learning hosted by Lancaster University Business School yesterday.

The morning was a useful overview and reminder of the basics, the back ground and the application - including some fascinating videos of Reg Revan discussing the thinking behind Action Learning.

In the afternoon, we had a brief experiential session as Action Learning Sets, and a couple of Workshop sessions.  These were all stimulating and enjoyable, and brought back to my conscious awareness how much of my work incorporates these principles, both using Action Learning sets as a part of leadership development programmes, and also in my coaching work.  I particularly enjoyed the Advanced Skills session which encouraged a very self-aware approach to personal development as AL Facilitators.

As so often, much of the richness came from the discussions with, and contributions of, other delegates on the programme: there was a rich mix of academics, practitioners and business people, which made for very good conversation.  All in all, an excellent and most enjoyable day.