Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind

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And so we interrupt. All of us. Paid and not. Professionals and parents. Leaders and learners. Wage earners and shareholders. We move through our days and years interrupting others and failing to foil it when others interrupt us. This timely and persuasive book shows us that the foundation for independent thinking is the promise to actually listen, without interruption, to what others have to say' Where in your circles can you point to a single person who you are certain will not interrupt you when you speak? Who in your circles has ever made this promise to you? And kept it? And have you ever made that promise to anyone? To get started, I spent three months searching for the single thing inside the ‘difference’ that made these conditions for thinking so powerful. What exactly, simply, irresistibly, singularly is going on when people are thinking for themselves as breathtakingly as I had seen over these years? I and others had written easily I fantasised that the piece would be only that one sentence, over and over and over: This is different.

Council thinking time (2 minutes): The Facilitator gives the Council a couple of minutes to jot down legibly on a piece of paper their initial thoughts. (These notes will be given to the Presenter at the end of the process.) It is important for Thinking Council members to have at least some understanding of the Ten Components of the Thinking Environment, particularly Attention, Ease, Equality, Diversity and Appreciation, and to have been introduced to the principles of taking turns in a Round, listening with full generative attention, and not interrupting.And that matters. Interruption diminishes us. It diminishes our thinking. In the face of it, our own thinking barely has a chance to form. That means that our decisions are weaker; our relationships are thinner. Interruption of thinking is so destructive, in fact, that what we have produced as a species, however advanced it may be in the animal kingdom, is probably inferior to the achievements the uninterrupted human mind might have produced over those eons. We know it is not really polite or considerate, so sometimes we apologise as we do it. But we keep doing it Nancy Kline’s theories are supported by practical structures which, if adhered to, will enable the Thinker to work through the issues, gain some clarity and find a way forward. The Thinking Session starts with a simple question: Polarisation is not a result of disagreement. It is a result of disconnection. When we disconnect from each other, when we see each other no longer as human beings but as threats, we polarise. And the first, most forceful disconnector is interruption. Or I could go very professional and tell you about being Director of Time To Think and its faculty, or being a teacher, or researcher, or school co-founder. Clarifying round:A brief round (process to be managed by the Facilitator) in which anyone can ask a clarifying question to ensure they have understood the Presenter’s question. Care must be taken not to allow coaching questions in this round. Only clarification of the facts or of understanding of the question are allowed.

No interrupting. Make a group commitment that you will never interrupt when someone else is speaking. The balancing commitment is to be succinct. As with all her work, Nancy models the principles of the Thinking Environment and leadership that powerfully yet softly prompt a complete rethink of the familiar issues of our time. This book is for everyone, goddaughters and godsons, women and men. ask an Incisive Question TM to remove that belief, for exampl e: ‘If you knew you would be listened to, what would you say, and to whom? end the meeting by asking everyone what they felt went well and what they respect or appreciate about the person next to them We also noticed that the principles fell into three clusters which became sections: ‘Loving Ourselves’, ‘Loving Each Other’ and ‘Loving the World’. We added an introduction that was a little manifesto about making the world better.

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For three years Christopher and I had been thinking about love, both its expression in our relationship, and as a force in the world. During one of our fortnights together, (in year 3 of what became a 7-year transatlantic courtship, now a 30-year marriage!) on an apple farm near Canterbury, we wrote down what we thought was important about love. They were ‘principles’, 101 of them. Christopher suggested we call the collection, ‘At Least a Hundred Principles of Love’. Just in case more showed up. That was prescient. Before we knew it, we had gone through 20,000 copies. People were giving them as wedding presents, bereavement presents, birthday, Bar Mitzvah, and anniversary presents. They were placing them strategically in their offices, their waiting rooms, their sitting rooms, by their beds, and in their loos. They even were required reading for an American university course. Something was going on. That would mean telling you this: I have adored writing since I was little. It started with Mrs Murphy. She was my 5th grade teacher. ‘You can write about anything,’ she instructed the class of 10-year-olds. ‘Just write.’ Eventually, the Thinker often reaches a point where everything that initially has come into their thoughts will have been said. They will pause and the Partner can ask:

go around in turns intermittently throughout the meeting to give everyone an equal turn to say something if they choose to This is where the Partner makes a more active intervention by asking what Nancy terms ‘Incisive Questions’ TM. The process for this is to: This is the first book I wrote by myself (except for that Nancy Drew look-alike when I was eight). Like the book with Peter Kline four years earlier (see blurb below), it was ‘specialist’. That’s book-speak for don’t count on lots of readers, or any. I mean, how many people were ever going to want to read about eight choreographers’ famous creations as seen through the lens of ‘nothing is ever still’? This timely and persuasive book shows us that the foundation for independent thinking is the promise to actually listen, without interruption, to what others have to say.Good, you may be thinking. I’m in. But surely I don’t need to read on. Can’t I just take your point, stop interrupting and, tra-la, change the world? In 1993 the London Lighthouse published it as a booklet, raising funds for that flagship HIV and AIDS project, Christopher’s creation.