The Thinking Environment Mentoring CPD & Supervision

Overview Revisit the ten components of a thinking environment Introduce ‘Transformative Listening’ Considers streams of attention Look more deeply at ‘Incisive Questioning’ Consider the constituents of a ‘Thinking Partnership’

The Ten Components Attention Equality Ease Appreciation Encouragement Feelings Information Diversity Incisive questions Place

Transformative Listening When you are thinking for yourself: –Being interrupted is not good –Getting lucky and not being interrupted is better –Knowing you are not going to be interrupted is categorically different Knowing you will not be interrupted allows you to truly think for yourself. To aid this we utilise Transformative Listening

Transformative Listening Generates clear, rigorous and innovative thinking. Steps: 1.Ask your mentee ‘What do you want to think about and what are your thoughts?’ 2.Encourage them to keep talking by asking ‘What more do you think or feel or want to say?’ 3.Then adopt the ‘Transformative Listening’ Stance

Qualities of Transformative Thinking Settle back Keep your on the eyes of the person as they speak Adopt an attitude of respect form the person and a thinking human being Let your face and posture communicate interest and understanding Do not interrupt Trust not uttering a word is the best thing to do. Know that your job is helping people think for themselves and not thinking for them

Cont… Qualities of Transformative Thinking Cultivate fascination with where the person will go with their ideas. Attempt to achieve a composure that is widely dynamic Disengage from any emotional investment in the outcome of their thinking. Remember that the expression of feelings is often part of the thinking process. Be aware that much of what they say will be the result of your effect on them Be more interested in what is real for the thinker than you are frightened of being proved wrong.

Exercise One Utilise Transformational Listening. –Working in pairs, take ten minutes to use transformational listening with your partner. Allow your partner to discuss an issue they need to spend some time thinking about –Change around –Spend 5 mins feeding back to each other how this felt

Streams of Attention When facilitating thinking in a mentee, 100% of your attention should be focused on 3 areas: –Your attention to the content on what the thinker is saying –Your attention to your response to what the thinker is saying –Your attention to the creation of the thinking environment

Exercise Two Working with a partner, spend 5 minutes listening to your partner talk about their last holiday/ Christmas/ something interesting. –Pay attention to where your attention is being directed –Try and give equal attention to all three of the streams of attention outlined before.

Incisive Questioning The aim of incisive questioning is to –identify and remove the assumptions involved in thinking, feeling and decision making. –removing negative or limiting assumptions and replace them with liberating assumptions To find the limiting assumptions you may ask ‘what are you assuming that may be limiting your life right now?’

Incisive Questioning Once given an answer to this, your role is to examine the assumption objectively to see if it is true. –What if this is wrong? –What evidence exists to the contrary? –How can I explain those contrary results? How can I get more of those contrary results? If it is true, then replace the limiting assumption with a liberating assumption. –‘I am a victim of relentless time pressure’ –Replace with –‘If you knew that you have a choice every minute over how you spend your time, what would you do?’

Exercise Three Working in pairs, practice using incisive questioning. Spend 15 minutes listening to your partner talk about something that they need to give thought to. Try to identify assumptive thinking on their part, question it and provide a liberating assumption in its place. Work with the liberating assumption to enhance their thinking Swap around Spend 5 minutes feeding back to each other how this felt

The Thinking Partnership Provides the thinker with an environment in which to think. This include: –Generating a thinking environment –Utilise a transformative listening –Ensure equality of streams of attention –Utilised incisive questioning

The Thinking Partnership Session Part One: Exploration –What do you want to think about? And what are your thoughts? Part Two: Further Goal –What do you want from the rest of this session? Part Three: Assumptions –What is the assumption that is stopping you from reaching your goal? What is the assumption most in your way of achieving your goal? Are these assumptions true? Part Four: Incisive Questions –If you know that (liberating assumption), how would you (insert goal)?

Exercise Four In small groups of four or five, spend 15 minutes discussing how your might use this system in your mentoring practice. –When might it be useful? –When might you use it? –What situations might it benefit?