What Skills Do You Need to Encourage Deep & Adventurous Thinking?

How often are we truly able to listen without interruption? I mean listening with almost tangible intent to others? Could our flippancy to being present inadvertently have demoralising effects on others? Could we be missing out on supporting the development of greatness?

Lack of Support

Our attention, the quality of focus, the presence we have in a given moment with others is underrated aspect of engagement, yet it provides a powerful environment for innovation, challenge and great decision making. We’ve all suffered at the receiving end of others’ poor attention, during calls, meetings and dinner dates. The result is often an internal battle veering between us thinking the individual is rude or flipping to internalising the experience; it must be me I am not valued, heard or appreciated, both of which are not environments for innovation.

Supportive Think

On Friday I had the privilege to discuss my career path, with Professor Peter Hawkin, an eminent thinker in leadership, strategy, culture change and organisational learning. Honestly, it was a total fangirl moment. I’d spent most of 2018 reading and referencing his work whilst writing my dissertation in shared and distributed leadership. I was excited to meet the man behind the academic papers.

Supporting Shift

After the conversation I realised I had gone into the call with a strong conviction of what I was going to do next, I was seeking validation that a PhD was the only move I could make. But my perceptions during this conversation shifted. 

I reflected on what had caused that shift and I apportioned some of it to Hawkin’s manner: he listened and created space for me. In that space, I felt no pressure to do or be anything at that moment. My fangirl ‘me’ managed to stay in check and I was, therefore, able to speak freely and listen attentively. Nancy Klien describes this with more eloquence: “The quality of your attention profoundly affects the quality of other people’s thinking,” and it was Peter’s generous attention and the ease that was between us that provided me space to shift my thinking.

Support With Ease

With coaching, it is assumed that it's all about action; asking strong questions to provoke ‘aha moments,’ or defining stretch goals, but it’s also space, listening, the attentiveness and the presence I provide that ignites a client’s thinking to evolve. Nancy Kline summarises this quality as; ‘Ease creates. Urgency destroys.’ What Peter Hawkins did for me was listen in a way that helped me gain clarity for myself about my life without any big interventions.

Whilst chatting about academic merits and challenges, as well as organisation culture in Muslim countries, and Sufism we had moments of checking out the view from the window of rolling Somerset hills. The agenda was free and I soaked up what we talked about and what emerged from this engagement was less pressure and as that weight lifted, a new idea appeared [I want to caveat, I am not sure how I will achieve my new idea, yet!]. But what I am left with is still a direction that will allow me to grow, but in a way that will not impact me and my family over a sustained period of time, as a PhD would.

Support Urgency

We often are in the habit of entering conversations with an urgency. Our schedules and time pressures are reflected in our speed of communication. We’re all guilty of checking our phones and even answering the odd ‘urgent’ email. A pace is however set, without a conscious decision to slow down, the pace and level of presence we can achieve in this moment is therefore limited.  We may not think we are being rude, but the message essentially being transmitted is we are here.. for now, so let's move on quickly and maybe even hurry up.

Conscious Support

To bring out the best in ourselves, our family and our teams, we need to consciously make an intention to reset our pace, attention, and listening when we enter a conversation. We then are creating an environment to bring the best qualities out in others. I’ve read that: attention of this calibre is an act of creation for both parties and that sounds a great payoff for bringing generous presence to a conversation.