Nancy Klein on Helping Peope to Think Better

Who – might we ask – is thinking?

“The quality of everything we do, everything, depends on the quality of the thinking we do first.”[i]

So who is doing the thinking in our organizations? How many of us? And could we think better? There is plenty said about organizational learning in our sector, but Nancy Klein, author of Time to Think and More Time to Think, gives us a new perspective to consider. She challenges organizations to think about how we help people think for themselves and create environments where we can do our best thinking. With the multitude of global challenges we face, can we afford not to?

She proposes 10 components that make for a productive thinking environment. It’s not rocket science – most good ideas aren’t – but how do our organizations in the development sector shape up?

1. Attention: How well would you think if you knew you weren’t going to be interrupted? Klein argues that when a person knows they are about to be interrupted, or that the other clearly wants to speak, their thinking slows down. We need to get interested and place our attention on three things: the content of what someone is saying, our reaction to it, and the thinking environment we are creating. All three need our attention. Are you listening to reply or listening to help ignite the others thinking?

2.  Equality: Do we really believe in being thinking equals? Klein proposes this analogy: if each person’s mind cost £1 million, then would you only have three brains on full, and 7 at low capacity? Of course not, and yet how much do we value everyone’s thinking in practice? As professionals, we feel justified and perhaps even obliged to think better than others – what else are we being paid for? Yet studies show that when people seek advice or support, they want to be asked what they think, who they are, and what matters to them. We need to regard them as equal and show them that regard by giving them equal time and equal attention.

3. Ease: Klein reminds us that rushing kills creativity. In the developed world, we tend to make assumptions that rushing = important; tense = focused; and pressured = alive. What about being at ease as opposed to dis-eased? Ease = quality. Giving full attention, and being at ease are great conditions for high quality thinking. We spend time learning how to use tools like the SWOT. What about learning about being at ease? People want to feel it, and people want to be around it. Perhaps this accounts for the interest in mindfulness these days. If this is how to get the best thinking out of people, is it not worth investing in?

4. Appreciation: Neuro-imaging has shown that appreciative thoughts and feelings help blood flow to the brain and stabilize the heart. Apparently the best appreciation to criticism to motivate and support creativity is 5:1. We all know it feels good to be appreciated so how can we factor more of this into our daily interactions?

5. En-couragement: “What would happen if we build people’s courage to go to the unexplored edge of their ideas by eliminating competition between thinkers?” Klein warns that being ‘better than’ is NOT always a good thing because what you are ‘better at’ could be not particularly good in the first place. Creative thinking needs trust to not be judged. Competition often leads to not listening for very long, and then not proposing adventurous solutions. We get energy from being able to be ourselves – and use our minds – rather than always trying to be better than.

6. Information: Denial of what is true is dangerous. Distortion (e.g. it happened but it wasn’t that bad) is similarly concerning. And even more scary is when denial leads to events and facts being rewritten and what is ‘bad’ somehow seems ‘good’. Klein argues that thinking dies in denial and information resurrects it. We need to supply facts and accurate information to aid good quality thinking.

7. Feelings: Someone said to me recently that ‘emotional intelligence’ was really big over 10 years ago. How is it that a fundamental aspect of human intelligence is no longer ‘en vogue’? How we feel, and how we manage our feelings, has a critical effect on how well we think individually and collectively. Fear constricts thinking; strong feelings can make our heads foggy. Kindness, clarity, ease, genuine interest, and not apologizing for emotions when they arise, can help our minds do better thinking.

8. Diversity: Reality is diverse, yet in society untrue assumptions about people’s identity (age, race, gender, nationality etc) limits our thinking and our collective progress. Too often we objectify people and see them as ‘other’, and even in the extreme, as less human. We play lip service to diversity that in reality means, ‘we value diversity as long as you think, act and feel like we do’. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting others to think like we do or thinking like others as it will please them. The objective needs to be to encourage everyone’s  finest thinking and accept and make the most of the diversity that comes from that.

9. Incisive questions: Untrue assumptions play a huge role in the quality of our thinking. Asking incisive questions can help work through them: what are we assuming? Is it true? What is true? And if you know that to be true, how can you move forward?

10. Place: Physical environments that say that someone matters will help them think better. What sort of environment are we creating for ourselves and others to think in? And what about our bodies? They are an important factor in the quality of our thinking. If you are healthy, guilt free, not in denial, showing respect to it – then the thinking is likely to be better.

So how can these components of the thinking environment be integrated into the way we work so that we give each other a framework within which to generate our own ideas? In ‘Time to Think’ various activities are explained in depth that can support better thinking. Here is a brief summary of the some of the main activities:

1. Thinking partnerships: Thinking partnerships (two people) are a form of coaching where a ‘thinking goal’ is set for the session and then a structure is followed to help to break down untrue assumptions, replace them with liberating ones, and use incisive questions where necessary to move towards the goal. The thinking environment described above is created throughout. Questions like: What assumptions are stopping you from achieving X? Is it true? What is true instead? And if you believed that to be true, what would you do?

2.  Time to think mentoring process: This combines elements of the structure used in thinking partnership, with the addition that the mentee can interview the mentor and the strong held belief that ‘the mind of the mentee matters most’.

3. Group thinking environments: How much better would we think as a group if we genuinely felt empowered to think for ourselves, able to make mistakes, at ease with ourselves, listened to, encouraged? Speaking in rounds helps with this, where everyone is given a chance, and equal time to speak – uninterrupted. 

“People are sucked in by the flipchart. They act as if it is about to say something profound. It isn’t!”

At meetings, Klein suggests the following ways to create better thinking environment in meetings:

·         put agenda items as questions and send them round in advance (differentiate between when we need a decision, a new idea, consider implications, need updates). This gets people thinking right from the star;

·         don’t use powerpoint or flipchart unless using visuals (or max of 5 slides if necessary) – these tools don’t have brain and they take our attention away from the person talking;

·         do an unbroken round to get everyone’s thinking;

·         have an open discussion where interruption is not allowed; ask further probing questions and do another round;

·         use dialogue pairs to generate more ideas – again without interrupting and only feedback best, freshest ideas;

·         summarise, make decisions and agree next steps.

6. Time to think councils: This is similar to the above except that the aim is to get everyone’s views whilst the individual needing the council is still able to think independently. The idea is for the presenter to have around 10 mins to share the issue, and their thoughts around it (uninterrupted) and then to use rounds to get everyone’s thinking around the particular question and then for the presenter to summarize.  

What can we take away from this approach?

Again, this doesn’t seem like rocket science – we have all been at training courses where we learn about active listening, and good communication skills. What Klein argues is that it is not enough to pay lip service to these things. Setting up activities to encourage thinking may seem to take longer, or be too structured to suit everyone, but in her experience, it saves time in the long run. How many wasted ideas aren’t heard? How much talk happens after meetings when people need to find a channel to share their thoughts and feelings with someone? How many ideas fail or take longer than expected and perhaps could have been better thought through from the start?

If you are interested in the ideas here, then I highly recommend, ‘More time to think’ by Nancy Klein. She puts people – with their incredible capacity to think and be creative - at the centre, and shares a wealth of wisdom about how we can support others to think for themselves.

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[i] Klein, N., More Time to Think,

Notes from book called 'Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman

I’ve typed up notes I made when reading this book and then organized the points under the following questions. This is a long post and really only for those who have an interest in this topic and want to read a summary of the whole book. 

The main points covered in the book fall under these questions:

- What is emotional intelligence?

- Why is emotional intelligence importance in the workplace?

- What is the link between emotional intelligence and children (parenting, schooling)?

- What is the psychology and science behind various psychological states? What are some of the key emotional difficulties people face?

- What is the science behind emotional intelligence (biologically and neuroscientifically)?

What is emotional intelligence?

·         Emotional intelligence = being able to motivate oneself; persist in face of frustration; control impulse; delay gratification; regulate mood; keep stress from swamping thinking; self awareness; managing emotions; recognizing emotions; handling relationships.

·         Emotional intelligence can be learned and improved

·         High IQ doesn’t = unhappiness or success.

·         Evolution has not caught up with the times we live in. Emotions can override rational judgement. The stronger the emotion, the more likely to make rational ineffectual. The two interact and affect each other.

·         Language – ‘emotion’ means ‘movere’ (to move) and the ‘e’ connotes move away. This suggests that to act is implicit in every emotion.

Why is emotional intelligence importance in the workplace?

·         Workplace are putting premium on ‘on the job’ success

·         Guide to effective feedback at work: Be specific; offer solution; be present; be kind. Guide to receiving – don’t take it as a personal attack; take responsibility where you can rather than getting defensive; ask to resume the meeting later if you need time to digest.

·         Prejudice or bias is not trivial and needs to challenged straight away so tacit consent is given. Diversity courses should include perspective taking – telling from the other side so people realize what damage it does.

·         By end of 2100 - 1/3 of workforce will be knowledge workers ie. Adding value to information.

·         Groups have a collective IQ and the group cannot be smarter than the sum but it can be dumber if talents not maximized. People too eager can be a drag on the group.  Too domineering.

·         Most important was groups internal harmony – more friction leads to not maximizing talents of particularly good people – when lots of social or emotional static – people cannot do their best.

·         Being able to work in formal networks helps determine on the job success

·         Rapport with key network of people; cultivating good relationships with those that might be needed; informal networking key for handling unexpected problems

·         Social ties strengthen when people communicate, then solidify into stable networks

·         Highly adaptive, informal networks work more diagonally and elliptically to get things done

·         3 varieties of informal networks: who you talk to; experts; and those you trust. Stars have thick networks in all three areas.

·         Stars co-ordinate team work; they are leaders in building consensus; seeing things from another perspective; persuasiveness; taking initiative; self management.

·         State of flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihaly- when emotions are contained and chanelled, energized and aligned on the task at hand. Being absorbed in the task,.  Unconscious of self. It might be slightly taxing but there is harmony between anxiety and demand of the task. Howard Gardner sees this important for children – its important for them to know what they like to learn and how they like to learn so that they can get into a flow.

What is the link between emotional intelligence and children (parenting, schooling)?

·         Childhood is key to setting emotional habits. Massive survey shows that trend is for kids to be more emotionally challenged than ever before. Emotional intelligence needs to be taught at school.

·         Howard Gardner done a lot of stuff on multiple intelligence theory – there is more than the standard intelligences tested on standard IQ tests and tested at school (reading, writing, arithmetic) and we should embrace all of the intelligences that children have.

·         The marshmallow test – 4 years old are offered a marshmallow but they get 2 if they wait 20 mins – they can have 2. Those that managed to got better SAT scores at 12. ‘goal orientated, self imposed delay of gratification’. This ability helps in later life to succeed.

·         We are born with temperament but these can be shaped by parenting etc.

·         The programme for kids on anger management has a lot of mindfulness in it.

·         Studies have shown that girls with eating disorders have less ability to tell the difference between feelings and control them.

·         Emotional learning was done 2^nd and 3^rd graders and they ended up being middle of their class socially instead of outcasts. They learnt how to make playing games more enjoyable.

·         Self science classes, or social development or social and emotional learning are growing in popularity in schools. This is not affective learning which uses emotion to help learning but it is actually affecting learning itself  - ie learning about the emotions and how they are dealt with

·         Emotional learning is done over time – it is about neural habits. It is better when done in school, community and at home.

·         SOCS stands for situation, options, consequences and solutions. It is something that is used with teenagers when trying to teach them to deal with things better.

·         Family life is first schooling for emotional learning. We learn how to feel about ourselves; how others will react to our learning; how to think about feelings and what choices we have; and how to read  and express our hopes and fears. They learning this by how parents are with them and they are with each other.

What is the psychology and science behind various psychological states? What are some of the key emotional difficulties people face?

·         We can’t control having emotion but we can control how long we have them

·         One of the challenges is dealing with everyday bad moods – not the ones you medicate or see the psychiatrist about but just bog standard daily mood shift

·         What matters is whether negative thoughts are followed by a cycle of others

·         Anger is seductive – energizing – can fuel self righteous thoughts – quick release catecholomines

·         Anger usually physical threat – threat to self esteem, dignity, being treated rudely

·         Second thing that happens is an amygdala driven release through adrenocortical branch of nervous system which create tonic background of readiness which can last for hours of days.

·         Anger builds on anger and every thought or event releases more catecholomines. The earlier the cycle stops the better. If already in a rage then attempts to mitigate fail as the person is cognitively incapacitated. It helps to cool off physiologically and take a break where anger wont be triggered – exercise, being alone, driving etc can help to shift to a low arousal state. Reading or teaching can stop the train of thoughts – but not eating. Self awareness can help us as long as we are not in rage.

·         Venting doesn’t have prove helpful in tests unless it helps to change situation

·         Worry is the rehearsal of what might go wrong and how to deal with it (create positive solutions, anticipates dangers). In excess though it is uncontrollable, steady hum of anxiety, impervious to reason).

·         It can help to shift attention off thoughts but worriers often don’t want to as they feel attached to worrying as a way of solving problem but worrying is not effective so ends up being rumination in danger itself. The key is that worrying gets the credit for averting the danger (as usually about things that are unlikely to happen. To help chronic worry 1) awareness of thoughts and physical response; 2) relaxation; 3) healthy skepticism as early in the process as possible (practice relaxation everyday) – it helps if it is not chronic e.g. a phobia

·         In depression, people worry about being depressed which makes it worse

·         Behaviour therapy helps the brain to relearn – literally it changes the function of the brain over a period of time – e.g. people with OCT to keep doing action like going to the sink without washing their hands and talking about their fears.

·         Mood heavily affects thoughts – some thoughts are linked to mood and are heavily wired and harder to suppress.

·         Worrying reduces ability to learn or carry out tasks effectively. Worry takes up attention so it becomes self fulfilling to do less well.

·         Some anxiety at the right level helps to improve performance as it motivates the person to prepare (called hypomania – mildly elated state).

·         Laughter can help with creativity and problem solving.

·         Memory is state specific so when in a good mood we are more likely to remember good things.

·         Hope is significant in predicting success. Hope is believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals.

·         Optimists see failure as something that can be rectified next time. Pessimists see failure as something wrong with them. Optimists more likely to learn and try again.

·         Self-efficacy – believing one has mastery over their life and can meet challenges.

·         People’s beliefs about their abilities has a profound effect on them.

·         Emotions can be contagious – partly due to motormimicry where we copy the visual cues of the other. The transfer is from the one who is more forceful is showing their emotion. Politicians and evangelists work to entrain the feeling in the audience. Emotional entrainment is at the heart of influence.

·         Social chameleons can copy the emotions of others to be loved rather than be true to themselves.

·         Women are more emotional – they feel range more and with more intensity. Men learn to minimize emotions to do with guilt, fear, and vulnerability.

·         The way couples talk about their problems is more important than the problems themselves.

·         Flooding is when a person is highly susceptible to emotional distress and anything can trigger it. Men stonewall to avoid this. Women want to talk about it. One option in arguments is to call time and count heartbeats to check in with emotions. Doing something else for 20 mins helps to calm down. Helps to watch thoughts and not just take them as truth. Could look for evidence to refute them rather than getting carried away with thoughts.

·         To help people learn after PTSD they help people to  understand that the way they feel is part of the PTSD so they need to understand it better and understand how they feel inside which people often feel they have lost control of – they make them mindful of emotions and thoughts.

·         Second part of relearning is retelling what happened at a pace that they are ready to which needs to be bearable.

·         In psychotherapy where you learn to build a new relationship into an event they have shown that there is likely ot be still be a trigger but the response to the trigger is better, quicker , more helpful. The trigger often doesn’t go away. They did tests on babies to show that those that cried show more reactivity – right side of the  brain when mum left the room and those that didn’t more in the left. AS positive outlook is more associated with left prefrontal lobe.

What is the science behind emotional intelligence (biologically and neuroscientifically)?

·         Biology – the top of the spinal chord is oldest part of the brain – a rudimentary sense of smell came first. The limbic system is where emotion is stored. Limbic = limbus (ring shaped). Neo-cortex = thinking part. The neocortex associated with mothering young (reptiles have no neo cortext and young are left to fend for themselves)

·         Science – fear = blood to large muscles; anger = blood to hands; happiness = inhibit negative feeling – increase in energy – rest and readiness; surprise = raised eyebrows to take into more information; sadness = slower metabolism, energy (potentially keeps people nearer home where they can be safer)

·         We have two amygdale and they are important for the emotional memory, personal meaning, recognition of feeling. Tears are triggered by the amygdala. Being stoked, held soothes are tears. The amygdala can respond faster than neocortex. Triggers fight and flight hormones. Send commands across the brain. Neural pathways (what eyes, ears take in) – goes first to the thalamus then there is a circuit to the amygdala then to the neocortex. It doesn’t go direct to the neocortex so it means that we start preparing the response before we process life in the rational mind. We can also store a memory of this in the amygdala so we can react again like that in the future without thinking with the neocortex (only small part of the response goes to the amygdala but this is key). Other experiments show that along with receiving information unconsciously (something coming in to our attention before we realize it) – we also decide whether we like it or not ‘cognitive unconscious’.

·         Hippocampus is associated with providing context, significance, perceptual patterns,  and providing emotional meaning e.g. it recognizes differing significance of bear in the zoo than in the backyard. Hippocampus = dry fear. Amygdala = emotion.

·         Memory – we remember high emotion moments like death of Diana because of imprint on emotional memory which involves the amygdala.  The brain has two memories: facts and emotional . Triggered by similar experience – there are sloppy connections. And many are made early in life. The hippocampus is crucial for narrative memory, the amygdala for whether memory has emotional valence. But amygdala is formed quicker in early life than the hippocampus. We may not have words or stories for why we feel these emotions because some are laid down in early childhood.

·         Normally prefrontal lobes determine the emotional response. They make sense of things and are the seat of planning. A lobotomy on prefrontal lobes used to be done to stop people being in emotional distress but it cut off all emotion. Left prefrontal lobes – neural thermostat – it regulates negativity on right side.

·         Pre frontal lobes are responsible for working memory. Connections between limbic brain and pre-frontal cortex can affect ability to learn as ‘neural static’ can happen making you feel like you cant think straight. 

·         Emotional trigger is important so without it, we can trouble making decisions. It is balance between reason and emotion and working with this balance is emotional intelligence. 

Ellen Langer on Mindful Learning - Keep it fresh, don't overlearn and age doesn't matter.

Ellen Langer is one of the most cited writers on mindful learning and I've stored up tons of paper to read on my sabattical. This video is a quick 10 minute explanation of key aspects of mindful learning. Essentially, Langer explains:

• Keep material fresh. It is no good just to tell people to 'pay attention'. Help people look at the 'material' from different angles; to relate to the material in different ways. Teachers can help participants to look at material from different perspectives; even physically - move around the 'material' so that it can be seen from different angles (posters, pictures, flip charts). 
• Over learning can be dangerous because it means we become too fixed on what the 'fact' is and less able to see how 'facts' are often context dependent - what is true in one context might not be in another, new research may have taken place about a subject etc.
• Mindfulness is about being present - being aware, paying attention - this means finding new things out about the subject, noticing different things (not just noticing the things you always tend to notice)
• People tend to fit social stereotypes - i.e. when they get older, they think they can't learn or can't remember. This doesn't have to be the case. It is more the attitude to learning. If you want to learn and have the drive then you can.

More on mindful learning over the next few months....for now, here is the video.

Bringing mindfulness to schools - a TEDx talk

What on earth is mindfulness and why is it being trialled in some schools?

Check out this short video by Richard Burnett on the Mindfulness in Schools programme called .b In just a few minutes he gives a summary of what mindfulness is, a quick exercise to demonstrate it, and talks about why it is so important to help children.

Here is a quick summary:

• It's a worthwhile life skill which will help them best use the lens through which their experiences are being filtered - through the faculty of attention.
• Their mental health and happiness (as per all of ours) is shaped by what they pay attention to - where they put their awareness 
• Learning how to direct their attention and awareness to their senses (their experience) will help them to deal with anxiety and stress
• It will help them to notice when thinking changes to ruminating in a negative way
• It will help them to pay more attention to positive things (which tend to slip off our minds like teflon) as opposed to negative things (which snag our attention like velcro!).

Have a watch and see what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mlk6xD_xAQ

Treading softly on our children's dreams - the need to revolutionize education

This is a truly inspiring TED talk (19mins) by Sir Ken Robinson on the need to revolutionize education. I'm not a good teacher - I tried that once - but I do feel strongly about learning and our responsibility as adults to consider the environment we create for children within which they can learn. Our school system is turning into a fast food industry. That needs to change. It's a captivating listen.

Mindfulness in Schools

Research Post Only:

Some of my posts like this one - are just for me to store and share some links and resources to various themes around mindfulness. I won't have time to write about all of the links and resources but if you are interested in researching these areas further then hopefully these links will help. I will keep adding to this post as I find things.

• http://oxfordmindfulness.org/learn/mindfulness-in-schools/
• http://mindfulnessinschools.org/
• Article on a piece of research conducted in Oxfordshire: http://mindfulnessinschools.org/images/files/keyDocuments/Immediate_and_sustained_effects_of__b.pdf
• http://www.mindful.org/the-mindful-society/is-social-emotional-learning-a-luxury
• http://www.mindful.org/the-mindful-society/education/teachers-tuning-in
• http://www.contemplativemind.org/about

Over-learning and the Risk of Mindlessness

There is a great deal of pleasure in learning how to do something so well that we can do it easily and without much thought. The risk, however, is that we become 'mindless' in doing it - i.e. we don't actually pay attention to what we are doing, we do it without thinking and miss things.

This is particularly worrying for trainers where training content becomes context independent - meaning you train it the same way without taking into account the learner, their needs, the context in which you are training.

If we want participants to be engaged - then we as trainers also need to be engaged and pay particular attention to the unique circumstance and the unique people that are being trained on that occasion. What do they need? What experience are they bringing to a discussion?

One way to facilitate learning within a group is to make creative use of the material that comes from the participants and then delicately weave that into the some overarching learning points which from the trainers experience will help them. To do this, space needs to be left in the course design to unearth these experiences and enough flexibility needs to be built in to let the course flow depending on the contribution of the group. We need to not assume that we know what issues, challenges or questions will arise.

If the course is filled to the brim before the training has started, bringing in participant's experiences will overflow the cup and throw out all of the timings. This can lead to the trainer rushing through content without participants getting their hands dirty. Space has to be built in in advance. We need to not just build in 5 minutes for questions - but shift the mindset to letting the participants do some of the driving about how the course goes.

They are the audience after all. It is their needs which are being met. And perhaps what we thought we knew as trainers will also change and evolve too.

 The transpersonal psychologist Christopher Bache said that when being asked a difficult question by a student, sometimes he would find a pause in the flow of his mind, a break in his thinking and that in these moments, he would have the opportunity to chose improvisation...He said he would discover a small door at the back of his mind where new suggestions and thoughts would come in and new ideas would flow between him and the students. He would write these all down at the end of the class. He said, 'often we learn what is emerging only as we move into action. The key is to act and remain open - so that the 'small door' does not slam shut in our haste and because of our focus on the task at hand.' (pg 146, 'Presence', P. Senge et al).

As an aside - there are lots of articles on mindfulness and learning/training but unfortunately, you have to pay for them so for the time being, here is a link to an abstract if you are interested in this topic:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02601370.2010.512792
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13636820.2011.563862
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0883035587900061

Fill vs Fulfill

In the book - 'Teaching Mindfulness', it talks about the idea of filling vs fulfilling. This is discussed in the context of training mindfulness in terms of it being important for the trainer not to fill the class with content and jeopardise the experience of exploring mindfulness and exploring what naturally and spontaneously arises (see the 'overlearning' post for more on this).

I see many parallels here with life itself. I recently went to India for three weeks on my own and for the first time, resisted the temptation to fill the holiday with a day to day plan. Instead, I arrived and I went with the flow - reacting in the moment to opportunities, people, navigating decisions about what to do next and with whom. It was indeed very fulfilling because space was available to learn more about myself and others. However, this is easy to do on holiday - so what about home life? How much of that do we fill with things and how much of it do we spend time fulfilling and being fulfilled? How many of things we really want to do - do we actually do?

In this culture of living at speed, earning money, buying things, promotions etc - is our happiness being jeopardised without us realising it? Is there enough 'fulfilling' going on? What do we do with our time and how would we categorise it - filling time with no or only short lived benefit or fulfilling time contributing to a deeper state of happiness?

Coming back to training - on any topic - this would also be an interesting exercise for reviewing session plans. Are there parts of the session plans where we are filling in time with content? How much of the content is fulfilling the learning objectives and if so, how? Is the course so full with content that there isn't much room for spontaneity and reacting in the moment?

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/213285209/">jurvetson</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>

What else are we missing?

"It is easy not to spot the the small changes because you already know what to expect. Did you spot the second 'the' in the previous sentence?" (Teaching Mindfulness)

Most of us are well versed in the key to communication being listening and we talk about it in courses on management and relationship building. What we don't necessarily talk about is the way our minds work and the effect they have on our ability to be fully present and aware. Our minds often make judgements about what is being said which can lead to an internal dialogue. They tend to move into the future - thinking about what to say next or move into the past, thinking about what was said before and not what is being said now.

The act of listening is also an act of quietening our own minds - lessening the internal chatter and making space for whatever is being communicated to us - verbally and non-verbally. From this, we widen our understanding of the other person, we gain new insight into what they are communicating - picking up on subtleties, and we can respond more spontaneously.

This takes practice and the first step is perhaps just noticing the judgements as they arise and/or noticing whether we are drifting into thoughts about the future or past as someone speaks. Once we have, we can then tune into what is actually being said and spot the difference.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/catnipcat/7157542418/">Catnip Cat by Jeff Hoyle</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>

Social Constuctivism and Training

In social constructivism - knowledge is co-created within relationships rather than being something that is 'out there'.

I am intrigued by this idea, having always put knowledge from 'out there' on a pedestal. I have always understood it to come from others - from smarter people! In training on mindfulness, social constructivism is vital as every group is diffferent, and everyone's experience of meditation and mindfulness is unique. The learning comes from each individual experience. That is the starting point and that is what the trainer will work with.

Is there learning from this that can be taken on board for training more generally - on any topic? Whilst we train on topics where there are tools, manuals, course books, power points and flip charts summarising the key learning points - everyone's journey has been different and their experiences at work will be unique depending on the culture, the environment, the people. How do we ensure that we don't categories people, their stories and their answers to questions - as being the same as others and therefore, miss something? How can we take into account where they are and start from there? How much new knowledge could come from a course in this way? How much space is made for this in the course?

As trainers, we do our best to weave participants experiences into the prepared content, giving it a flow and building up a picture. The beauty of the course is only preparing half the picture and leaving the rest to be co-created by the other artists in the room - adding their particular shade and nuances to the canvas.

For more on this, see 'fill vs fulfill' post and 'overlearning'.