This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Time to Think" by Nancy Kline. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are the meetings or classes you lead designed to elicit productive thinking? What can you do to boost creativity and problem-solving?
Nancy Kline has a step-by-step process for taking on the role of the listener to help someone else engage in higher-quality thinking, resulting in ideas that lead to powerful action. Her process can be adapted for group settings such as work meetings, family conferences, or classroom discussions.
Continue reading to learn how to lead a thinking group that gets results.
How to Lead a Thinking Group
As individuals, our thinking determines the majority of our actions. However, many of the circumstances of our lives are determined by the decisions of groups of people, such as our corporate leaders determining our job responsibilities or our government representatives determining our rights with little to no input from us. To elicit the best problem-solving processes, it’s essential that these groups engage in the highest-quality thinking possible. Kline shares three strategies for facilitating an effective thinking group.
| Thinking Groups in Remote Settings During the Covid-19 pandemic, many organizations began holding group meetings remotely via video conferencing applications like Zoom. Remote meetings have a different dynamic than in-person meetings because it takes more concentration to focus on video meetings and it’s more difficult to pay attention to body language and other nonverbal cues, among other things. This takes a toll on meeting participants and their engagement, a phenomenon that experts call Zoom fatigue. It can have a particularly limiting impact on problem-solving processes like Kline’s thinking session because of the high level of engagement and energy that these require. If you participate in or run virtual meetings, be aware of how the remote setting impacts your meetings and consider scheduling shorter, more flexible meetings with plenty of breaks to prevent fatigue. |
Tip #1: Start With the Positive
In group situations, Kline emphasizes that you must highlight the positive before addressing the negative, or the thing that needs to be improved (if improvement is the goal of the session). This means showing a lot of appreciation for each other and discussing what’s going well for everyone both at the beginning of the meeting and at the end. She says you should strive for a five-to-one appreciation-to-criticism ratio.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Time to Think summary:
- That what and how we think determines everything we do
- Why the quality of your thinking depends on how well you listen to others
- A step-by-step process for taking on the role of the listener
