Thinking Environment: 10 components

“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first

The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking” – Nancy Kline

[Text below is adapted from: https://www.timetothink.com/thinking-environment/the-ten-components/]

From over 40 years of empirical observation and rigorous research, there are 10 behaviours that generate the finest thinking in people – unhooking people from old assumptions, liberating fresh energy and generating the best ideas.

These have become known as The Ten Components of a Thinking Environment.

They are:
1. Attention: listening with palpable respect and genuine interest, and without interruption. This is an act of creation.

2. Equality: treating each other as thinking peers; giving equal turns and attention; keeping boundaries and agreements.

3. Ease: offering freedom from internal rush or urgency. Internal ease creates, urgency destroys.

4. Appreciation: the human mind works best in the presence of appreciation (more than persistent challenge).

5. Encouragement: giving courage to go to the cutting edge of ideas by moving beyond internal competition. To be ‘better than’ is not necessarily to be ‘good’.

6. Feelings: unexpressed feelings can inhibit good thinking. Allowing sufficient emotional release restores thinking.

7. Information: when information is incorrect or limited, the quality of our thinking suffers. Whereas, accurate and full information provides the path to good independent thinking.

8. Diversity: reality is diverse. Therefore, to think well we need to be in as real, as diverse, a setting as possible. Differences can be welcomed and celebrated.

9. Incisive Questions: removing untrue assumptions that limit our ability to think for ourselves well

10. Place: ‘Thinking Environments’ are places that say back to people, ‘You matter.’ People think at their best when they notice that the place reflects their value to the people there and to the event. Place is a silent form of appreciation.

Each Component is powerful individually, but the presence of all ten working together – as a system – gives this process of attention and enquiry its transformative impact.