Life Coach Certification Tools – Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment
Life coaching schools will not teach you how to think for your client. Instead it will teach you about how to improve their thinking process. Remember the difference between mentoring and coaching?
Aside from tools for decision making, here is another coaching tool to help you in promoting and establishing good rapport and an effective coaching environment for your client.
In This Article:
Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment
Ten Components of the Thinking Environment
How to use the Ten Components and Certified Coaching Tips
But before you continue you might like to consider our free worksheet on exploring “Dream Bigger Planner”. Please download this worksheet here.
Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment
Nancy Kline created and pioneered The Thinking Environment’s development and its ten components, which will be discussed later. The concept of a Thinking Environment revolves around the connection created between two people – a Thinking Partnership. A Thinking partnership comprises the Thinker (coachee) and the Partner (coach) – or it can also involve people in group undertaking brainstorming sessions. The Thinking Environment is rooted in the principles of having good active listening skills, as it is a crucial factor in bestowing quality attention to the Thinker for a practical session. Kline was also particular that an effective session is composed of an equal balance of three streams:
- The Partner’s attention focuses on the content of what the Thinker is saying.
- In the second stream, Partners’ attention formulates their response to what the Thinker is saying.
- In the third stream, the Partner’s attention is on creating a Thinking Environment for the Thinker.
Thinking Environment has similarities to coaching, which was being developed during the same time; both fundamentally respect people, care for their welfare and development, and build relationships grounded in trust. One difference is that Nancy does not recommend reflecting the Thinker’s words, which is a common technique used by coaches.
Ten Components of the Thinking Environment
The Thinking Environment is Nancy Kline’s concept of how to help people think better and is made up of ten components. These are:
- Attention
- Equality
- Ease
- Appreciation
- Encouragement
- Information
- Feelings
- Diversity
- Incisive Questions
- Place
Here is an excellent infographic by Lita Currie of 3Stickmen.com about the ten components before we dwell deeper into them in the next part.
How to use the Ten Components and Certified Coaching Tips
The Thinking Environment provides the Thinker (coachee) a suitable environment for them to think and vocalize their thoughts. The following relates how each of the ten components is used to create a generative atmosphere for creation.
1. Attention
One way to generate a good environment for intellectual discourse is to be fully attentive to the Thinker. This is one of the skills that you can develop when you take a life coach certification program. Rapport is established when a coach knows how to listen well to their coachee.
Certified coaching tip: This can be achieved through active listening because Nancy Kline believed that when we give people our full attention through our great hearing skill, it leads to ‘an act of creation. And as her famous line goes, “The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.” Excellent listening skills show that you respect a person by not interrupting or thinking about what they have to say next.
Remember that you don’t always have to finish the sentence of another person. Let them talk and hear them out. One of the things that Nancy Kline also believes is that active listening does not include repeating phrases that your coachee says, it is about truly listening and responding in valauable ways.
2. Equality
This component is respectful of each other’s experiences, backgrounds, roles and responsibilities, thoughts, strengths and weaknesses, and ideas. Although we have many differences that we can account for, we are all equal in our worth. A Thinking Environment is a space that encourages everyone to be vocal about their ideas and make them feel and realize that their thoughts are valued equally.Coaching tip: In a group, this can be in the form of how everyone gets their turn to speak, and as each of them takes the turn, everyone else listens. This fosters an environment that emboldens quiet people to communicate and prevents too much domination of talkative people.
3. Ease
A good space for thinking has an element of ease. Let people take their time thinking, as putting pressure on people can result in fear or automatic responses and defensiveness, which can hamper an excellent thinking atmosphere.
Duhigg (2016) advocates psychologically safe spaces as it helps workers think, work, and be their best selves. An environment promoting ease has calm, focused, and unhurried processes to let people think about what they need to do.Certified coaching tip: When leading a meeting or session, be sure to embody calm. Make sure to be on time, not agitated or distracted by other things. Try to take some time to ready yourself beforehand to make sure that you are at ease with yourself.
Recommend removing electronic devices during meeting like phones, laptops, can all be stored away, tablets, let them be switched off, or put on silent at the very least. Make sure everyone is engaged in the meeting and not just a few ears and minds.
4. Appreciation
Do you know the psychology behind why our minds latch on negative things more quickly than positive ones? It is called our negative bias! One negative is equal to five positives to finally get ourselves recognize the positivity, therefore it is vital to give people five times more positive remarks than negatives or criticisms.
Remember that being a good critical thinker does not mean that you need to be critical of others. So how can you show people more appreciation?
Coaching tip: Try to look at the positive things about the person than just what they are doing. Don’t forget to appreciate them for something, like their value, trait or characteristic that you admire in them andand share that. Remember that practicing appreciation can also become a personal strength!
5. Encouragement
While competition is useful at times, it does not apply to things when you are creating an environment for thinking. A sense of competition may reduce ease and the sense of equality, increases threat and makes people go back to their win-lose mentality. Too much competition can lose the sense of being courageous in thinking, and in turn loses focus on the goal idea, team or vision.
Certified Coaching tip: So how can you encourage thinking without all the need for competitiveness?
When in a conversation, a meeting or by other context, try not to share the thoughts or experience that you might have rememebered when the other person is speaking, do so unless they ask for your thoughts.
When your turn to speak is on, you can try to pause and ask yourself, will the things you say help them produce good thinking or will it create a sense of competition? Remember that the person should benefit from the conversation by having a space for them to think, not listen to what you have experienced.
6. Information
Good thinking and having good decisions are rooted on having accurate information. Incorrect information may regard flaw to our thinking and decisions. Even as listeners, there are moments and opportunities where we may need to provide information for a thinker. Denying them that information can translate into us undermining the quality of their thinking.
Quality information helps to break down the wrong assumptions and perceptions, to quote Kline, it ‘dismantles denial’.
Life Coaching Schools tip: When people ask for your advice don’t tell them right away what to do or what you think is best. Instead of saying “You should (could)..” or try to present your thoughts less directively way such as saying “I have read/heard that…” or “In my experience…”.
7. Feelings
Most people think that showing emotions or sharing feelings within a work context is unacceptable. But suppressing feelings makes our minds busy doing just that, rather than be thinking well.
Nope this doesn’t mean that meetings should be all about showing feelings, but it should be about giving space to express feelings to help them get them out, then give them a bit of space, to help them move on. Allow freedom for feelings; a few tears may come with it, but at least more laughter too and good thinking can come from it too!
Certified coaching tip: Always remember to have your tissues on stand-by! Also show that you have the courage to be authentic and share your feelings, because when you do, the people around you are more likely to share theirs.
8. Diversity
Different backgrounds, experiences, cultures and points of view can all help the creation and shaping of good ideas. Other components of Thinking Environment ensure that everyone of every background are free to share without fear of discrimination.
Living in a diverse world can be full of difficult challenges and problems. The best thinking environments counter this by having a diversity of thinkers. As some teams may be built by choosing people who are a good fit for culture or chemistry, this can often be at the expense of the opportunities for having the best ideas.
Certified coaching tip:
When bring people together for a team, think more about their good character and competence—worry less about their chemistry or culture fit. Also when conducting meetings consider bringing people from outside your team to encourage different viewpoints, ideas and challenges.
9. Incisive Questions
Incisive questions allow people to carry on generation of ideas and solutions. We all have to have our assumptions in order to make decisions but not all of our assumptions are correct.
Incisive questions are questions that directs to the matter and bring release. Incisive questions release the mind from having limiting assumptions and help re-frame challenges and establish new delivering statements.
Certified coaching tip: If someone feels that they cannot do something, try asking them, not “Why?”, but a more direct question like: “What do you think is stopping you from…?” This is best used in promoting effective delegation.
10. Place
Our physical environment is essential. The revolution in the workspace, is led by companies’ life we can cite Google as an example! The environment that we choose to live and work in gives us a renewed sense of worth.
The environment where we choose to have a meeting, think or discuss can also have a significant effect on how well we think. Choosing a good place affirms to people that they matter and encourages thinking.
These ten components of a good thinking environment are a good start to establish a good coach-coachee understanding and to promote their own thinking. Remember that when you give them a space to think well, you may get to understand them more and hopefully you also learn from them.
A life coach certification program can teach you more tips and applications of this concept, because am I right, you’re a bit curious of how more you can apply it too?
Are you ready to enhance your life coaching skills and create an empowering environment for your clients? Download our Dream Bigger Planner for free here and start building your path to becoming a certified life coach today!
