Time to Think:

Conventional coaching aims to help someone think clearly around a goal, theme, topic, or specific issue. This approach aims to help you change something such as making a decision, acceptance of a situation, making a plan or doing something differently. The coach uses a framework to support you to get where you want to go. This framework can be influenced by the thoughts of the coach, as they guide you through a discovery process. This can be hugely beneficial, but also has the potential for your thinking to be limited unnecessarily in ways you may not notice.

Coaching in a Thinking Environment involves the coach providing an experience that encourages you to think well for yourself. At first this may seem like an unusual idea because surely you already think for yourself? This may be so, but very often, when we examine our thinking, there may be few opportunities for us to truly think independently for ourselves and often our thinking is limited. For example, our thinking can be distracted by the demands of life, or we are influenced too much by the thinking of others, or our thinking gets limited by blocks that we don’t realise are there. As a Time to Think Coach, I will partner with you to create together a Thinking Environment designed to enable you to improve the quality of your thinking.

Coaching in a Thinking Environment creates an experience of a depth and quality of attention that encourages you to do your best thinking. The purpose will be for you to successfully think independently about the topic of your choice. I will focus my attention on a way of being that encourages your best thinking. Then, if your thinking gets stuck, and only if you ask me to, I will use carefully chosen questions which aim to stretch your awareness and help you unblock anything that is limiting your thinking. This is based on the belief that given the right conditions, you will think clearly and effectively for yourself.

Time to Think Coaching was developed by Nancy Kline and colleagues and their approach to providing a Thinking Environment is described in Nancy’s books (“Time to Think. Listening to Ignite the Human Mind”, “More Time to Think. The Power of Independent Thinking” and “The Promise that Changes Everything. I won’t interrupt you”).

Thinking Environment sessions are different to other coaching sessions. As a Coach, I don’t have an agenda. Instead, I provide the framework for your thinking. I will listen closely to your thoughts, and I do not interrupt your thinking. I will encourage your best independent thinking. The thinking sessions are successful when you have done just that. I intervene only when invited to do so by you. You decide what you want to think about and what you want to do with that thinking. The method allows you to go beyond dependence on the views, guidance, or analysis of others (including the coach) and come up with ideas, directions, understanding and solutions for yourself. This is because you are usually the source of the best ideas (Kline, 2021). You direct the session and if you want something different from me as your coach, then you can ask for it; but I will not decide for you.

The findings about the neurobiology of independent thinking guide Coaching in a Thinking Environment. Humans think successfully in waves and pauses. This can be a stream of ideas followed by a pause, until a new stream of thinking begins. It is important that this process is encouraged and not interrupted. As a Time to Think Coach I will not interrupt independent thinking. However, if your thinking gets blocked, then I will respond to your request for help such as another question, to help unblock your thinking, with the aim of enabling your next new waves of thinking to begin. This is based on the finding that everyone can think well for themselves with the right encouragement.

One of the foundation assumptions is that when you think effectively for yourself, you will come up with the best solutions for you.

Most of us have few experiences of being truly listened to with the intention of encouraging us to think for ourselves. We are used to our thinking being interrupted and replaced with advice or guidance from others. This is familiar and can be comforting. Experience may lead us to getting used to believing that it is better for others to think for us. There are times when advice and guidance may be essential (such as learning a complex new skill). However, mostly, we benefit from opportunities to encourage our brains to do our best thinking. This is energising and expands our own potential.

If you haven’t experienced this before, then it can sound daunting to give it a try. Don’t worry, most of us love it when we have been given the opportunity. It also gets easier with practice and most people find that when they have experienced working in a Thinking Environment with a Time to Think Coach, then the quality of all their thinking will improve within sessions (as well as outside of sessions).

Coaching in a Thinking Environment assumes that we can think independently for ourselves when given the opportunity and encouragement to do so. Often without us realising, there have been limits set (often by real experiences) which block our thinking. Once the blocks are removed, we can surprise ourselves with how much more we can think on a topic. Sometimes, however, we do identify that we need something additional to help us think (for example, further information or skills) and if you need anything from me, then you can ask for this.

As humans we are meant to think for ourselves. However, most people find doing something new is uncomfortable. With experience we usually find that things get easier. The Thinking Session aims to empower us by igniting our thinking. This process has to be experienced before you know whether you want to do more of it. You could try it out and see what you think!

Anyone who wants to think independently for themselves and do this with a thinking partner who aims to help you do this.

Thinking Sessions are challenging. The session may be challenging in a different way to what you imagine. Instead of the coach deciding what’s important, the coach recognises that you know what is important. The challenges in our thinking come from overcoming the blocks which limit our thinking. Facing these challenges leads to more growth than anything the coach comes up with to challenge your thinking.

Work-related coaching focusses on what you think is relevant to your work role. Executive coaching is coaching for someone in a senior work role.

We are often busy at work and we don’t have enough time to stop and think about what we are doing and why, or it can be that important information is outside of our awareness, limiting our thinking and holding us back. Creating space to think with a coach can help you develop increased awareness of yourself, a situation or other people, become more focussed, identify new persoectives, make decisions that you can drive forwards, improve your well-being and increase effectiveness at work.

Life coaching is coaching focussed on something specific in your life such as to rediscover your own strength and abilities: this can include excelling in the workplace, becoming happy and fulfilled at home, managing work-life balance, improved health and well-being, exploring your potential, managing health issues.

Don’t worry if these descriptions don’t fit for you, coaching is for everyone and is adapted to suit you to develop further awareness in an area you want to focus on, in order to help you decide, what the right positive changes are for you.

I am really motivated when I hear people describing their experience of coaching as “life changing” or “I am now a better version of me” and “this has transformed my life”.

Outcomes from coaching vary. The aim of Coaching in a Thinking Environment is for you to think independently for yourself. This leads you to achieving the outcomes that you define for yourself. People describe how improving their ability to think independently has numerous benefits such as gaining further awareness of what’s going on, helping discover new solutions, and feeling more empowered through being able to think more freely.This can be focussed on work (e.g. managing staff, transition to promotion, leadership skills, work life balance, stress management etc) or life coaching (such as making a difficult decision, managing a transition, or coaching in relation to important relationships).

Mentoring is coaching where the mentor has some relevant life experience to bring to the work with the mentee. This can be an obvious explicit experience such as being the same professional background, a change focus such as transitioning from working in the NHS to Independent practice, working in leadership positions or implicitly being an experienced human being. Mentoring typically includes sharing some of the mentor’s experiences as part of the process, when requested to and in a way designed to help you think further for yourself. Mentoring within a Thinking Environment means I only share this experience with you if you ask me to do so.