Time to Think

What would it be like if your team had time to think – together – instead of continuously responding as individuals to emails and urgent matters of the day?

I believe collective thinking and listening time is fundamental to effective collaboration and team working. I also believe it rarely happens.

If you were able to get your people in the same room for half a day how would you go about creating a safe environment in which they could think, listen, engage and contribute to greater success?

Here are some pointers:

1. Chose an appropriate venue, away from the office and all the distractions. Natural daylight helps to maintain participant energy, board room layout diminishes it. ‘No tables’ is best though spooks some people.

2. Have a clear purpose, ‘why are we here today?’, and make it known about seven days before the session. Even better give people a chance to shape the purpose in advance.

3. Go round the room at the start giving everyone a chance to say something. “What’s going well for you?” provides a positive start to the session.

4. Establish some ground rules, for example: no mobiles, everyone participates, one person at a time. Occasionally ask “how are we doing against the ground rules?”

5. Get everyone involved. To engage is to ‘intensely involve’. Forget it, if you are thinking about hitting them with 60 PowerPoint slides. Everyone has heard of ‘death by PowerPoint’ though it is still endemic.

6. Help the people in charge step back from their hierarchy, even if just for this session.

7. Help everyone speak one-Nth of the time where N is the number of people in the room. Ask “what do you think?” if someone is not saying anything, then give them a chance to respond.

8. Getting people to discuss in pairs helps them externalise their thinking before opening up the conversation to the room. This works well for new or challenging topics.

9. Doing a ‘round’ where each person in turn, uninterrupted, says what they think is also a great way of collecting all the views. Sometimes a ‘second round’ straight after – “what do you now think?” – helps to consolidate the collective thinking.

10. Ask “what do you take from this or what have you learnt?” at the end to finish on a positive note.

Check out Dialogue vs Debate for a slightly more advanced angle on enabling effective conversations. Also “Time to Think” by Nancy Kline for much more on this and if you want to make your gatherings truly effective.