# Banter 100:  17Dec25 Taking Time to Think, with Linda Aspey

{% embed url="<https://youtu.be/bUdczk0XALY>" %}

Please note that a technical fault prevented the last third of the session from recording - apologies to all, but we will re-run the exercise in 2026 to catchup - date now set for 18Mar26

### Presentation:

No presentation this week - the video is all-encompassing.  [However, you may find this interesting! ](https://www.aspey.com/blog-posts/one-widespread-habit)

***

### Meeting Summary:

Dec 17, 2025 11:53 AM London ID: 834 5460 8536

### Quick recap

The meeting focused on the concept of creating effective thinking environments, led by Linda, who introduced the 10 components of the Time to Think approach. Participants discussed the importance of uninterrupted attention, the impact of interruptions on thinking, and how to foster a safe space for collaborative thinking. Linda shared practical strategies, such as using thinking pairs and rounds, to enhance meeting productivity and inclusivity. The group explored how these techniques could be applied in various settings, including parish councils and corporate environments, with participants sharing personal experiences and challenges. The session concluded with reflections on the value of allowing time for independent thinking and the need for humility in facilitating group discussions.

### Next steps

Next steps were not generated due to insufficient transcript.

### Summary

#### Climate Action Hubs Scotland Update

The meeting began with informal conversation about recording protocols and personal introductions, including Linda's discussion about dandelions and their symbolic significance. Frank shared updates about his efforts to engage Climate Action Hubs in Scotland, with a focus on mapping initiatives, while Linda requested and received co-host privileges to share slides during the meeting.

#### Banter Network's 100th Climate Session

The meeting marked the 100th session of the Banter Network, a non-profit organization focused on supporting parish and town councils in addressing climate change and environmental issues. Graham introduced the session, explaining that it involves a weekly 15-25 minute discussion on a relevant topic, followed by Q\&A, with all content compiled into a knowledge base shared with participants. Linda, the host for this session, welcomed newcomers, including John and Simon, and discussed the organization's efforts to provide a centralized resource for climate and net-zero information. The conversation ended with Graham reiterating the network's goal of simplifying climate action information and encouraging participants to share their locations in Zoom to demonstrate the group's national reach.

#### Enhancing Thinking Environments

Linda, an organization development consultant and climate psychologist, led a session on creating thinking environments, emphasizing the importance of attention and uninterrupted listening for effective thinking. She introduced the concept of the "thinking environment" and its 10 components, highlighting that the quality of thinking directly influences decision-making and outcomes. Linda explained the origins of this practice, its application in various sectors, and its neurobiological basis, encouraging participants to focus on the quality of their attention during the session. The session included breakout groups for further discussion, with an agreement to keep personal sharing confidential.

#### Enhancing Thinking in Meetings

Linda discussed the importance of creating conditions for effective thinking in meetings, emphasizing the impact of attention, questions, and psychological safety. She highlighted that the mind thinks better when focused on questions rather than being interrupted, and that allowing pauses can lead to deeper thinking. Linda also mentioned the Google Aristotle Project's findings on high-performing teams, which identified psychological safety as a key factor. She concluded by encouraging participants to reflect on how they can create environments that foster independent and collaborative thinking.

#### Enhancing Team Effectiveness Through Safety

Linda discussed the Google Aristotle project's focus on team effectiveness and its findings on psychological safety, creativity, and risk-taking. Graham shared his experience from the Royal Navy, highlighting the importance of a familial atmosphere for team effectiveness. Amanda compared teaching practices to the concepts discussed, emphasizing the role of psychological safety in learning and inspiration. Linda explained the neurobiological link between safety and improved thinking and introduced components of a thinking environment, such as pairs, rounds, and dialogue. She invited participants to engage in a thinking pair exercise to explore the impact of interruptions on thinking.

#### Enhancing Meeting Thinking Environments

Linda facilitated a discussion on creating effective thinking environments in meetings, emphasizing the importance of allowing uninterrupted thinking and the neuroscience behind why interruptions can be detrimental. Participants shared experiences and insights, particularly highlighting the challenges of managing different personalities and contexts in meetings. Linda introduced the concept of the "thinking environment" and its ten components, which aim to foster better collaboration and idea-sharing. The session concluded with participants reflecting on their own meeting practices and the potential benefits of implementing these strategies in various settings, including local councils and corporate environments.

***

### Chat:

In answer to the verbal question "What brought you here today?":

00:08:33 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Fascinated by the topic
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00:08:37 Simon Donovan: Your post Linda!
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00:09:07 John Renshaw, Folkestone: Curious to meet the group
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00:09:21 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Regular attendee
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00:11:27 Simon Donovan: Liversedge - West Yorkshire. Luddite country!
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00:12:26 Andrew Wright (South West London): I'm near where the magna carta (and more importantly charter of the forest) was signed.
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00:15:46 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Runnymede?
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00:16:45 Andrew Wright (South West London): Replying to "Runnymede?"

Yep
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00:18:25 Andrew Wright (South West London): I think this was advertised on the Climate Emergency Centre WhatsApp which is why I'm here?
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00:19:13 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: I’ll add them to the list, to ask if they would do so each week. Good suggestion, thank you!
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00:22:11 Amanda Davis: Essential classroom management practice.... Alistair Smith promoted it as Accelerated Learning

***

### Audio-transcript (for AI indexing and search):

(the audio-transcript does not pick up again after the deliberate pause in recording the audio, so the second part of the session is lost)

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: I will, yes, most people know about us, but I'm very happy to say that we're a non-profit organization that is dedicated to trying to get parish councils and town councils and community organisations more effectively on the road towards climate change or…

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Just in the environment generally.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: So we run a weekly banter session, which, Linda is now the host for the 100th session.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Which is sort of good news, yes, there are… and,

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: We try to bring up a useful topic every week,

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Which, sort of, is about 15 to 25 minutes of chatting, and then the rest of the time is spent in answering questions. People put all sorts of helpful links in the chat, because we produce the whole lot afterwards on our knowledge base, and you'll all get a copy of the notifications as to where that is and when it's gone up.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And that is building into some place where people can come as their first port of call, I hope, when they're looking to do anything in the climate change or net zero worlds. So, rather than get confused by the multiplicity of details out on the internet, we're trying to find best practice in any

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Field or arena, and point people towards it.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And the chats that we give each Wednesday are a major part of the knowledge base.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Thank you very much for the time, Linda, all yours.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Great. Session is being recorded, which was going to go into the knowledge base. Hopefully that's okay with everybody, but there will be some breakout groups, so I'm going to… that won't be recorded then.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So today's going to be a bit different, perhaps, than a normal banter, in that I'm going to invite everybody, if they can and are able to, to switch their mobile phones off.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And to give attention, because we're going to be looking at the subject of attention, and why it's so helpful.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we're going to be looking at that, and there's going to be, chance to go into breakouts, and whilst we're not necessarily sharing anything personal, if you do share anything personal in the breakout, it would be nice to agree that the person you're with doesn't come back and say, you won't believe what they've just said.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: or similar. If you want to share your own personal stuff, you can, so that would just be nice to know that it's confidential. So, a bit of background, really, about me. I'm,

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I'm an organization development consultant and coach and facilitator, involved in climate, for the last 8 years, particularly, and now a climate psychologist.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And I'm a qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor, amongst other things. And back in 2008, I came across an organization called Time to Think.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And I was a coach, and also an assessor of coaches at the time, and teaching coaches. And, it really struck me that this was something very, very important, is how do we have time to think, and how do we create

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: conditions where people really can think. Because often, lots of coach training and lots of counselling training actually teaches you to interrupt.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: teaches you how to interrupt, effectively, or ineffectively. And so this was very different, so this really grabbed me. So I'm going to invite you to give attention today, for this next hour, if you can.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And switch off any things that are going to ping, and close your email down. To just think about this. The reason I think it's so important, I hope will transpire.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I've got some slides to share with you around some of the concepts of it.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: The first part of it came from this book called Time to Think.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: by a lady called Nancy Klein.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And, Nancy is an American living in Oxfordshire, and I met Nancy, as I said, back in 2008, and I trained with her as something called a Thinking Partnership Practitioner. Hello, Amanda, nice to see you. I trained as a thinking partnership practitioner, and I went on

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: to train more and more and more, and eventually became faculty member of Time to Think. There were just 35 of us around the world.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And we teach and qualify people to work with what we call the thinking environment. So, that's what I'm going to do today, is invite you in. And Amanda, we just agreed that when we go into breakouts, and then come back and reflect, that anything personal that's shared in the breakouts, pairs, doesn't get shared. That's just lovely.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And invited also people to switch off devices and focus on the quality of the attention they're being… they're giving right now. And we'll look at why that is so important. So I'm going to start with some slides, and everything is invitational, you don't have to do anything. If you say, I don't want to go into a breakout, that's fine too.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, this, this, this idea, these ideas are used all over the world now.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: quite a lot in NHS, a lot of NHS organizations create what we call thinking environments. Lots of councils, I've worked with loads of those, lots of corporates, lots of coaches and facilitators use these practices.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, let's share.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And the session I usually call is Think Well, Think Together.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And, we've done that in the chat. What brings you here today?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So there's been a mixture of curiosity, my post on LinkedIn, people already know

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: each other, and so a variety of different things. So.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: This is what we call the 10 components of the thinking environment. We're going to look at a few of them today. I will share… you'll… I'll share these, you'll see this on the recording afterwards, and I'll also put links in to various sources of information, including websites.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And I will come back to that. The beautiful thing about the thinking environment is, although there are 10 things, unless you're actually teaching it, you don't need to remember all 10.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You can begin to apply them every day in your life.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: How did this come about?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Well, the first one is what I've just said, it's attention.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And we'll talk a bit about what this… we call it a component, but it's an element of creating a space in which people can think well.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And we define attention and thinking environment as listening without interruption.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And where… and with interest in where the person will go next in their thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So what's this all about? What's the background to this?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Well, the thinking environment started with a key observation by Nancy Klein back, at least 40, 50 years ago now, around 40, 50 years ago.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: She's still alive and teaching occasionally.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And it started with this key observation.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: That the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: If we don't have good thinking, we won't make good decisions, and we won't take good actions, and we won't get good outcomes.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Whereas, but in this day and age of everybody so busy all the time, our attention's being grabbed by multiple sources, multiple factors, both internal and external.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: We're not often getting the quality of the thinking time that we really need.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: good thinking results in good decisions and good actions. If we want good outcomes, we have to have quality thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And so this, many years ago, set Nancy off on a quest. She's a leadership trainer, and anybody here who's a Quaker might recognize some of the

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: some of the practices that we use, it's not a spiritual or religious organization or way of being, but it is based on ways of being together that help people to think and share and open up.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: and create.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, you'll recognize elements of Quaker practice in here.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But we don't sell it as that. It's, it's not about that. It's about the quality of thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And what we've been finding over the years, Nancy started out on her own, and then a few of us joined her, and started to look at this, this, this singular question that obsessed us, really, particularly Nancy in the early days, is, what does it take for people to think well for themselves?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And what she'd noticed was in the schools that she'd taught in, and the colleges, and the leadership institutions, and the coaching, and the management courses.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Very little was focused on.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: What is it to think well?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And how do you do that well? How do you think well? And what you notice, principally, is that if you didn't get the right kind of attention, if you didn't get attention when you were thinking, when you were with others, you wouldn't think very well.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because it would have an impact on your brain, and on your thinking patterns itself, that you were being interrupted, or you weren't being attended to.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Now, what we now know, which we didn't know 40 years ago, is that actually there's a neurobiological element to this. If you give somebody attention, they feel safe, if it's the right kind of attention. And they'll feel safe to be creative, to explore, to think for themselves as themselves.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And the findings along the way have been things like the way that we behave as listeners with people actually has more impact on the quality of their thinking

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: than their IQ, their prior knowledge, or their experience.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Doesn't mean to say their thinking is going to be, the same as a rocket scientist, but if you are someone who's not a rocket scientist.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: what they thought about landing people on the moon, they would have some thoughts.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They might not be technical, they might not be based on experience, they might not have particular intellectual expertise to think about that, but they can think about the subject.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And they can share their thoughts with you.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So the way we behave with people has a big impact. We're actually helping them as co-creators in their thinking because, as you'll know from your climate work.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: and your biodiversity work, we are all connected. We are all connected to everything.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So the way we behave with people has much more impact on the quality of their thinking than their IQ, prior knowledge, or experience.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: We also have discovered along the way that the human mind seems to think better in the presence of a question.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And yet, how often do we go to meetings with lists of things that we've got to cover?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And the energy changes when you say, here's a list of questions we need to address today.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: What we've also found is that the mind who's got a question, with the question, is usually the best one to answer it.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And if you've had the luck of having a great coach in your life, you will know that when you ask the coach a question.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Often they will say, that's a great question, what are your thoughts about that?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And something amazing happens, and you go, oh, yeah, well, they're interested in what I think. What do I think? And off they go.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And if I'm in a group, if I'm teaching to a group in an audience… by the way, you can interrupt me at any time and put your hand up if I'm going too fast. So do… do feel free to do that, even though I've said it's not about interruptions.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But I'd appreciate it, no chat at the moment, because that will pop up and take our attention away. Our brains, as Oliver Berkman has told us in some of his wonderful books, particularly one I called out, Oliver Berkman is Busy.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Is that we can't do two things at once. We think we can. There's no such thing as multitasking with task switching.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And it takes 40% longer when you task switch to get your thinking back to where it was before you went somewhere else.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, we know that the mind with the question is usually the best one to answer it. So, if I'm in a group, of a live audience, and somebody asks a question about the thinking environment.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They'll say things like, this is… this sounds great, but it'll never work in my organization because of so-and-so. How would I do that in my organization? And I say, that's an interesting thought. What are your first thoughts? And they'll, guess what they'll do?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They'll answer it! And they say, well, I could try this, and I could try that, and I say, yeah, absolutely you could.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we know that the mind with the question is often the best one to answer it, and I'd say 99% of the time.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And anyone that's been coached by me will notice that I don't speak at all, unlike many coaches which do speak… I can speak if you invite me to, but most of the time, we find that you do the work, in your own space, because I've given you time to think.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: We've also noticed that the mind seems to think in waves and pauses.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So someone will have a thought, and maybe they'll share that verbally. And they'll go quiet.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And if we don't interrupt that quiet, because we recognise they're probably still busy thinking, they will have some more thoughts about it.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Whatever that question is. But in society, we tend to always interpret a pause as a chance to nip in there ourselves.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I mean, in fact, one could say we live in two worlds of thinking. There's a large, large world, which we could call exchange thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Where there's an unwritten rule that when someone speaks, somebody else speaks immediately afterwards, or sometimes before they've finished. And we know that that's a big world we're used to. It's a dialogue world, we can have a chat, we can have a banter, there's an exchange, and that's a good, you know, it's a great place to be.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But it's often coming at the expense of the much smaller and increasingly smaller world.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: of independent thinking. What do I think about this for myself, as myself? What's my view here?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I'm fed all this information. What do I think about this? What's right for me? What are my values? What's a decision that feels good to me, that's not influenced overly by somebody else's?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we've noticed when we don't always just jump straight in, and we let that pause happen, the person will continue thinking for themselves.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Now, naturally, we have to have some agreements around this, otherwise some people could talk forever and a day.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we have some agreements around taking turns and things like that.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because knowing… and knowing you will have a turn is very different from being lucky and getting one. Have you ever been to a meeting where you've never spoken the whole time, or you've noticed somebody else hasn't?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And how quiet, and often managers and leaders say to me, I just wish everybody would, you know, play their part in a meeting.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And my question to them is often, well, what are the conditions you're setting up to make that possible for people to step in and speak? How safe is it?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Are you making it?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Explicit that everybody can speak if they want to, that we can go round and have a turn, and as long as we manage the time well, everyone can speak if they want to.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And anyone that knows the work of the Google Aristotle project a few years ago, which looked at high-performing teams. Of course, not every organization is like Google, thank goodness. However, we do know that the research they did of vast numbers of teams, vast amounts of research data.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: is that there were 5 things that made teams really effective. And the top factor that made teams the most effective and high-performing

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Was the extent to which they created psychological safety.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And psychological safety means that you know various things, such as it's safe to speak, or you perceive it's safe to speak, you perceive that you won't get criticized.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You perceive that you can say, get something wrong and not get laughed at.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So certain things that make it safe for you to take risks and be creative.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And part of what the practices of these high-performing teams was, was making sure that everybody had a turn to speak at the beginning and at the end of meetings.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And it was time… not necessarily with a hand timer, but it was time, you know, we've each got a meeting to speak here. Haven't had time today, hence the chat.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, knowing you'll have a turn is very different from being lucky and just getting one, because you've been able to get in

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we then come on to these 10 components, and they're 10 behaviors that seem to make a significant difference in the quality of our thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And you don't need to remember all of them, but if all you'd remembered was the quality for your attention.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Makes a massive difference. When someone else is speaking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: That will change the way they think.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because when one person gets attention, and someone else, or others, listen with the intention of igniting

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They're thinking as if they're on a shared creative journey.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They listen to ignite and not to respond, we think better.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And it is also natural that we're… when someone's talking, we are always in the background thinking what we want to say in response to it, either to

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Make a comment, or a joke, or a suggestion, or an observation. But when we change our perspective, and we intentionally listen to ignite their thinking, and not just to respond to it, they think better.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They just do. They… when you know you're not going to get interrupted.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I mean, you know for sure you're not going to get interrupted. You'll just develop so much more confidence in your own thoughts, whereas if you're waiting.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You know, just imagine what's happening to your amygdala, to your nervous system, when you're waiting for someone to nip in there and have a joke at your expense, or…

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And Ovid, the great philosopher, knew this, and there's very rarely a management program without a dead Greek philosopher popping up occasionally. And Ovid, in whatever year it was, 439…

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: BCAD, I don't know, I don't, I should know the year. He said.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: An idea is a very delicate thing.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: It can be killed by a frown on the right man's brow.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Or a sneer on the right man's face.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So he knew the power of someone else's, response to our thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: That could kill the idea.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I'll just do a couple more of these, and then we'll move on. So, when we give… when we give attention to somebody, rather than interrupting them.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: It actually seems to have the effect of asking them a question.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: When we just give attention, and we wait expectantly, you know, wonder what else this person thinks, this is really interesting, where are they going?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: It has the effect of asking, what more do you think?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Or feel, or want to say. And it starts a new wave of thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And people sometimes say, well, that's all very well, Linda, all this independent thinking. We want people to work together.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But what we found is that when independent thinking is welcomed, and you're given a turn, and your ideas are listened to, and you feel respected and valued.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: guess what you do? You listen to others better, you become more collaborative, you become less triggered.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Less emotionally dysregulated.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And of course, this is all going on beneath the surface in most corporate boardrooms, most meetings every day. We go to work terrified. Well, most people go to work every day with a hope they don't even know they have, which is that somebody's going to ask them what they think.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But equally, at the same time, we go to work with an absolute terror.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Someone's gonna say, what do you think?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because if they say it in a way that puts the pressure on us, they're going to go, I don't know, what do I think? I don't know, I don't want to get it wrong.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So if we create conditions in which people can think, well, we'll all think better and more collaboratively.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, I'll stop there for a moment and just see… let's get to people's responses to what I've just said.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Any questions?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Challenges.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Observations.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Andrew.

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Andrew Wright (South West London): I've got an interesting one. So if the Google Aristotle project was such a success.

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Andrew Wright (South West London): how come Google buy, I don't know, some metrics?

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Andrew Wright (South West London): is probably… obviously, they did drop its don't Be Evil thing, and people would now kind of associate Google with AI, and kind of thinking that may not be ideal by, again, some metrics. I'm wondering how…

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Andrew Wright (South West London): Yeah, how these two, kind of, almost, like.

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Andrew Wright (South West London): Different things in the same space.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, yeah.

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Andrew Wright (South West London): What they were looking at specifically was team effectiveness, not strategic effectiveness.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I think. Yeah, and this… the research was done, I think, about…

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I think it was about 2015 or something like that.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Well, certainly before COVID, but yeah. So these behaviors, these were repeated across team after team. If there was psychological safety, they were more creative.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: More connected, more trusting, more likely to take risks, but measured risks.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Anything else? Any other thoughts, questions, challenges?

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: just an observation, Linda, that,

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: I used to start my career, or I started my career in the Royal Navy, and it was very noticeable that some ships or submarines were much more effective than others, and the ones that were happy ships, were because everybody felt part of a team.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And you… the more familial, if that's the right word, the atmosphere, then the more everybody worked together. And the more that they worked together, the much better they were at responding to an emergency. So, what you're saying is so far hitting all the right spots, as far as I'm concerned.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, there's some… Amanda?

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Amanda Davis: I'm so sorry that I… you probably said before I joined about not putting anything in the chat, so I did put something in the chat, which probably did disturb, but was just comparing with that part of my career that I spent in the classroom teaching.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And…

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Amanda Davis: First of all, that fear of being asked.

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Amanda Davis: Probably… you know, I'm seeing why this has come from.

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Amanda Davis: Because, you know, we've all been to school, that's the one thing that we've all had to do, if you like, in our upbringing.

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Amanda Davis: And,

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Amanda Davis: And also the fact that it's… it's… when I said essential classroom practice, what I meant by that was vital, or the core of classroom practice. I didn't mean the basics of

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Amanda Davis: teaching practice, because it's something that, you work on. You first of all think it's about controlling your class for class behaviour.

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Amanda Davis: But actually, it's about enabling your class, when you truly mature as a teacher, and getting your students so inspired that they'll get more from it, that they believe in it for themselves.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, absolutely, beautifully put. I didn't get a chance to read the message because I was talking, but yeah, beautifully put.

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Amanda Davis: I was referring to Alistair Smith, who, when I was learning, probably about 20 years ago, was the guru on accelerated learning. That's what he called it.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Oh, thank you, we'll look up, yeah.

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Amanda Davis: It's all about the brain connection. The more we understand about the brain and how it works, the better we can develop and learn and thrive.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

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Amanda Davis: Thank you.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So what we know is that, what we've found over the years is there is a neurobiological link to this, is if you feel psychologically safe.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: you are much able… much more likely to be tapping into… if you're feeling alarmed, for example, and bearing in mind that an idea is a very delicate thing, it can be killed by a frown on the wrong man's brow… on the right man's brow, is if you're feeling safe.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: then, or unsafe, your broker, R-O-C-A-S, broker's area, in your brain, responsible for language, will shut down.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: just shut down. You know what it's like when someone puts you at the classroom, teacher puts you on the spot and says, what do you think, Freddie? You go, your language, you can't find the words. It's because you're… you're being triggered in that area. We know that when you create safety, and you say, I'm going to give you attention, and I'm going to listen to what you say.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And of course, that can be… that can be learned. We used to be able to do it, and we've unlearned it, because of the pace of life.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, these are… these components, and there's so much in this, and I'm going to try and squeeze as much in as I can today in an easeful way. We know that, or I say we know, our observations over hundreds and hundreds of coaching sessions of

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Meetings, of events and conferences, is that the quality of the attention is absolutely key.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: When we give attention, and when we receive attention, it changes the outcome into something much more positive.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So I'm going to go back to my slides.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, what would… so how do you make this come alive? When… we're going to talk about some of the components in a moment, but how do we make this come alive? Well, the thinking environment is this… we've… we've… it's the, the book was called Time to Think, but the… the process and those 10 components,

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Which I will go back to shortly.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: enable us to actually build a thinking environment in pieces, and it doesn't mean that you have to do the whole thing. You can use little building blocks, as long as you apply the components within there, and I'll come back to what the components are. So these are…

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Little things you can use in your meetings. Thinking pairs.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You can invite people into pairs. Lots of people are not very comfortable in large groups, and so they shut down.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They are either not confident in speaking, or they're just… it's just their preference, you know? Whereas we know that when you create safety, and you put people into pairs, generally they will think better together, and they'll be able to give each other better attention, so we use it in pairs.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So if you're in a meeting, and the meeting feels like it's stalling, and people just aren't… aren't coming to life, give them a lovely question, and send them into pairs, and ask them to have a think about it.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And then come back to the main group and share their thinking. And you'll find immediate acceleration in contribution.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Dialogue is a bit like a thinking pair. We're going to do a thinking pair in a moment, I'll come back to that. Rounds, starting and ending meetings with rounds, using rounds to harvest data, making sure that people know they've got a turn if they want one.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But asking them to be succinct when they have a turn, because one of the components of a thinking environment is equality.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: If we feel equal as thinkers, even if there's a hierarchy.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: of pecking order status, income, job title, you name it. If we know that each person in the room is there for a reason.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: and they have an equal chance to contribute, that will change the energy. And one of the things I say to leaders when I work with them is,

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You need to work really hard not to be the first to always speaking around.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: You know, it's really helpful when a leader does not be the first.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And open discussion, which is a free-flowing discussion without the rigor of the round, but with a promise of no interruption.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, I'm going to invite you to do a thinking pair.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And this is 5 minutes each way. You've probably done all these kinds of things before in other groups, a listening exercise.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And it's not a conversation, it's where you each have a period of time to think about a question together.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And, the, the agreement we ask you to do is that the thinking partner, which is the one doing the listening.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: agrees to listen, Expectantly.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Promises not to interrupt.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And if you feel comfortable, to keep your eyes on the eyes of the person doing the thinking.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Not everyone will.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: But we certainly know that when you know you've got attention, provided it's with a good intention.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: and you know you've got that person's attention, we will think better. There is a massive… there's a biological reason for attention. It's because we are humans, we need attention to survive. If we were just left as babies after we've been born on our own to fend for ourselves in the jungle, we wouldn't last long.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, but attention is a biological mechanism that persists through life.

380
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So there's two roles in a thinking pair. There's the thinking partner, the listener.

381
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: also known as the listener. And your role is to listen with interest, Fascination.

382
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: In what the person's saying, and what they might say next.

383
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because you don't know what they're going to say next, and they don't know either. And neither of you will know if you interrupt it.

384
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And be aware that you can interrupt it with a frown.

385
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Or a laugh, or a sneer, or a quick movement, or a look at your watch, any of those things, the brain will receive as a danger signal.

386
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: this person isn't interested anymore, I'm talking rubbish about changing the subject, you know, that kind of thing goes on. So that's the invitation, and it's only 5 minutes. When I coach, I do this for an hour and a half, so it's a muscle that could be stretched.

387
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: The thinker is invited to think, and they can think quietly or out loud. Most people think out loud when they're with someone else, and what we do is say to them, you can think about this, freely, knowing you won't be interrupted.

388
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because that's the deal, you're not going to be interrupted.

389
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And the person's just going to listen, and give you their attention, and you can think about this.

390
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And even if you go quiet when you're thinking.

391
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Your thinking partner, your listener, is not going to nip in, make a comment, or make it and turn it into a conversation. It's purely a 5-minute fee, and it's going to be 5 minutes for them.

392
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So this is the question to think about, is what happens to your thinking when you get interrupted in a conversation?

393
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So we each have 5 minutes on that.

394
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, Person A goes first.

395
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And then person B goes. And in between, because we're short on time today, we don't have time for dialogue in between, but we'll come back and do a round.

396
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, what happens to your thinking when you get interrupted in the conversation? Now, what can typically happen is one person starts talking and thinking.

397
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And they dry up a bit.

398
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: often, because we're not used to somebody just listening to us, and they go, oh, I don't know, I think that's all I want to say, then what you can do is just ask them, what more do you think?

399
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: or feel I want to say.

400
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Because it shows that you're still interested, and it's one of the components, it's encouragement.

401
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And courage means to give courage to.

402
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So you're going to give courage to their thinking.

403
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And then you swap around. And then you end with an appreciation, which is another of the components.

404
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: appreciation of a quality that you've observed in the other. Not what they've done, not, oh, I really like what you've said you're gonna do, I really like that. A quality, the kind of thing you might say when someone says, what's Fred like? You say, well, yeah, Fred's a guy, nice guy, if he's got a good sense of humor, Fred's this, Fred's that. So, not what they've done.

405
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So then, and what we'll do is put a, put a, put a, let's say a 12-minute pair together.

406
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: 11-minute pair, actually, because I have 5 each way. I'll let you know when to swap around.

407
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And then I'll let you know when the second five is finished, and then you have a minute to give each other an appreciation of a quality you've observed in the other.

408
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: When we come back, we're just going to reflect on what that was like.

409
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: So, what happens to your thinking when you get interrupted in a conversation?

410
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: And if they need a bit of help.

411
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: They can usually ask for it and say, well, I've dried up, I'm stuck, I'm done. Just ask them, what more do you think, or feel, or want to say?

412
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: We found… we've tested these questions over the years.

413
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: What more do you think Ophelia want to say?

414
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Does anybody not want to take part in a thinking pair?

415
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Amanda Davis: Linda, I'm happy to if the numbers work out, but I'm, I'm suffering quite a bit at the minute.

416
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Okay, thanks.

417
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Amanda Davis: I'm happy to if it makes up the pairs, though.

418
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Great, thank you. Let's have a look at the breakouts, so…

419
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I haven't got… I haven't got breakouts, because I'm not host.

420
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I wonder if you could make me host, co-host, please, Graham.

421
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Excuse me.

422
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Do you, do you need any guidance as to how to do that?

423
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Oop.

424
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John Renshaw, Folkestone: I'm still not co-host, or am I there? We got a message, yeah, I don't think.

425
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, I haven't, I haven't got co-hosted.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: You're showing as co-host on my screen.

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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Oh.

428
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Yeah, why have I not got… I haven't got breakouts showing.

429
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Graeme, are you able to set up breakouts?

430
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Oh, I've got them more… no, I've just not got… I've got no breakout facility here today.

431
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Hmm.

432
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: I thought they were built in to every copy of Zoom, but maybe not.

433
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Not this one.

434
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: one.

435
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00:46:51.630 --> 00:46:55.080
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: No, where would I normally look for it? It's not something I've done before.

436
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: along the bottom of the screen.

437
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00:46:59.060 --> 00:47:06.770
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: It's not under hostels, it should be on its own, as, mmm.

438
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00:47:07.870 --> 00:47:10.760
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: You can start a collaboration, is that… that's right?

439
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: No.

440
\
00:47:14.270 --> 00:47:16.270
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: I've not come across this before.

441
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00:47:16.810 --> 00:47:18.410
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Something new every day.

442
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00:47:19.050 --> 00:47:20.610
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: In the land of the web.

443
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00:47:22.020 --> 00:47:25.369
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Now, I've got transfer meeting to a room, but that's all.

444
\
00:47:26.890 --> 00:47:27.630
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Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Nope.

445
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00:47:28.520 --> 00:47:30.750
\
Linda Aspey - North Cotswolds: Let's just stop the recording and pause…

<br>


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