How To Think Like A Genius And Support Others To Do The Same

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Michael R Dale, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

There are ten behaviors that support anyone to think like a genius. They have become known as “The Ten Components of a Thinking Environment”.

They are: Attention, Equality, Ease, Appreciation, Encouragement, Feelings, Information, Diversity, Incisive Questions and Place.

Each Component is powerful individually, but the presence of all ten working together within the framework of a coaching session is what really supports anyone to think like a genius.

Bill Ford author of ‘High Energy Habits’ says:
“Because the Thinking Environment Coaching Process uniquely develops the vast thinking ability of the client, it makes coaching into the powerful, liberating act it is intended to be.”

But what is it about each component that makes it so powerful? What does it take to think like a genius?

In almost any setting the best help we can be is to create the conditions for people to generate their own finest thinking. And when someone is thinking around us, much of the quality of what we are hearing is our effect on them.
In fact, the quality of our attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking. Attention, driven by deep respect and genuine interest, and without interruption, is the key to a Thinking Environment. Attention is that powerful. It generates thinking. It is an act of creation.
“Attention: Listening with palpable respect and genuine interest, and without interruption.”

2. EQUALITY: Even in a hierarchy people can be equal as thinkers.
Treating each other as thinking peers; giving equal turns and attention; keeping boundaries and agreements.
In a Thinking Environment everyone is valued equally as a thinker. Everyone gets a turn to think out loud and a turn to give attention. To know you will get your turn to speak makes your attention more genuine and relaxed. It also makes your speaking more succinct.
Equality keeps the talkative people from silencing the quiet ones. But it also requires the quiet ones to contribute their own thinking. The result is high quality ideas and decisions.
“Equality: treating each other as thinking peers; giving equal turns and attention; keeping boundaries and agreements.”
3. EASE: Ease creates; urgency destroys.
Ease is an internal state free from rush or urgency that creates the best conditions for thinking.
But Ease, particularly in organizations and through the ‘push’ aspect of social networking, is being systematically bred out of our lives. We need to face the fact that if we want people to think well under impossible deadlines and inside the injunctions of ‘faster, better, cheaper, more,’ we must cultivate internal ease.
This takes the particular discipline of a Thinking Environment, and it takes a preference for quality over the rush of adrenaline.
“Ease: Offering [ourselves and others] freedom from internal rush or urgency.”

4. APPRECIATION: The human mind works best in the presence of appreciation.
Society teaches us that to be appreciative is to be naïve, whereas to be critical is to be astute. And so, in discussions we are asked to focus first, and sometimes only, on the things that are not working. The consequence is that our thinking is often flawed.
Thinking Environment expertise generates a balanced ratio of appreciation to challenge so that individuals and groups can think at their best.
“Appreciation: practicing a 5:1 ratio of appreciation to challenge.”

5. Encouragement: To be ‘better than’ is not necessarily to be ‘good’.
Competition between people ensures only one thing: if you win, you will have done a better job than the other person did. That does not mean, however, that you will have done anything good. To compete does not ensure certain excellence. It merely ensures comparative success.
Competition between thinkers is especially dangerous. It keeps their attention on each other as rivals, not on the huge potential for each to think courageously for themselves.
A Thinking Environment prevents internal competition and competition among colleagues, replacing it with a wholehearted, unthreatened search for good ideas.
“Encouragement: giving courage to go to the cutting edge of ideas by moving beyond internal competition.”

If instead, when people show signs of feelings, we relax and welcome them, good thinking will resume.
“Feelings: allowing sufficient emotional release to restore thinking.”

7. Information: Withholding or denying information results in intellectual vandalism.
Facing what you have been denying leads to better thinking.
We base our decisions on information, accurate or not, all of the time. When the information is incorrect, the quality of our decisions suffers. Starting with accurate information is essential, therefore, if good independent thinking is our aim.
The importance of information also pertains to the pernicious phenomenon of denial, the assumption that what is happening is not happening. Learning how to formulate questions that dismantle denial is a powerful feature of Thinking Environment expertise.
“Information: Supplying the facts; dismantling denial.”

8. DIVERSITY: The greater the diversity of the group, and the greater the welcoming of diverse points of view, the greater the chance of accurate, cutting-edge thinking. Reality is diverse. Therefore, to think well we need to be in as real, as diverse, a setting as possible.
We need to be surrounded by people from many identity groups, and we need to know that there will be no reprisal for thinking differently from the rest of the group.
“Diversity: welcoming diverse group identities and diversity of thinking.”

9. INCISIVE QUESTIONS™: A wellspring of good ideas lies just beneath an untrue limiting assumption. 
An Incisive Question will remove it, freeing the mind to think afresh. Everything human beings do is driven by assumptions. We need to become aware of them, and by asking Incisive Questions, replace the untrue limiting ones with true, liberating ones. The building of Incisive Questions is at the very heart of generating fine independent thinking. These questions have been described as ‘a tool of unbelievable precision and power’.
“Incisive Questions™: removing assumptions that limit our ability to think for ourselves clearly and creatively.”

Place is a silent form of appreciation.
“Place: creating a physical environment that says back to people, ‘You matter’.”
In a coaching session with me you will enjoy a supportive, challenging environment in which all these components are present. The quality of your thinking and the solutions you create to solve your biggest challenges will amaze you because you will think like genius.

Contact me now to arrange your free consultation.

Michael Dale
Skype: md-ignite
email:
thinkmichaeldale@gmail.com
contact@enterignite.com
web:
www.mrmichaeldale.com
www.enterignite.com

How To Think Like A Genius And Support Others To Do The Same ©Michael Dale 2013.
Incisive Question, Thinking Environment, The 10 Components Of A Thinking Environment © Time To Think 2013