More Time to Think: The power of independent thinking

when Al said that to me, he was talking about heightened awareness through contrast. Over the years of organizational life he had become numb to the pain of interruption, of rushing his thoughts and fighting to keep his turn, of being trampled by the people who stampeded in order to get noticed, of being dismissed when he ventured difference.

The Thinking Environment seems to create time.

It places right at the top of required expertise in leaders and professionals and parents and teachers the ability to generate people’s finest independent thinking.

Nevertheless, Al decided to thank me – because he decided that as long as he worked at that company, with every shred of leadership and influence he had, he would create Thinking Environments.

you genuinely Appreciate people five times more than you criticize them, they will think more clearly and imaginatively around you than if you focus on their faults. If you Encourage people – build with them their courage to go to the unexplored edge of their thinking by championing their excellence – they will think better around you than if you c

“It’s possible that people may frown on the gaps in your CV, but what are you assuming that causes that assumption to stop you from making a plan to find a global position in a global organization?”

“And what more do you think, or feel or want to say?”

person’s finest thinking lives inside those linings of minutes when you are not plotting or trying or prying loose.

What am I assuming that is stopping me from feeling good?

We need to find, eject and replace the untrue cognitive assumption that is making us feel bad with the true liberating one that will make us feel good.