How We Teach Insight Thinking
It’s all very natural and non-prescriptive. Once the principles are grasped, “what to do” is obvious.
Teaching Format
We have successfully taught Insight Thinking in individual sessions and during team meetings. When working with an individual, we often hold one or two 75-minute conversations on insight and on how thinking works. Often, but not always, the subject is a current business problem. In a group setting, we teach the principles in a few half-hour classroom sessions, interspersed throughout a day, alternated with “coached” practice, again on a real problem or issue.In either instance, our first step is to help people surface and reconnect with their personal “insight state of mind” by reflecting and sharing a past experience or two that involved insight. Next, we might ask whether the quality of their thought is higher in those states, and whether they would value more access to those states. These are important assessments, though not difficult, and can be made through either group or individual conversation.
Once this foundation is established, two tasks remain. First is personal practice, so that the “feel” of the presence and absence of the insight state is established in awareness. This is a little like becoming familiar with the “idiot light” in your car, but in reverse. The quality of your thought drops and the absence of the “good feeling” triggers the light. A good first step when the light goes on is to notice it. You don’t have to do anything; generally, your wisdom knows how to right things better than your conscious mind. As you come to understand how your thinking turns the lights on, you can turn the switch off and return to a better state of mind at will. With experience, the passage of time, and the use of your insights, you find that the “idiot lights” more and more rarely have cause to switch on.
Second is the creation of structures that work like memory aids to help maintain awareness of the state of mind. This might include looking for things that surface and break prevailing thought patterns, or cause a moment of reflection; in a team situation, sometimes you are setting new norms, as well. Here are a few examples.
When You're On Your Own
You’re working furiously at your computer. You reach for your coffee and notice you’ve lost the “good feeling.” Remember, you’re now looking for it, so it’s at least a bit more likely that you’ll notice its absence. Instead of plowing ahead, you’ve made a prior deal with yourself to stop and just let your head clear and then decide, from a condition of “fresh thought,” what to do next. It may be not going back to the keyboard. Zen parables talk about calming the mind as being similar to clearing a muddy pool: let it settle, it will clear. By more thinking, you stir up the mud. Before the mind is still, thought looks like a waterfall – solid. When the mind settles, you can see individual drops – individual thoughts. And there is “space” in between these thoughts. In these spaces is the possibility (and source) of fresh, new thoughts – insights.When You're With Another Person
You’re in a conversation with someone. You get frustrated or feel pressured and it doesn’t feel good. The idiot light goes on and you realize you have lost a good state of mind. You’ve previously realized the value of taking a moment to reflect on, and even to study, the idiot light and your thinking. So you ease off the mental gas pedal and let mental buoyancy return. Then you begin a gentle listening, not for what the person is saying, but what she or he is trying to say. Perhaps you ask the person to slow down a bit so you can really absorb what’s being said. Or maybe you ask if you both can just be silent for a moment, as you’ve lost your train of thought and need a moment to reflect. Any of these might work, or none might. But odds are you will have recovered your bearings. You won’t be making matters worse. And in the next moment you might have an insight about an action you could take that will be perfectly effective.In general, when you notice that a person you’re meeting with is in a mental storm and you’re not, you’ll know what to do to ease him or her out of it – or at least to avoid getting caught in the downdraft. You might propose to reschedule the meeting, or you might just listen calmly. You’ll probably start to avoid the very human, but flawed, habit of using reasoning to help out. When someone is in a lowered state of mind, his or her thinking is “off” and logic is of little help. In that state, a person’s cognitive ability probably doesn’t allow a grasp of the soundness of reasoning, which is why explaining to someone who is upset why she or he ought not to be, rarely works. However, gentle and attentive listening to that person has much more impact. It can allow him or her to calm down and let go of the basketball, allowing it to rise gently back to the surface.
When You're With A Group
You’re in a meeting with a group. You get agitated (and notice it). Instead of blurting out into the conversation (with some comment borne of lower-quality thought), you sit quietly and look for the inner sense of peace and equanimity, and for a thought that you’ve never had before. You wait silently until one or both have occurred, and then you speak. You discover that people listen to you with entirely different ears. At the very least, you will not be contributing to and compounding a dispirited mood within the group. Or maybe you suggest a break. Everyone takes a walk and, lo and behold, their heads also clear, and someone returns with a novel solution. At the least, everyone returns in a somewhat better mood. If others in the group have familiarity with Insight Thinking, you might only remark that the good feeling is gone and almost instantly people will recover their bearings.In a team setting the support of colleagues can accelerate the learning and application processes. It really helps to have someone gently point out that the feeling of the meeting has gotten heavier or labored. Unlike other team performance aids, only one person in a good state of mind is needed to pull the “emergency” handle. With multiple “sentries” it’s far more likely that someone will have the presence of mind to interrupt to good effect a process that has gotten “off the rails”. This dramatically reduces teams’ “getting lost” and having low-productivity meetings. As people come to understand how thought operates, they tend to be more effective at helping colleagues who are off-balance.
Practicing
We favor practicing during real work meetings. People have had great success with setting up, every hour or two, a 10-minute period wherein participants discipline themselves to listen for their own fresh thoughts and those of colleagues, and to speak only when they have fresh thoughts to share and when they are in “good feeling.” There can be significant periods of silence. This is good. Others have split into pairs at the start of the meeting, especially if the subject for discussion has been around the block a few times. One person “dumps” all of his or her thinking on the subject while the other simply listens with an empty mind. Emptying the memory seems to make more room for fresh thought and it also serves as one of those memory aids that remind us of the state of mind we are seeking. Also, if it has been thought before, it has probably been said before. And if it has already been said, saying it again probably is not going to generate a different result than it did last time (a.k.a. the definition of insanity: repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result). If people must discuss an “old” subject, having participants use only new ways of talking about it can work very effectively. We also encourage people to get some buddies to cross-coach and to set up some Insight Thinking ground rules for the teams on which they participate. These might include speaking up when someone notices the absence of good feeling, and pausing for a mental or physical break. But people ought not necessarily use these. In a short time, teams can come up with a couple of great guidelines of their own.It’s all very natural and non-prescriptive. Once the principles are grasped, “what to do” is obvious.
