What if leadership looked more like coaching and less like a boss?
Do you ever read something and know you’ll never look at life the same way ever again?
That’s what happened when I read this from Michael Bungay Stanier:
“Your job is to create the conditions where the other person can do their best thinking.”
Leaders (and we’re all leaders in Extension) have 1 job:
Create the conditions for people to do their best thinking.
Nancy Kline calls this the “thinking environment,” a set of external conditions under which human-thinking flourishes. I stopped and smiled.
For years, I’ve been putting together this list of the challenges that keep Extension staff from doing their best thinking, their best work. These workplace challenges rob us of the mental and emotional space to do our best work.
Comparing my list to Kline’s 10 components of the best thinking environment below, I see overlap between our lived experiences in Extension and what research tells us.
Attention: “Listening with genuine interest, without interrupting, without planning your next move.”
Ease: “Freedom from internal urgency without the pressure to perform or conclude quickly?”
Equality: “Treating the person's thinking as equally worthy … not just tolerable?”
Appreciation: “Am I starting from what is working, not what's wrong? A 5:1 ratio of appreciation to challenge — active acknowledgment of what is good”
Encouragement: “Giving permission to go beyond conventional thinking — to think what hasn't been thought … permission to say something they might be afraid to say.”
Feelings: “Allowing emotional release without moving immediately to fix or redirect. Am I willing to let emotion be present without rushing past it?”
Information: “Is there something they don’t know that is limiting their thinking?” What haven’t you told them that impacts their work?
Diversity: “Welcoming difference of identity and perspective as generative, not threatening.”
Incisive Questions: “Removing limiting assumptions that are blocking further thinking.” What isn’t true but others think is?
Place: Providing “a physical or virtual environment that communicates ‘you matter here’”
Academia reduces this theory to this: If the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first, “What does it take for people to help each other to think well for themselves?”
How do we create the ‘environment for better thinking’ in our Extension organizations?
Better thinking happens when the people affected by a decision are included in the discussion about the decision before it happens.
Better thinking happens when there are achievable paths to advancement for everyone. If we fail to provide the next step, they’ll find someone who will. Is there a step up for everyone?
Better thinking happens when annual reviews focus on the future and not on what went wrong 6 or 8 months ago. No one should find out they aren’t performing as expected during their performance review. Corrective action at the moment it’s observed makes for changed behavior.
Better thinking happens when people don’t go through hard things alone. As Kline says, good thinking happens when we allow emotional release without redirecting because it makes us uncomfortable or we think it is unprofessional.
Better thinking happens when there’s someone you can talk to about your boss that isn’t your boss. What independent observer do you have that advocates for everyone?
Better thinking happens when many voices are heard, even those that disagree. People don’t quit because they don’t like their job; they quit when the room makes it clear they are tolerated, not valued.
Better thinking happens when the rules apply to everyone, equally. When some get scolded while others get by, it’s hard to do your best thinking. This is especially true when different standards are applied from director to director or county to county. Act as one organization.
Better thinking happens when you provide a vision of what excellence looks like.
Better thinking happens when we take time to celebrate the end of stuff — the end of the week, the end of the season, the end of the program — before repacking the car for the next thing that has to be done.
Better thinking happens when one staff person isn’t expected to cover two jobs without adjusting the expectation of how much gets done and how much they get paid. Stop expecting staff to absorb the work of others who leave.
Better thinking happens when the internal candidate who didn’t get the job isn’t expected to train the person you gave the job to. It’s an insult to pass them over for the higher position, then lean on them to share their institutional knowledge with the person you hired over them.
Better thinking happens when staff take 100% of their annual leave. Quit handing back unused days to the organization. When we don’t take our earned leave, we aren’t providing administration a clear picture of how much time it truly takes to complete the work we’ve been asked to perform.
Better thinking happens when volunteers, colleagues, partners, and donors aren’t allowed to be abusive. Being passionate is not an excuse to be mean. Administrators must establish clear guidelines that protect staff from abuse.