Suggestions About How To Become An Effective, Sought After ‘Thought Partner’
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Simple gidlelines I’ve discovered through three decades of experience coaching clients who were interested in learning how to become a collaborative learning companion.
What follows decribes the concets, ideas, and steps involved in becoming an effective thought partner. This is an introductory article on this subject and in it I’m going to describe the ideas, concepts, and steps that characterize a 21st Century approach to becoming a thought partner.
Key Propositions
In every thought partnership, there are four key propositions at the heart of every effective thought partnership:
- Thought partners address their toughest questions together.
Both parties are focused on asking and answering clear, direct, often pointed personal questions. Ttogether, they find and use communication styles that are comfortable for both people, but neither worries too much about being heard and understood; they both make sure mutual respect and acknowledgement comprise their relational touchstones.
2. Thought partners are introspective.
During their work together, a thought partner and their client often pause in explicit, serious, and concerted ways to allow each other time for one or both to reflect, gather their thoughts, and voice as-yet-unspoken concerns. Both thought partner and client take notes as they go, to avoid the distraction of silently trying to remember those thoughts that they want to inject or the questions they need to raise.
3. Thought partners agree on the issues they will explore.
At all times, vulnerability and honest disclosure are pivotal boundaries that need to be recognized and respected. These boundaries work best when they’re know and shared.
4. Thought partners consciously and purposefuuly design and implement their own learning experiments together.
Together, thought partners work side by side to explore and deal with the complex problems that trouble them.They work together in ways that help each other co-create new ways of thinking and behaving. For this reason, careful, well-designed, on-going behavioral experimentation is the heart of any thought partnership.
Basic Principles
Four basic principles describe the personal and interpersonal dynamics at play between two or more thought partners:
1. Thought partners set their agenda together.
The client always decides which complex issues they and their thought partner will address each time they talk.
2. Thought partner set the tone of their collaborations together.
Thought partners raise promising issues, ask challenging questions, and provide frame setting for their clients.
3. Thought partners create the answers they’re seeking together.
Thought Partner’s never offer pre-cast or pre-existing “expert answers” to eafh other. Rather, thought partners each other explore complex issues, doing their best, step by step, to help one another learn how to understand the challenges they’re facing and create the new modes of thinking and acting that produce useful results.
4. Thought partners are equal collaborators.
In a thought partnership, neither thought partner is the authority figure, neither is the subordinate. They work together as equal partners in mutually beneficial exploratory processes. They share responsibility for success.
Key Expectations
In every thought partnership, four key expectations are explicitly shared by the thought partner and their client:
1. Thought partner and client address the tough questions together.
Both parties are focused on asking and answering clear, direct, often pointedpersonal questions. They find and use communication styles that are comfortable for both people, but neither worries too much about being heard and understood; they both make sure mutual respect and acknowledgement comprise their relational touchstones.
2. Thought partner and client are introspective.
between loving couples or good friends. Instead, during their work together, a thought partner and their client often pause in explicit, serious, and concerted ways to allow time for one or both to reflect, gather their thoughts, and voice as-yet-unspoken concerns. Both thought partner and client take notes as they go, to avoid the distraction of silently trying to remember those thoughts that they want to inject or the questions they need to raise.
3. Thought partner and client disclose their toughest truths.
At all times, vulnerability and honest disclosure are pivotal opportunities that need to be recognized and addressed effectively.
4. Thought partner and client experiment.
together to deal with the complex problems that trouble the client, They work together in ways that help both co-create new ways of thinking and behaving. For this reason, careful, well-designed, on-going behavioral experimentation is the heart of what they do together.
The Bottom Line
Thought partners are about conversations, in particular the kinds of essential, soul-searching dialogues that helpeach other create a road map for the learning journey each is pursuing. Whether they’re struggling with a career, a relationship, a life transition, or they’re confronting some sort of deep-seated mismatchbetween their meaning-making capabilities and the disruptive, belief-shattering disruptions emerging from the real world, their conversations always begin and end with open dialogues.
Key Steps
There’s only one step that’s necessary if and when two thought partners wnat to develop a thought partnership for themselves; they need to discuss and agree on their version of the ideas, proposition, and principles described above.
