Nancy Kline in her books Time to Think and More Time to Think describes how to develop a Thinking Environment in an organisation or team, and how it encourages creative and productive thinking. She identifies ten components of such an environment:

1. Attention: listening to others with interest and without distraction.
2. Incisive questions: using questions to remove limiting assumptions and faulty thinking.
3. Equality: respecting others as equals, sticking to agreements and giving each person uninterrupted time to speak.
4. Appreciation: offering five times more appreciation than criticism.
5. Ease: giving freedom from urgency and allowing space to think.
6. Encouragement: valuing all contributions rather than promoting competition.
7. Feelings: accepting and allowing expression of feelings.
8. Information: offering information when it is needed to move the team forward, not as a way of controlling or rescuing.
9. Place: Ensuring the physical environment makes people feel valued.
10. Diversity: using diversity within the group to enhance thinking and to expose different perspectives.

A thinking environment allows creative thinking to flourish and supports individual and group learning, both highly relevant for a University. Using these approaches, an effective leader will create a high performing team, one with a shared purpose and agenda, where every member had a clear role and knows their strengths, and in which members trust one another and their leader, have space and encouragement to contribute fully and have fun doing so. The same principles can be used in one to one interactions to ensure people have opportunity to think clearly and in meetings to get the best out of all participants.