Thinking Partners: a valuable tool to create more

My niece, Cassi, is a creative.

She is also one of my most powerful thinking partners. Professionally, Cassi is a scriptwriter and videographer. She has a YouTube channel where she produces children’s videos with over a million subscribers to entertain weekly. 

As a coach, I have the privilege of working with bright professionals. So it might seem like I would be her thinking partner, but no, she is mine.

As part of our thinking partnership, Cassi proposed that I, as a coach, create a presence on YouTube. 

The mechanics and vision were perplexing for me. I couldn’t see the path. How does a coach who spends her days listening to people talk, design an interesting presence on YouTube? What I do is not visually stimulating.

After meeting with Cassi every two weeks for a couple of months, the ideas started to crystalize and a plan emerged. (Don’t go look yet. All the pieces are still being gathered to put the plan into play.)

Creative thinking is about having new thoughts that result in something fresh and different being brought into the material world.

Creativity, of course, is used to manifest art and literature but is also used to make life transitions, start new businesses, evolve existing businesses, strengthen leadership skills, create strong relationships, and solve social issues.

Creating My Thinking Partnerships

I started developing thinking partnerships for myself after coaching for several years and being coached by professional coaches. Coaching is a powerful tool to help think through issues and implement new ideas.

It was important for me to always have a coach.

Starting in my late 50’s I had a difficult time finding coaches who had the qualifications I wanted.

I wanted them to be developed beyond me in leadership, business, health, and family….especially family!

For a long time, I wanted a matriarch coach who was ahead of me in this arena. As a matriarch of a large clan, it’s was often difficult finding clarity and wisdom as my family became more complex. But I couldn’t find anyone and was frustrated.

Plus, As a matriarch and as a woman, it’s important for me to continue to create a dynamic life where I continue to learn new concepts and use them to build and synthesize my thinking.

So, I decided to look at it differently.

If I couldn’t find older, wiser coaches, I’d look for bright, energetic people who see the world differently than I do and who have skill-sets I wanted to learn and ask them to be my thinking partners. 

It has been a fruitful journey that is transforming my business and my thinking!

Cassi is almost 30 years younger than I am. She’s from the rising creative class, young professionals who design their own professional niche, are influencing thinking shifts, and are social media savvy. 

She’s from a whole different generation of thought than I was raised in.

She has me not only exploring using YouTube, but also experimenting with Instagram and Facebook, and as you can see, writing blogs!

Direction of Support

Thinking partnerships, to be effective, need to have a clearly defined intent with a clearly defined direction of support.  In the relationship with Cassi, the direction of support is one way. She is supporting me and we are working on a specific project.

I have other thinking partnerships that are structured differently and the direction of support goes in both directions.

Amy and Brandolyn are friends with who I also have a thinking partnership. In this arrangement, all three of us have our own project and we support each other. 

Both Amy and Brandolyn are bright, talented and creative thinkers who are excited about their projects.

We meet once a month to discuss and share our thoughts and progress. The direction of support goes both directions.

We have named the meetings “Our Sistermind.”

For more information on the value and structuring thinking partnerships is the article Thinking Partnerships Create Brilliance.

Conclusion

Amy and I recently taught a workshop titled Create a Brilliance Life, built around the concept of using thinking partners.

My hope is that the concept spreads, and the term “thinking partners” becomes commonplace in the context of conversations. And that many people start using it to create more of what they want in their lives.

Cassi’s world of YouTube was completely foreign to me when we started. I couldn’t see a path, but what I had was faith that Cassi knew how to navigate well enough for us to start carving one. And I knew it wouldn’t be a mediocre path because I knew Cassi. It would be a unique, classy, and powerful new one.

If this interests you, go find a person you want to collaborate with and start experimenting. It takes a little faith and patience at first, but the journey is worth it!