Crucially, they have arrived having promised to stop interrupting. They have agreed 1) to start giving attention, 2) to stay interested in where each other’s thinking will go next and 3) to ‘share the stage’ equally.

We speak at approximately 115 words per minute, but think at approximately 825 words per minute. My own experience aligns better with an even starker view offered by a psychologist on one of my courses. His working hypothesis is that ‘for every thirty words we say, we don’t say 300’. If he is right, even when I am listening to you beautifully, I don’t have access to 90 per cent of your thinking. So surely we both benefit if you can develop your thinking fully before I speak. At least the 10 per cent I am responding to will be more accurate and fully formed, so my response can be, too.

The first turn starts. The thinking partner asks this question (or one so nearly like it, it might as well be this one):

What do you want to think about, and what are your thoughts?

This kind of attention, this rare kind of listening, as we know, is different. Thinking pairs are not conversations. They are not consulting or counselling or even coaching in its usual modes. Thinking pairs are a unique structure in which the human mind can venture forth with no shackles, no leash, no collapsing into the listener’s lead. That is why they are so fruitful.

The promise changes our listening.

The point of the five minutes is to keep the thinker going for themselves. Not to turn their self into yourself. Nothing prepares us for this challenge. If the thinker does not need your brilliant insights to keep them going, what do they need?

They need a catalyst. That need can be met with a question. But not the one you might think.