Ilkka Rajala in a blue blazer, reaching out a hand
Ilkka Rajala
FIEN

Leadership and communication training

Leading thinking.

When every view comes with good arguments, a leader's job is to get people to see a shared direction. Leading Thinking is where you practise how to do that.

Ask about available datesFive formats

Where we are

Facts don't settle disagreements.

There is endless information, and almost every opinion can find its arguments. In one study, the most numerate people interpreted the same data most strongly in the direction of their own view (Kahan et al. 2017). Smart people are the best at justifying what they already think.

Leaders often argue from their own values, while the listener is persuaded by theirs. Resistance to change is seen as the listener's fault, even though part of it comes from how the change is communicated.

When a team has no shared picture of where it is going, everyone does good work, but in different directions.

Source: Kahan et al. 2017, Behavioural Public Policy.

Everyone thinks in their own way.

People aren't sorted into types and there are no personality tests. Leaders learn to hear how this particular person thinks in this particular situation.

These are skills of influence. I teach them to be used for people and for the common good.

Three levels

Three levels, nine skills.

Each level builds on the previous one. A keynote makes the levels familiar. In the programmes they are practised in real conversations over several weeks.

  1. Level 1

    Your own thinking

    Metacognition as a leadership tool: how you form interpretations, where your beliefs come from and how you stay clear when pressure rises.

  2. Observation or interpretation

    A leader rarely reacts to what happened. They react to what they concluded about what happened.

  3. Where a belief comes from

    Every leader carries assumptions about people and work. They steer choices without being seen. You learn to see where a strong opinion came from.

  4. Clarity under pressure

    When something concerns you personally, judgement narrows. Distance brings it back.

    Research. When people looked at their own situation through the eyes of an outsider, their reasoning became wiser: they recognised the limits of their own knowledge and took other perspectives into account better. (Grossmann & Kross 2014)

  5. Level 2

    Other people's thinking

    What you hear in someone's speech: how they structure their thinking and what matters to them.

  6. Direction of thinking

    Some people move towards opportunities, others away from risks. You can hear it in their words: achieve and grow, or secure and avoid.

    Research. In psychology this is known as regulatory focus. When a message matched the way the listener is motivated, it felt right and was more persuasive. The result was repeated in four experiments. (Cesario et al. 2004) The direction also shows in written language: word choices in CEOs' letters to shareholders predicted how many acquisitions the company made. (Gamache et al. 2015)

  7. Structure of thinking

    One person needs the big picture first, another the details. One thinks in analyses, another in stories.

    Research. People differ in whether they describe what they do in terms of purpose or execution: why or how. The difference shows in what kind of message inspires them. (Vallacher & Wegner 1989)

  8. What matters

    The values and criteria a person uses to judge whether something is a good idea. You can hear them in speech when you know what to listen for.

  9. Level 3

    Shared thinking

    How you fit a message to different listeners, open up resistance to change and get people to see the same direction.

  10. Fitting the message

    The same decision is explained to each listener in the language of their values and motivation. The content stays the same.

    Research. In six experiments, arguments fitted to the listener's values were more persuasive. Even so, people almost always argued from their own values. (Feinberg & Willer 2015)

  11. Opening up resistance

    Resistance tells you what a person is trying to protect. Once you understand that, it becomes information.

    Example. In an efficiency programme at a production plant, employees resisted a change driven by top management. The turning point came when the supervisors started saying: “We're making these changes so that we can keep these things as they are.” The changes stayed the same, but now people heard what they would get to keep. For the leaders driving the change, what mattered most was the new. For the employees, what mattered most was what would stay.

    Research. When leaders described a change in terms of what would stay the same, employees supported the change more. The effect was strongest among those whose work involved a lot of uncertainty. (Venus, Stam & van Knippenberg 2018)

  12. Shared direction

    People see the same picture of where we are going and why.

    Example. “Communication is our challenge.” When I ask how you communicate, the conversation becomes concrete right away. The same goes for the phrase “let's put the strategy into practice”. It leaves open how that is done. So everyone does something different, and the leadership wonders why.

Ilkka Rajala in a dark blue three-piece suit, hands in pockets

Why me

I can hear how a person thinks.

My speciality is seeing how thinking works. I can hear from someone's speech how they structure their thinking and what matters to them. That is the skill I teach.

In 2016 I trained 300 managers in Leading Thinking, and I have developed it after every group since. Behind it are more than 20 years of teaching thinking skills and more than 50,000 people trained.

In 2015 I helped found an AI company whose machine read a person's way of thinking from speech and text. In acquisitions it showed me where the thinking of two organisations was at cross purposes.

From a keynote to your own trainer.

Five formats, the same content. You can start small and expand once you see results.

0145–60 min

Keynote

For Leadership days, a kickoff or a management event
Price from €2,500 + VAT

A better argument rarely wins a debate, let alone brings people along.

In the keynote I go through the three levels of Leading Thinking: your own thinking, other people's thinking and shared thinking.

The audience tries the effects for themselves. A volunteer talks about their work for one minute, and I tell them what I heard: how they structure their thinking and what matters to them.

  • Opening experiment: the room is split in two. Both halves get the same fact told in a different way, and they usually make a different decision.
  • Your own thinking: what is observation and what is interpretation.
  • Other people's thinking: what you can hear in one minute of speech.
  • Shared thinking: how to tell the same message to different listeners, and what resistance is telling you.

At the end everyone picks one person to try what they learned with the following week. Also available as a 30 or 90 minute version.

021 day

Training day

For Managers or experts
Price from €5,700 + VAT

A manager's work is largely talking and listening, but few have practised how to hear the way another person thinks.

The exercises use the participants' own situations: an upcoming meeting, a difficult conversation or a change that has to be announced. By the end of the day everyone has prepared one real conversation they will have the following week.

  • Morning: your own thinking and other people's thinking. Observation or interpretation, tracing a belief, your own situation through an outsider's eyes and reading how people think.
  • Afternoon: other people's thinking is practised by listening in small groups. Then shared thinking: how to fit the message to the listeners and understand resistance.
  • A short survey and a checklist two weeks later.
0312 weeks

Manager programme

For Managers
Price from €18,900 + VAT

The manager programme is the most extensive form of Leading Thinking. The skills are practised for three months in real conversations, with short assignments in between.

Managers learn to see their own interpretations, hear how their team members think and explain the direction so that everyone understands it. The programme ends with each manager running a shared-direction meeting with their team.

Leading change

Managers learn to open up resistance by asking what the person is trying to protect. Resistance then becomes information the change needs.

  • Baseline: a survey for the managers and a priority test for the teams.
  • Week 1, three hours: your own thinking.
  • Weeks 2–3: an observation and interpretation diary, five minutes a day.
  • Week 4, three hours: other people's thinking.
  • Weeks 5–7: listening in your own one-to-ones and development discussions.
  • Week 8, three hours: shared thinking. Everyone prepares their team meeting.
  • Weeks 9–11: each manager runs a shared-direction meeting with their team, using a ready-made outline.
  • Week 12, three hours: results, final measurement and a report for the leadership.

I can also offer participants personal sparring.

044–6 months

Leadership team programme

For Leadership team
Price from €24,900 + VAT

Each member of a leadership team has their own way of thinking and their own criteria for judging options. That is why the organisation hears the strategy in as many voices.

The programme starts with a map that shows how this leadership team thinks. Then you practise decision-making, handling disagreements and explaining the same direction to different groups in the organisation.

  • Assessment: a one-hour interview with each member and a priority test for the leadership team and a sample of the organisation.
  • Workshop 1, half a day: the leadership team's thinking map and the gap between leadership and organisational priorities.
  • Workshop 2, half a day: how this leadership team makes decisions and handles disagreements.
  • Workshop 3, half a day: the strategy message for different groups. The messages are tested with small groups before they go out.
  • Personal sparring for each member.
  • Final measurement: the priority test in the organisation again, and a report.

The assessment can also use language analysis if every member gives permission. The results are never used for recruitment or individual evaluation.

052 days + materials

Trainer licence

For Large organisations with their own training or HR team
Price €17,500 + VAT

When the goal is to reach all staff, your own trainer is often the most sensible route.

I train your trainers to teach the three levels of Leading Thinking in their own voice and on their own schedule.

  • Two-day trainer training: the three levels of Leading Thinking, the exercises and how to run the demonstrations.
  • Materials: slides, exercises, a team discussion outline and a survey.
  • The price includes a licence for the whole organisation and training for one trainer. You can bring more trainers to the same training for €1,500 + VAT per person.
  • The licence covers training your own staff.

Also works as a next step once the manager programme has shown results.

Measurement

Shared direction is measured.

The programmes include a priority test at the start and at the end. Every team member writes down the team's three most important things right now. We count how many of the answers are shared.

The result is a single number, and the leadership sees right away which teams have lost the direction. Alongside it we ask whether team members understand their manager's messages and whether disagreements are dealt with openly.

In a meta-analysis, a team's shared picture of the work predicted the team's performance (DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus 2010).

Guarantee

If you're not satisfied, I won't invoice you. That is how I have always worked.

Ask about available dates. I'll tell you where to start.

Ask about available dates ilkka@ilkkarajala.fi +358 40 508 5615