Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

What did you just say? Language plays a bigger role in what your brain motivates you to do … than most people realize. That’s why Lamar Advertising designed ads that launched an anti-violence campaign in Rochester, New York this week.

Einstein put it this way: "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Could that message re-direct words that attack? Could they remind readers to avoid verbal attacks... the first seeds of conlict and even war...?

Thanks to this campaign... there are 12 different billboards across my city, in addition to posters and brochures that are intended to help curb the violence that stalks our downtown areas. Lamar’s billboards will only stay up for 30 days… and that may not be long enough to get the language of violence out of parts of the brain that have lodged this city in record crime spikes.

In one of the toughest neighborhoods the billboard reads A GUN IS NO ALTERNATIVE: CHOOSE PEACE. There is also a phone number to the highly effective organization here, called Pathways to Peace.

Language is one of our multiple intelligence … called linguistic intelligence …and it both describes what you do in a day… and predicts what you’ll do tomorrow. What language predominates in your workplace and how would you design a billboard to transform attacks into cooperation?