Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Stories not only make effective points … and beat the boredom of  lectures that offer little more than a sore butt for the brain dead, stuck on a hard seat.

Anecdotes boost the brain. What one story projects itself on the back screen of your mind, that you could write as a way to exercise and develop linguistic intelligence at work. I’ll start….

How about a story to help prepare employees work with vastly different cultures? Here’s a true tale…. Ten years ago, during a skidoo race to the Igloolik Airport , I almost missed my once a week flight to another remote community on the north tip of Baffin island. It was Saturday, I was 600 miles north of the arctic circle and the mercury was about 70  degrees below zero. For all those reason,  I counted myself lucky to finally get Cecilia, head of the Government Social Work, to roar up to my home in a skidoo, in a last ditch effort to get me there. Yikes! Did I tell you yet about fidget conditions on Baffin Island – up beside Greenland?

Back to my story though… ten minutes before flight time, we hopped onto a small broken skidoo seat, piled my four bags anywhere they’d stick, and Cecilia promised to race back for one bag that refused to stay with us. What a ride! We zoomed through Igloolik's snow-packed, uneven ditches, out of town to the airport, as if headed down Aspen mountain in a ski race.

Cecilia skidded into gullies over bumps and teetered on the edge of snow banks while I held onto blowing bags, and held my breath. Inuit seem undaunted by the tundra's' icy obstacles, and the weaving and tipping of her race machine seemed part of the whole arctic adventure.

Unprepared for a skidoo, or the sub zero temperatures, and even less prepared for the rugged terrain we encountered, I fought to hold bags flying in the wind. Although unable to see much behind frozen eyelashes, I caught Cecilia's smiled – a symbol of sheer conquest.

Moments later, as I thawed from under the ice formed over my eyeballs, Cecilia burst through the airport door - red-faced and smiling. Hurling a large frozen bag in front of me, she pronounced. "Hope there’s no breakables in this thin… Yer bag flew off the skidoo three times… but I got ‘em here."

"No problem." I shot back, "It could have been me flying off that skidoo" And it nearly was.