Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

There are reasons why some people get heard more than others at meetings, and these are not what you may think.

Six facts about the human brain can move you from being ignored -- into getting your best ideas heard. You don’t have to be an expert to see how others gain interest in your creative ideas.

Here’s how the human brain works for or again you in meetings:

1. Brain Fact - People resonate with what they already know and already do daily, because the brain’s basal ganglia keeps some people trapped in safety of the old, comfortable or familiar.

Brain Based Response? – Hook your new idea onto their familiar approaches. How so? Say you want to propose a new accounting system? Suggest how this innovation can enhance one popular part of the current system – before you show how it will fix another problem part.

2. Brain Fact - Humor helps because it releases enzymes into the brain for openness and ability to go with a new possibility.

Brain Based Response? – Help them laugh - with a fun joke … Let’s say you are still going for an accounting adjustment idea. Tell them, “An accountant dies and St. Peter says “You look so young for 144 years old?” The account shoots back …”But I’m only 42.” “Sorry,” St Peter says, “We got your age from your reported time sheets.” 

3. Brain Fact - Advanced organizers enable the human brain to see and act on a clear plan.

Brain Based Response? – Hamstring their confusion by showing bare-boned parts or bullets to overview your key ideas.

4. Brain Fact - Serotonin prepares a place in people brains to help them take a new risk.

Brain Based Response? – Hammer home a few monetary benefits for each of them – if they adopt your new idea. For instance they might earn a bonus, save on taxes, and cut waste for the firm at the same time.

5. Brain Fact - Cortisol impacts tone negatively and so it can shut down people, ideas, adventures, and opportunities before you get your points across.

Brain Based Response? – Heap extra possibilities on the problem in this way. State the dilemma clearly and show it as a reason and justification for your plan and then quickly move into the solution.

6. Brain Fact - Melatonin, the hormone for sleep, increases in a darkened room and put folks to sleep whenever the lights are too low.

Brain Based Response? – Hike up the lights to avoid people nodding off before you get to the punch line. Ask a two-footed question to bring them back – since we also know now how too much talk works against the human brain.  If too much talk kills meetings you’ll want tips to bring a session back to life. Say you cutting edge idea in less than 20 seconds!

Not sure you’ll remember all these tips when the next meeting rolls? Then why not scribble these 6 words on your meeting agenda and try for a few of them when you speak – so that you really do get heard.

Simply jot down these 6 words - 

Hook … Help … Hamstring …Hammer … Heap … Hike …

You likely have one or two more that will work – but this is a fair-to-middlin’ start.  What do you think?