Your mind is capable of increasing peace and warding off war – but it takes daily rewiring and that kick-start depends more on what you do than most people realize.
Remember the brain’s plasticity is changed daily and is shaped by the world around you. That newly discovered research can guide how you respond when war calls arise at work.
If you’re tired of conflict where you work … here are ten ways to kick-start peace before the mind wires for violence.
1. Suggest a peaceful alternative … whenever a conflict strikes. Hear about an unfairly demoted worker? Offer a proposal that shows the other side – respectfully - for that worker to present to leaders.
2. Model good tone on a daily basis in ways that inspire others to emphasize points they agree on and to value differences as a learning opportunity for both sides. Tone is likely the best kept secret for peaceful prosperity and unique tones skills can be learned by all who choose them
3. Survey peoples’ strengths and downplay their weaker areas. When people awaken new intelligences ... contentment follows ... and they often make life-changing improvements to their day.
4. Affirm exactly what you expect in clear thoughtful examples. Ask people’s input and frame all expectations more to offer benefits to them than to yourself or your firm. Workers used to war zones tend to come with frail self-worth.
5. Invite questions about what is expected. Show the benefits of meeting expected criteria – and a person’s brain leaps into action. At the same time, expose venting for its newly discovered effects on the brain and to peaceful solutions and show its opposite in higher levels of serotonin.
6. Challenge your brain and others’ for higher productivity together and share the winning research results when people avoid stifling others’ gifts and talents.
7. Contribute brain food to your workplace on a fairly regular basis. It need not be expensive but it will often add to peaceful encounters and can help to cut out conflict - simply by goodwill that generosity generates.
8. Organize for peaceful visions … and watch the brain shape confrontations into cooperation. That’s because the human brain achieves calm best with an advanced organizer.
9. Reduce levels of stress and its cortisol hormones. Especially stomp out stress that masks itself as diligence and yet creates meta messages for everybody in its wake.
10. Discuss the marks of a brain based peace plan. The human brain rewires itself whenever we go after a plan for peace.
Is your workplace wired for war or peace?
Ellen, in relation to seeing another person's strengths and downplaying weaknesses, I've found that if I ask something like, "What if..." or How might you...." it primes people to think way to use their strengths to help them work on the task in a new way.
Posted by: Robyn McMaster | June 2, 2007 10:28 AM | Permalink to Comment