Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

While science is shedding light on the brain at work … practice is far from benefiting from these dynamic insights. Take the simple fact that too much talk works against learning or growth.

Here’s the skinny:

1. Lectures and staff  meetings often work against the human brain.

2. The brain’s plasticity is limited when we simply hear – without doing.

3. Learners walk in with 8 intelligences but engage few in lectures.

4. To teach others as you learn – helps you retain 90% more than lectures.

5. Lecture or delivery approaches perpetuate myths that limit human brains.

6. It takes two footed questions to address a flat world.

7. The brain is equipped with dendrites for competitive edge when engaged.

8. It takes active learning to increase IQ, memory capacity and creativity.

9. Lectures fill the working memory – which holds serious size limitations for retention ... or for application of ideas learned.

10. Flawed assumptions about who’s smart and who’s not tend to grow in talks.  

Don’t expect change instantly … when you ignite a move away from lectures … into more active learning and mental engagement.  Why not?

The brain’s basal ganglia hardwires old habits. Furthermore the lecturer literally gains huge dividends  with brain based benefits from teaching … such as 90 % retention. If that speaker fails to recognize that learners retain less than 5% of the material. It doesn’t have to be that way though.

Increasingly college faculty and higher education learners ask exhilarating questions that could lead to change.  Improvements in learning and assessment can capitalize on the human brain ... when hebbian learners either step aside ... or help make it happen. 

Why not check a few quick brain facts to rate your own workplace setting. Or share MI surveys with co-workers … to discover multiple intelligences strong at work. Do stop by and let us know what changes you make to engage more brain in meetings and lecture halls.