Try Brainwriting

Brainstorming sessions work successfully for many. But, what happened at your last brainstorming session? A reality check comes when brainstorming's used in toxic meetings or is led by a poor facilitator. Note that Sara Superstar vies with Paul Peacock to impress the leader while Jimbo doodles and Mariah slams her fist to catch attention and contribute. Works like clashing cymbals. Ever see it in action where you work? Here's an alternative to consider or even to mix sessions up a bit...

Try Brainwriting Ideas come thoughtfully... one bounces off another, everyone has voice, and many folks work well in a quieter setting. Best part is you don't necessarily need a leader and it improves superior idea generation, according to Peter Heslin, business professor at SMU.

Brainwriting offers many variations... A theme for the session might be written on the board. Underneath a two-footed question's listed, linking each participant to the theme.

Write - Folks sit around a table each with a slip of paper, a different color pen or even different color sticky notes. Each person writes an idea on the note and passes it to the right.

React - Once each person reads what's written, each one writes a reaction that comes to mind. If a person can't think s/he leaves the paper blank so there's no pressure.

Review - When each note's brimming with about five ideas, place it in the middle of the table. When slips are complete everyone analyzes. Review leads to a "systematic consideration of each idea," according to Heslin.

Select - Each person makes a list of favorite ideas and the most popular are recorded. Result- Lots of surprises that can make a difference.

Benefits -

• ideas spark quickly and people don't lose best thoughts since they can write them down immediately
• people can contribute equally - no chance for personality clashes
• ideas generated simultaneously so can be judged by merit
• people gain confidence in their contributions
  
• community builder
  

Brainwriting variations you would enjoy

http://www.mycoted.com/Brainwriting

http://creatingminds.org/tools/brainwriting.htm

http://litemind.com/brainwriting/

http://ezinearticles.com/?Brainwriting,-A-More-Perfect-Brainstorm&id=510585

Ellen Weber - An Inspiration

Ellen Weber inspired me from the very first time I met her. Huffington Post writer, Gail Goodwin, of Inspire Me Today interviewed Ellen to see what makes her tick... Don't miss it... inspiration is catching!

In Gail's fast moving podcast, she asks probing questions to find out why Ellen's so interested in neuroscience and what led her to be a "pathfinder for change."

Happy Weekend!

What do you most look forward to - your week or weekend? Most people are happiest on days without work, Richard Ryan, psychologist at University of Rochester finds.

Men and women alike get an emotional and physical boost starting Friday afternoon through Sunday regardless of age, education, salary, marital status or total work hours. Wonder why?

"Weekends are better because we connect with people we care about and we have the freedom to manage our own day," says Ryan. "Wherever you don't have autonomy or don't feel relatedness, your well-being will be lower." Ryan adds that's more likely to be at work.

Free time over the weekend is critical since it gives us space to "repair, rejuvenate and get back our energy."

Since we expect more pleasure during the weekend we highly anticipate it. Dopamine, a brain chemical, influences how people make choices. This neurotransmitter produced in several areas of the brain has a role in signalling pleasure expectations from anticipated weekend events.



Happy weekend!!! And better yet, create ways to make your work more like play!

Stretch Past Ability Myths

"…I opened the page and scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page, expecting to see ourselves in the last 10 positions for the Best Coaching Blogs 2009," Frederique Murphy relates…

"As you know this is not where we had been ranked at, but that is where I first looked. That means that for a quick second or two, my little voice (yes, you know that one…!) had decided that there was no way I could be anywhere else other than the bottom of that list."

If you entered a contest and received results in an email, would you first look at the top or bottom to see where you ranked? Please take a minute to complete the poll you see just to the right of this blog.

Frederique says she quickly interrupted the pattern -- of seeing herself as lesser than and began to look at the top in the belief that she truly could rank at the top.

Evidently over time, Frederique had wired into her brain she was not in the top ten for accomplishing a big goal, such as writing one of the 10 Best Coaching Blogs 2009. No doubt the mindset that she might not be right at the top began in childhood. She's not alone according to research.

I can relate to this because I developed a similar mindset through varied experiences K-12. For instance, I was one of the last players chosen for any of the kickball teams all through elementary school. So I began to think of myself as not good in sports. Do you relate to this as well? Though, a late bloomer, I took up golf and have played tournaments and won... in my 60's!

Thinking of ourselves as "lesser than," when it comes to performance, is but one of the many myths we create in our brain about our capabilities. Myths such as this one are wired into our brain's basal ganglia, the storehouse of patterns and routines we experience daily over time. The number of times we wire these into our brain, the more deeply entrenched the belief. Dr. Ellen Weber explains this myth in relation to beliefs about learning and performance...

MYTH: Some things are impossible for some people to learn or perform well, in reasonable time limits.
Reality: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing you know already and learning or doing new skills increases in less time.

Frederique said she listened to the little voice for one or two seconds... the voice that told her to look at the bottom.

All of us face situations when we revert back to patterns and routines stored in our brain's basal ganglia. Frederique points out that she stopped her glance quickly, to glance at the top of the list. As a coach, she was very mindful about what was happening. So she immediately changed her unthinking first move to look for her name at the top of the winners list, fully showing her confidence.

Rather than allowing our minds go into autopilot when doing something, we can instead take thoughtful actions... that transform.

Good news is that the human brain has great plasticity so that enables us to change habits or beliefs about ourselves that we formed long ago. The more you do something in the opposite direction, the more you rewire your brain for the new. Stretch and go for it!

If you have a story to add or comments, please do comment. I'd welcome your thoughts.

Sleep to Prime Body & Brain!

How much capital did you put in your sleep bank this week? Since Night Owls and Early Birds may skimp on sleep, it gives us pause to reflect on how much sleep we've had in the last week. We benefit with plenty! Just consider...

Brain practices day's lessons as we sleep As you try a new recipe or try your hand at fixing your snow-blower, your brain creates new dendrite connections. These reactivate and strengthen your long term memory at night.

Sleep helps you problem solve Try asking yourself a question about something you're curious about or even a problem you want to solve, just before you go to bed, Dr. Ellen Weber advises.

More sleep increases athletic performance Members of the Stanford tennis team maintained their regular schedules. They slept and worked out as usual. Then the players extended their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks. It made a difference. After increasing sleep, their drill performance increased.

Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds. Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits.

Getting enough sleep is vital to academic success Does it make sense that adequate sleep is vital for people to feel awake and alert, maintain good health and work at peak performance?

"New research highlights the importance of sleep in learning and memory," Dr. Lawrence Epstein reports. "Students getting adequate amounts of sleep performed better on memory and motor tasks than did students deprived of sleep."

Good sleep is important in regulating emotional responses As you sleep your brain selectively preserves memories that are emotionally significant and relevant to future goals when sleep follows soon after learning. Effects persist for as long as four months after the memory is created, according to research findings of Jessica Payne of Harvard Medical School. She notes selectivity within emotional scenes, with sleep only consolidating what is most relevant, adaptive and useful about the scenes. It was even more surprising that this selectivity lasted for a full day and even months later if sleep came soon after learning.

Link between sleep and weight If you are trying to lose weight, a good night's sleep might be critical. A recent study of nurses at Walter Reed Army Medical Center reveals that study participants who got less than six hours sleep per night) tended to have higher body mass index [BMI] than long sleepers. Arn Eliasson, lead researcher says there are several possible reasons...

Lack of sleep may disrupt natural hormonal balances, triggering overeating. Stress could also be a factor -- contributing to less sleep and more eating in the same people.

Sleep boosts ability to learn a language In an earlier study University of Chicago of Chicago professors found that...

Ability of students to retain knowledge about words is improved by sleep, even when the students seemed to forget some of what they learned during the day before the next night's sleep.

Sleep debt can be repaid... "Tacking on an extra hour or two of sleep a night is the way to catch up," says Lawrence J. Epstein, medical director of Harvard-affiliated Sleep HealthCenters. "For the chronically sleep deprived, take it easy for a few months to get back into a natural sleep pattern."

When banking extra hours, lengthening the hours and intensity of your sleep are critical. Your most refreshing sleep occurs during deep sleep. And when you sleep more hours, you allow your brain to spend more time in this rejuvenating period.

As you erase sleep debt, your body will come to rest at a sleep pattern that is specifically right for you. Sleep researchers believe that genes—although the precise ones have yet to be discovered—determine our individual sleeping patterns. That more than likely means you can't train yourself to be a "short sleeper"—and you're fooling yourself if you think you've done it. A 2003 study in the journal Sleep found that the more tired we get, the less tired we feel.

Hmmm... good reasons to sleep in on Saturday mornings?

Act on Empathy

If we see a friend going though tough experiences, most of us step up to help in some way. We act with empathy, since we're prompted to do more than if we merely feel sorry. It's helping with the intention of enhancing that friend's well-being.

Empathy leads to altruism. "Altruism is a choice and something that we can actively cultivate when we observe others in need," according to psychologist, Lidewij Niezink.

Ten years after Columbine, educator David Levine is giving workshops to help students practice empathy as a way to overcome violence in schools. Levine says,

Empathy is a bundle of social skills. It really is starting out with the natural inclination that children have to reach out when someone's having some struggles and then as they get older, teaching them ways to use that natural feeling, to not just feel what someone else is feeling, but do some things to help them.

Acting on empathy can turn lives around...

Change didn't come easy for Quentin Marcus Moore. He wrestled and fought it for years.

"I'd start thinking, like, I wanted a better life, because I had just had my first child," he says. "So I wanted a better life for him, instead of me just going through life gang-banging, shooting people. But it was, like, going through a dark smoke: OK, I'm leaving the gang, but I'm going through cliques and crews in order to get to a place where I can work and be able to have a job and see how it was in the working world.Empathy can turn lives around...

Quentin's path eventually took him to Homeboy Industries, where he works as a case manager. And now as a case manager he describes himself as a "light through the darkness to find out what people's needs are - transportation, education, spiritual guidance - and then we place them in programs or at agencies where those needs can be met." A lot of the change that took place for Quentin came about because he now helps others and "every day he sees homies changing from being hardcore bangers to more mature young adults."

Similarly, expelled from school at just 14, Marvin Osemwegie spent his days wandering the streets of Peckham, South London, getting in with the wrong crowd. An organization, From Boyhood to Manhood, made a difference in Marvin's life. He explains it...

"It helped me with my self development, with my temper, and I learned how to control myself.

It meant I was able to go out there and have an effect like I was supposed to, rather than going out there and being a nuisance wherever I went."

After two years in the programme, Mr Osemwegie went to college, where he gained five GCSE's and then three A-Levels. He plans to help other youth turn themselves around in the same way. Mr Osemwegie is one of a group of former FBTM students now forming their own business, Streets 2 Success, which will mentor young boys in the area and help them fulfill their ambitions in life.

Interestingly, there may be a basis in neurobiology for wisdom's most universal traits, which researchers, Jeste and Meeks found to include such "attributes as empathy, compassion or altruism, emotional stability, self-understanding, and pro-social attitudes, including a tolerance for others' values."

Empathy activates the brain's pre-frontal cortex, when a person ponders a situation calling for altruism. And, moral decision-making is a combination of rational (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in sustaining attention and working memory), along with emotional/social (medial pre-frontal cortex. Since the human brain has great plasticity, we can grow more new neuron dendrite connections each time you or I act on empathy. Just think we grow more wise as we do!

What fruits of empathy in action left an impression on you?

Thrive at night?

Did you stay up late last night to usher in the New Year? While some folks thrive as they stay awake late into the night, others don't. Night owls have different brains! You'd be interested in what's behind this...

While some folks find that ideas and good work occur late at night, others who try find themselves very drained in the morning. Not too surprisingly, at 9:00 a.m., other folks' brains work at prime. What makes the difference in night owls and early risers?

Night owls have a gene that works more resiliently than those without. Their brains become more active as they tire. Scans show that these folks responded to fatigue by garnering more brain structures to help them perform well on a memory test, according to recent research.

Brains definitely function differently for night owls and early birds

Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, scientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the spinal cord and brain. They found that morning people's brains were most excitable at 9 a.m. This slowly decreased through the day. It was the polar opposite for evening people, whose brains were most excitable at 9 p.m.

Other major findings:

• Evening people became physically stronger throughout the day, but the maximum amount of force morning people could produce remained the same.


• The excitability of reflex pathways that travel through the spinal cord increased over the day for both groups.


• These findings show that nervous-system functions are different and have implications for maximizing human performance.

No matter which circadian rhythm is genetically wired in your brain, work with, rather than against the way your brain is wired as much as possible. When night owl friends play stimulating games on New Year's eve and you feel sleepy, try to stay where the light is bright. Bright light is known to increase your alertness at night.

Thoughts?