Alvaro Fernandez
Sep 9th, 2006
Sep 9th, 2006
SharpBrains Mental Workout at Cisco Systems
A couple of weeks ago we had a very fun team-building session, titled SharpBrains Mental Workout at Cisco Systems, during the retreat of a Cisco Systems group. We covered recent brain research and its implications for learning and training, and we introduced a lot of fun games and activities. Some key take-aways for participants were:
- a) There are frequently different, but equally valid, ways to look at things. We better try to understand each other before we try to impose our ideas (See old lady-young lady game in a later post, under title "What do you see?")
- b) Each os us has "3 integrated brains" and 7 key “mental muscles”
- c) Good brain exercise requires novelty, variety and practice.
- d) Doing our best at work and life helps train our brains. Training our brains helps us do our best at work and in life
We went through some areas relevant to business life, through the eyes of neuroscience
- 1) Develop Creative Inspiration through movement
- 2) Improve Teamwork through emotional understanding, appreciation and learning to manage stress
- 3) Manage multi-tasking through Attention and Memory techniques
- 4) Leadership through focus, planning and learning
- 5) Communicate through relating to daily experiences, and analogies
- 6) Improve confidence through a clear vision, and visualize success
And used some classic games and challenges, such as the ones in the other posts, to illuminate some aspects about how our brains work.
If you were in charge of training executives in your company, what other areas would you emphasize?
[...] 3. Exercising Our Brains for Top Health and Productivity (like our session at Cisco Systems) Neuroscientists have finally shown that, at any age, our mental activity influences the generation of new neurons and their connections, with clear guidelines to follow. We have all heard "Use it or lose it". In this workshop we will learn how to make the most of the latest research which suggests instead: "Use it and improve it". We will combine both research and fun group activities to learn how to exercise and improve different areas of our brains: attention, executive functions, language, visual skills, language, memory, emotions, motor coordination. [...]