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?

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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