Whole Brain Teaching and Learning
by Sue Leonard
This article reviews the concepts of Ned Herrmann’s Brain Dominance theory and instrument. Herrmann’s Whole Brain Model can be used to build learning experiences to enhance learning and make it more memorable for all participants.
Ned Herrmann’s Research
Ned Herrman's Whole Brain Model combines Roger Sperry's left/right brain theory and Paul MacLean's triune model (rational brain, intermediate brain and primitive brain) to produce a quadrant model of the brain. The quadrants are:
Left Cerebral (upper left)
Left Limbic (lower left)
Right Limbic (lower right)
Right Cerebral (upper right
As with the other brain models, each area has functions associated it to create a model of thinking and learning. Practitioners of HBDT use the following labels each quadrant for persons whose strongest preference is in that quadrant:
Left Cerebral: Theorists
Left Limbic: Organizers
Right Limbic: Humanitarians
Right Cerebral: Innovators
Theorists: These are people who like lecture, facts, and details, critical thinking, textbooks and readings, etc. The brain dominance for theorists is the upper left (cerebral).
Organizers: These are people who prefer to learn by outlining, checklists, exercises and problem solving with steps, policies and procedures. People with these preferences have lower left (limbic) brain dominance.
Innovators: Innovators prefer brainstorming, metaphors, illustrations and pictures, mind mapping and synthesis, and holistic approaches. The brain dominance for innovators is upper right (cerebral).Humanitarians: Prefer cooperative learning and group discussion, role-playing, and dramatization. Their brain preference is lower right (limbic)
Preferred Learning Activities
Knowledge of HBDT can help people in the training and education fields develop and deliver training that is more applicable to everyone and is also better remembered. Each quadrant has a preferred style of learning and preferences for particular types of learning activities. When the activity matches a learner’s preference, there is an increased probability that learning will occur. Below are some activities with the HBDI preference that prefers that activity shown in parentheses:
Precise definitions (theorist)
To-the-point, factual learnings (theorist)
Step-by-step instructions (organizer)
History, timelines (organizer)
Brainstorming or free association activities (innovator)
Visual or graphic mind-maps (innovator)
Use of personal impact stories (humanist)
Collaborative activities (humanist)
Frustrations in Learning
When training is biased mostly toward one HBDI preference, persons with other preferences will experience a great deal of frustration. Participants can check out mentally when the training environment has too many of the frustrations for their HDBI preference. Below are some of the types of frustrations people can experience. The HBDI preference that might experience that frustration is shown in parentheses after the frustration:
Vague, ambiguous instructions (theorist)
Inefficient use of time (theorist)
Too slow a pace (innovator)
Lack of overview/conceptual framework (innovator)
Disorganization, poor sequencing, hopping around (organizer)
Lack of practice time (organizer)
Impersonal approach or examples (humanist)
No sensory input; sterile learning climate (humanist)
Teaching & Learning Assumptions
The Whole Brain teaching approach starts with several teaching and learning assumptions that are very consistent with MBTI principles:
People have different preferred modes of thinking and learning
Those preferences influence how we:
process and store information
retrieve information
make meaning out of information
All learning groups are made up of people with different thinking style preferences, different ways of knowing, and different learning styles.
Effective learning is “whole brained”, taking advantage of the all the mental processes of the brain
Teachers and trainers typically design learning experiences that reflect their own thinking/learning preferences.
In light of the above, we need to re-examine all of our previous assumptions about teaching and learning
The content, design and delivery of each learning point must be whole brained to meet the diverse learning and thinking styles of the learners. This is achieved by “paraphrasing” the learning point in each of the different modes of the whole brain model.
Herman International has designed a training kit that helps developers and trainers pick activities to ensure whole brain training. The kit has cards with several learning activities for each HBDI preference. The idea is that each learning module or segment should have activities for each quadrant’s preferences. One recommendation is to pick two activities for each quadrant.
So a balanced training might look like this:
Agenda (quadrant B)
Overview (quadrant D)
Warm-up (quadrant C)
Factual lecture (quadrant A)
Concrete examples (quadrant B)
Brainstorming or mind-mapping (quadrant D)
Critical review of material (quadrant A)
Journaling or stories (quadrant C)
When teaching, managing and communicating are going well, they are most likely whole-brained. They also noted that when things don’t seem to be working, it’s likely we’ve forgotten one or more of the quadrants.
Correlation Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ®
As Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) enthusiasts might speculate, there is a correlation between MBTI® preference and HBDI preference. Sally Power, Jean Kummerow and Lorman Lundsten (1999) conducted multiple studies based on some previous work done by Power and Lundsten (1997). Figure 2 shows the relationships. The results were mixed, with the strongest correlations between Introverted Thinking and Cerebral Left (theorists) and Extraverted iNtuition and Cerebral Right (innovators).
Group Preferences
THE HBDI has been given to over one million people. Hermann has discovered that in groups of 15 or more with ‘normal’ characteristics, the group will be spread among the four quadrants. However, brain dominance data also indicate that people with similar occupations tend to have the same general profile. Data also show there is a strong and direct correlation between a person’s personal profile and his or her occupational profile, and his or her learning profile. This shows that it is essential to consider the uniqueness of the learning group when designing educational programs for the group.
HBD Instrument
Hermann Developed an instrument, the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument™ (HBDI) in 1979. The HBDI™ is a thinking styles assessment tool which allows a person to learn more about how his or her brain functions and thinking and learning preferences. The HBDI™ is the result of extensive validation and has been developed and modified taking into account the results of continuing brain research. Three examples of the rigorous validation for the HBDI™ are:
Validation studies of C. Victor Bunderson and James Olsen of Wicat and later by C. Victor Bunderson and Kevin Ho. Schadty and Potvin at the University of Texas carried out validation experiments in conjunction with these validation studies.
Through the research and experimentation of leaders in the field including Roger Sperry, Robert Ornstein, Henry Mintzberg, and Michael Gazzaniga.
Hundreds of EEG experiments carried out by Ned Herrmann.
Other features of the HBDI include:
The results of the scoring are free of value judgment and cultural bias.
The HBDI is adaptable and takes account of the fact that we can grow and change. This encourages many people to discover and design a pathway for change.
References
Herrmann, Ned, The Creative Brain, Insights into creativity, communication, management, education and self-understanding, The Ned Herrmann Group, 1995.
Herrmann, Ned, The Whole Brain Business Book, New YorkMcGrtaw-Hill, 1996.
Power, Sally J. and Lundsten, Lorman, Studies That Compare Type Theory and Lef-Brain-Right-Brain Theory, Journal of Psychological Type, Vol 43, 1997.
Power, Sally J, Kummerow, Jean M. and Lundsten, Lorman, A Herrmann Brain Dominance Profile Analysis of the Sixteen MBTI Types In a Sample of MBA Students, Journal of Psychological Type, Vol 49, 1999.
Hermann International, The Ned Herrmann Group -- http://www.hbdi.com/
Dynamic Thinking: http://www.dynamicthinking.com/HBDI.htm
Hope Unlimited http://www.hopellc.com/bdsi.html
ACCSYS Corporation: FAQs: http://www.accsys-corp.com/HBDI_FAQ/hbdi_faq.html
Paul McLean’s Triune Model http://www.kheper.auz.com/gaia/intelligence/MacLean.htm
For more about whole-brain learning contact Leonard Consulting at 847-692-1911.
Showing posts with label test. Show all posts
Showing posts with label test. Show all posts
11/06/2007
10/04/2007
Various Tests
BEYOND MYERS-BRIGGS: THE ART OF USING YOUR WHOLE BRAIN Lya Sorano
This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of Competitive Edge® magazine.
"The workshop had barely run 10 minutes, when the hunched-over woman in the blue dress in the front row raised her hand. “Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong?” With graphs and drawings plastered all over the walls and a standing-room only crowd in attendance, the facilitator had encouraged questions, but this one came too soon, too early on. Except that . . . it was such a good question! Others in the audience had wondered about this also, even if they had never voiced their doubts. Myers-Briggs, after all, is the widely-used, undisputed vehicle for personality testing, isn’t it? Companies use it all the time, to find out if a new hire should become a financial analyst or join the marketing team. Women who hire coaches for personal growth and development – such a nineties thing! – are routinely given the test and offered advice and encouragement based upon its results. Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong? How could that be possible?“Yes, yes,” the facilitator’s eyes lit up, her engaging smile became a beam and she was obviously thrilled with the interlocutor’s question, “and let me tell you why!”Based upon the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who first developed a theory of psychological types and identified eight elements that became the tools for understanding, guiding and helping people, both the mother-daughter team of Myers and Briggs (in the 1950s), and Katherine Benziger, Ph.D. (in the 1990s) designed instruments for personality assessment. The difference between the two instruments (Myers-Briggs’s MBTI and Benziger’s BTSA) is that the former is based on only the first five of Jung’s elements, while the latter makes use of all eight. Dr. Jung developed his theory in the 1930s and had absolutely no interest in a popular/commercial application. Myers-Briggs had the application interest, but stopped short of the more complicated – and interesting! – science behind Jung’s theory. Then, thirty years after the MBTI was introduced, Dr. Benziger, a neuropsychologist by training, took the whole thing and designed her BTSA, which is now available for personal assessment as well as a workplace testing tool, both online and in print.Once you have an understanding of your preference, you will be able to use the guidelines provided in Thriving in Mind to help you lessen the extent to which you falsify type - by leveraging your preference consciously and frequently each day, and by consciously managing how you handle all tasks that require skills not managed by your preference.“The person who gave me the test,” the woman in blue continued, “told me I was an extravert and should think about a career in sales, but I know I am an introvert and I don’t think selling is my strong point.” “Myers-Briggs works very well,” the workshop leader commented, “if the person being tested thinks true to his or her type. But if type is falsified, the outcome of the test is often wrong.” Jung, Myers-Briggs and Benziger work with the same types of thinking: intuitive, thinking, feeling and sensing (Jung’s element 1); they also use the two established directions of focusing energy (introversion and extraversion: element 2). They agree that everyone has a dominant (preferred, lead) mode of thinking (element 3) and that this mode combines (Jung’s 4th element) with the focused energy direction to form a person’s personality type: the introverted thinker and the extraverted thinker, the introverted feeler and the extraverted feeler, the introverted intuitive and the extraverted intuitive, the introverted sensor and the extraverted sensor. Element 5 of Jung’s theory is described as “Living True to Type” – the extraverted thinker acts as an extraverted thinker, the introverted intuitive acts as an introverted intuitive, etc. – and this is where Myers-Briggs leaves us. Katherine Benziger, however, continued with elements 6, 7 and 8 of Jung’s theory (e.g. “Falsifying Type”, “The Cost of Falsification” and “Links between Living True to Type and Wellness on the one hand and Falsifying Type and Illness on the other”) and offers the world her BTSA assessment tool.The woman in the front row was much relieved, but others in the audience now had their hands up: “What do you mean by falsified type?” “What makes us falsify type?” “How do we know if we falsify type?”Briefly, this is what the workshop leader conveyed to her audience:
If, during the day, day in and day out, you mostly use your non-dominant, non-preferred mode of thinking most of the time, your mode of thinking is falsified, not natural, not true to your innate thinking type.
Conditioning causes us to set aside our natural thinking type and adopt a false one. The US educational system is geared towards the adoption of a falsified thinking type and our workplaces perpetuate the process.
There is a simple test. If you lack energy and enthusiasm, if you feel tired or depressed, if you are prone to illnesses, even minor ones, if you experience boredom at work or lack of “centeredness” at home, chances are you are falsifying your natural thinking type. Hungry for far more than the 90-minute workshop was able to provide, the facilitator referred her audience to Dr. Benziger’s Web site (www.benziger.org) and her book “Thriving in Mind” (order information available on the Web site). The woman in the blue dress left the room with a smile on her face and noticeably straightened shoulders, her Myers-Briggs experience explained and well put behind her. Now she knew how to get beyond its limitations".
This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of Competitive Edge® magazine.
"The workshop had barely run 10 minutes, when the hunched-over woman in the blue dress in the front row raised her hand. “Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong?” With graphs and drawings plastered all over the walls and a standing-room only crowd in attendance, the facilitator had encouraged questions, but this one came too soon, too early on. Except that . . . it was such a good question! Others in the audience had wondered about this also, even if they had never voiced their doubts. Myers-Briggs, after all, is the widely-used, undisputed vehicle for personality testing, isn’t it? Companies use it all the time, to find out if a new hire should become a financial analyst or join the marketing team. Women who hire coaches for personal growth and development – such a nineties thing! – are routinely given the test and offered advice and encouragement based upon its results. Is Myers-Briggs ever wrong? How could that be possible?“Yes, yes,” the facilitator’s eyes lit up, her engaging smile became a beam and she was obviously thrilled with the interlocutor’s question, “and let me tell you why!”Based upon the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who first developed a theory of psychological types and identified eight elements that became the tools for understanding, guiding and helping people, both the mother-daughter team of Myers and Briggs (in the 1950s), and Katherine Benziger, Ph.D. (in the 1990s) designed instruments for personality assessment. The difference between the two instruments (Myers-Briggs’s MBTI and Benziger’s BTSA) is that the former is based on only the first five of Jung’s elements, while the latter makes use of all eight. Dr. Jung developed his theory in the 1930s and had absolutely no interest in a popular/commercial application. Myers-Briggs had the application interest, but stopped short of the more complicated – and interesting! – science behind Jung’s theory. Then, thirty years after the MBTI was introduced, Dr. Benziger, a neuropsychologist by training, took the whole thing and designed her BTSA, which is now available for personal assessment as well as a workplace testing tool, both online and in print.Once you have an understanding of your preference, you will be able to use the guidelines provided in Thriving in Mind to help you lessen the extent to which you falsify type - by leveraging your preference consciously and frequently each day, and by consciously managing how you handle all tasks that require skills not managed by your preference.“The person who gave me the test,” the woman in blue continued, “told me I was an extravert and should think about a career in sales, but I know I am an introvert and I don’t think selling is my strong point.” “Myers-Briggs works very well,” the workshop leader commented, “if the person being tested thinks true to his or her type. But if type is falsified, the outcome of the test is often wrong.” Jung, Myers-Briggs and Benziger work with the same types of thinking: intuitive, thinking, feeling and sensing (Jung’s element 1); they also use the two established directions of focusing energy (introversion and extraversion: element 2). They agree that everyone has a dominant (preferred, lead) mode of thinking (element 3) and that this mode combines (Jung’s 4th element) with the focused energy direction to form a person’s personality type: the introverted thinker and the extraverted thinker, the introverted feeler and the extraverted feeler, the introverted intuitive and the extraverted intuitive, the introverted sensor and the extraverted sensor. Element 5 of Jung’s theory is described as “Living True to Type” – the extraverted thinker acts as an extraverted thinker, the introverted intuitive acts as an introverted intuitive, etc. – and this is where Myers-Briggs leaves us. Katherine Benziger, however, continued with elements 6, 7 and 8 of Jung’s theory (e.g. “Falsifying Type”, “The Cost of Falsification” and “Links between Living True to Type and Wellness on the one hand and Falsifying Type and Illness on the other”) and offers the world her BTSA assessment tool.The woman in the front row was much relieved, but others in the audience now had their hands up: “What do you mean by falsified type?” “What makes us falsify type?” “How do we know if we falsify type?”Briefly, this is what the workshop leader conveyed to her audience:
If, during the day, day in and day out, you mostly use your non-dominant, non-preferred mode of thinking most of the time, your mode of thinking is falsified, not natural, not true to your innate thinking type.
Conditioning causes us to set aside our natural thinking type and adopt a false one. The US educational system is geared towards the adoption of a falsified thinking type and our workplaces perpetuate the process.
There is a simple test. If you lack energy and enthusiasm, if you feel tired or depressed, if you are prone to illnesses, even minor ones, if you experience boredom at work or lack of “centeredness” at home, chances are you are falsifying your natural thinking type. Hungry for far more than the 90-minute workshop was able to provide, the facilitator referred her audience to Dr. Benziger’s Web site (www.benziger.org) and her book “Thriving in Mind” (order information available on the Web site). The woman in the blue dress left the room with a smile on her face and noticeably straightened shoulders, her Myers-Briggs experience explained and well put behind her. Now she knew how to get beyond its limitations".
12/13/2006
Dr. Benziger's introductory article
Leveraging Your Brain's Natural Lead
to Achieve and Sustain Inner Balance
By Katherine Benziger, Ph.D.
Breakthroughs in brain research in the past 10 years have shocked neuroscientists. Learning to live an energy efficient lifestyle has taken on a new meaning, as the neurological foundations of human thinking are better understood. Just as we find ourselves selecting more energy efficient cars, cars which cost less to run and pollute less; so too, we are learning that by selecting jobs and activities which use our brain’s most fuel-efficient component (i.e. functionally specialized area), we can naturally increase our own inner well-being and balance, as well as our own mental, physical and emotional health.
Here’s what we’ve learned. Our brain is made of four highly specialized areas which are responsible for performing very different tasks. Their specialized capabilities make us think they are the physiological bases for Jung’s four functions: thinking, sensing, feeling and intuition.
CORTICAL REGION FUNCTIONALLY SPECIALIZED ABILITIES JUNG'S FUNCTION OR TYPE
Left Frontal Logical Analysis, Decision Making Thinking
Left Posterior Convexity
Left Basal
Sequencing, Performing Routines Sensing
Right Posterior Convexity
Right Basal
Harmonizing, Connecting Feeling
Right Frontal Pattern Analysis, Inventing Intuition
The two discoveries that have surprised scientists are:
1. that we are each born with one efficient and three inefficient areas; and
2. that the one efficient area is so tremendously efficient, it naturally uses only one one-hundredth the energy second per second.
Moreover, although we can and do develop competencies in all four areas, as we study different subjects and master different types of tasks, the relative efficiency of the one mode is never altered. We continue, throughout our life, when learning or using a skill managed by our brain’s preferred area to enjoy more efficiency, a faster learning curve and a tendency to make fewer errors.
These discoveries have surprised neuro-researchers and educators alike. Both had assumed that those who appear to be more intelligent on IQ tests could learn and do just about anything well, given a good teacher, proper training and practice; and those who performed less well on such tests would do virtually everything less well. The breakthrough discoveries say in no uncertain terms: everyone is gifted – in one area of their brain. Everyone can be smart – concentrate easily, learn rapidly, feel energized, be highly effective. The trick is to make the choice to use and leverage skills managed by area of our brain that is naturally highly efficient.
And that’s not all. It turns out the context in which we do something matters, as well. Additional research has established that each of us has a stable level of inner wakefulness (e.g. how awake we are inside when we wake up). About 15% of the us are very awake. About 15% of us are barely awake. And about 70% of us fall along a continuum between these two very different inner realities. Why does this matter? Because, those of us who are in the first group, who are barely awake, need lots of external stimulation (noise, activity, competition, crowds, a crisis, literal or metaphoric fire-fighting) to wake us up so that we can perceive and think clearly. And, unfortunately, the very stimulation which makes it possible for women in this first group to achieve peak performance, creates discomfort and anxiety in the second group, causing them to shut down or leave. In other words, what facilitates the first group improve performance actually hinders the performance of those in the second group. A quick example: a woman in the first group, who needs the additional stimulation will elect to read in a noisy office or kitchen or cafeteria, where the noise around her keeps her awake so she can read. Put in the same environment, a woman in the second group would find reading very difficult, if not impossible.
As such, it is easy to understand how and why a woman gets out of balance when she goes to work.
1) She gets out of balance, because she is regularly using mental skills which are not managed by her natural lead function – a life and work habit which demands and consumes one hundred times the oxygen second per second – leading to: irritability, headaches, fatigue and a wide range of other problems (e.g. digestive disorders, inability to sleep, anxiety, and depression) from overworking her brain in a way that robs the rest of her body of the oxygen it needs to operate properly.
And or,
2) She gets out of balance because she is pushing herself to compete, close deals and or function in noisy, crowded environments, more than is suited to her natural level of introversion-extraversion, generating inside her a chronic low grade anxiety, as well as forcing her to need significant downtime after work to re-balance.
To achieve balance in the first instance, she needs to identify, develop and leverage skills in her natural lead function so that her work is naturally energizing and meaningful, rather than exhausting, and meaningless. Indeed, when her brain is being so very efficient she finds her work easy, even fun.
When we invest our minds in activities and tasks that our brain can manage from its area of superior efficiency, we receive an abundance of energy, mental alertness and inner balance. It is the wisest investment we can make. And, in choosing to make it, we are honoring and empowering ourselves. The result is that we live and work in balance. We do not need to do anything else to achieve or reclaim our balance, because we no longer lose it.
In other words, living a balanced inner life is the natural pay back or ROI we get for choosing to invest our time, energy and attention in activities which use our natural lead function in the environment or context which suits our arousal needs.
Article taken from www.benziger.org
to Achieve and Sustain Inner Balance
By Katherine Benziger, Ph.D.
Breakthroughs in brain research in the past 10 years have shocked neuroscientists. Learning to live an energy efficient lifestyle has taken on a new meaning, as the neurological foundations of human thinking are better understood. Just as we find ourselves selecting more energy efficient cars, cars which cost less to run and pollute less; so too, we are learning that by selecting jobs and activities which use our brain’s most fuel-efficient component (i.e. functionally specialized area), we can naturally increase our own inner well-being and balance, as well as our own mental, physical and emotional health.
Here’s what we’ve learned. Our brain is made of four highly specialized areas which are responsible for performing very different tasks. Their specialized capabilities make us think they are the physiological bases for Jung’s four functions: thinking, sensing, feeling and intuition.
CORTICAL REGION FUNCTIONALLY SPECIALIZED ABILITIES JUNG'S FUNCTION OR TYPE
Left Frontal Logical Analysis, Decision Making Thinking
Left Posterior Convexity
Left Basal
Sequencing, Performing Routines Sensing
Right Posterior Convexity
Right Basal
Harmonizing, Connecting Feeling
Right Frontal Pattern Analysis, Inventing Intuition
The two discoveries that have surprised scientists are:
1. that we are each born with one efficient and three inefficient areas; and
2. that the one efficient area is so tremendously efficient, it naturally uses only one one-hundredth the energy second per second.
Moreover, although we can and do develop competencies in all four areas, as we study different subjects and master different types of tasks, the relative efficiency of the one mode is never altered. We continue, throughout our life, when learning or using a skill managed by our brain’s preferred area to enjoy more efficiency, a faster learning curve and a tendency to make fewer errors.
These discoveries have surprised neuro-researchers and educators alike. Both had assumed that those who appear to be more intelligent on IQ tests could learn and do just about anything well, given a good teacher, proper training and practice; and those who performed less well on such tests would do virtually everything less well. The breakthrough discoveries say in no uncertain terms: everyone is gifted – in one area of their brain. Everyone can be smart – concentrate easily, learn rapidly, feel energized, be highly effective. The trick is to make the choice to use and leverage skills managed by area of our brain that is naturally highly efficient.
And that’s not all. It turns out the context in which we do something matters, as well. Additional research has established that each of us has a stable level of inner wakefulness (e.g. how awake we are inside when we wake up). About 15% of the us are very awake. About 15% of us are barely awake. And about 70% of us fall along a continuum between these two very different inner realities. Why does this matter? Because, those of us who are in the first group, who are barely awake, need lots of external stimulation (noise, activity, competition, crowds, a crisis, literal or metaphoric fire-fighting) to wake us up so that we can perceive and think clearly. And, unfortunately, the very stimulation which makes it possible for women in this first group to achieve peak performance, creates discomfort and anxiety in the second group, causing them to shut down or leave. In other words, what facilitates the first group improve performance actually hinders the performance of those in the second group. A quick example: a woman in the first group, who needs the additional stimulation will elect to read in a noisy office or kitchen or cafeteria, where the noise around her keeps her awake so she can read. Put in the same environment, a woman in the second group would find reading very difficult, if not impossible.
As such, it is easy to understand how and why a woman gets out of balance when she goes to work.
1) She gets out of balance, because she is regularly using mental skills which are not managed by her natural lead function – a life and work habit which demands and consumes one hundred times the oxygen second per second – leading to: irritability, headaches, fatigue and a wide range of other problems (e.g. digestive disorders, inability to sleep, anxiety, and depression) from overworking her brain in a way that robs the rest of her body of the oxygen it needs to operate properly.
And or,
2) She gets out of balance because she is pushing herself to compete, close deals and or function in noisy, crowded environments, more than is suited to her natural level of introversion-extraversion, generating inside her a chronic low grade anxiety, as well as forcing her to need significant downtime after work to re-balance.
To achieve balance in the first instance, she needs to identify, develop and leverage skills in her natural lead function so that her work is naturally energizing and meaningful, rather than exhausting, and meaningless. Indeed, when her brain is being so very efficient she finds her work easy, even fun.
When we invest our minds in activities and tasks that our brain can manage from its area of superior efficiency, we receive an abundance of energy, mental alertness and inner balance. It is the wisest investment we can make. And, in choosing to make it, we are honoring and empowering ourselves. The result is that we live and work in balance. We do not need to do anything else to achieve or reclaim our balance, because we no longer lose it.
In other words, living a balanced inner life is the natural pay back or ROI we get for choosing to invest our time, energy and attention in activities which use our natural lead function in the environment or context which suits our arousal needs.
Article taken from www.benziger.org
11/30/2006
Using whole brain (taken from Herrmann Brain Dominance)
YOUR “WHOLE BRAIN” IS THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
The most widely recognized thinking styles are illustrated as left-brained and
right-brained approaches to problem solving. The left-brained preference is described
as analytical, logical and sequential, while the right-brained preference is described as
intuitive, values-based and nonlinear.
The awareness of one’s own thinking style and the
thinking styles of others combined with the ability to act
outside of one’s preferred thinking style is known as
“Whole Brain Thinking.” This methodology has been
scientifically proven to help individuals at all levels to
become more cooperative and productive, and can lead
to heightened levels of employee and team performance.
By taking advantage of Whole Brain Thinking and
its many applications, companies have addressed issues
including leadership, creative problem solving,
communication, productivity, and more. Companies
who’ve applied the principles of Whole Brain Thinking
have found that once employees are aware of their own
and others’ thinking preferences, they’re much more
likely to want to improve their skills in less preferred
quadrants or to make sure they use other resources to
“bridge the gaps.”
While individual performance improvement is
certainly important, companies are finding that the richest
rewards come from the long-term business results they
WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
The highly validated Whole
Brain Model is scientifically
designed to help people learn
to think better. Training that
utilizes Whole Brain
Technology™ focuses on
showing people how to use
their whole brain – not just the
parts with which they feel most
comfortable.
The Herrmann Brain
Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) evaluates and
depicts the degree of
preference individuals have for
thinking in each of four brain
quadrants:
Rational —Blue / A / upper left
Practical —Green / B / lower
left
Feeling —Red / C / lower right
Experimental —Yellow / D /
upper right
Research has shown that
everyone is capable of flexing
to less preferred thinking styles
and learning the necessary
skills to diagnose and adapt to
the thinking preferences of
others. Presenting information
in a way that recognizes,
respects, and is compatible
with different preferences is
crucial to meeting co-worker,
customer, and client needs and
expectations.
The Brains Behind Your Organization’s Success 3
get when they apply this “technology” across their organization and to their customer
relationships.
The most natural place to start applying this “technology” is to diagnose the brains in
your organization. Although a number of different diagnostic tools and assessment
instruments exist for measuring brain dominance, their proponents agree about these basic
points:
• Preferences cannot be labeled inherently good or bad
• People can learn how to act outside their preferred styles
• Understanding others’ preferences supports good communication and promotes
collaboration
Scientific studies have shown that instruments
that classify and describe how people perceive and
interact with the world around them can be powerful
tools in developing employees and achieving
business objectives.
The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™
(MBTI™) are two of a number of assessment
systems that have earned scientific and experiential
credibility. The profiles they reveal build selfawareness,
self-esteem and performance. By
helping individuals understand why they “get” some
people and not others, the profiles encourage
individuals to communicate and collaborate more
effectively.
The MBTI is a psychological profile tool to
assess personality type, while the HBDI specifically
measures not only a person’s preference for rightbrained
(intuitive) or left-brained (realistic) thinking,
but also for (cognitive) upper or (visceral) lower
thinking. The HBDI model is more complex because
it is based on scientific research conducted specifically on thinking styles, and thus has
applicability beyond individual profiling. But because it is based on the way our brains are
organized, it is also intuitive and easy to remember. In the HBDI, the different thinking
preferences are categorized into four distinct quadrants, and a person who uses the HBDI
process can easily learn which quadrant(s) for which he or she has a preference and how
those preferences may differ from others they work with.
Valuing different thinking preferences is the key to fewer mixed messages, improved
working relationships, and gaining business advantage. People who understand the nonjudgmental
differences between quadrant preferences can expand the range of their own
behaviors and work productively outside their preferred styles of thinking.
Taken from www.hbdi.com
The most widely recognized thinking styles are illustrated as left-brained and
right-brained approaches to problem solving. The left-brained preference is described
as analytical, logical and sequential, while the right-brained preference is described as
intuitive, values-based and nonlinear.
The awareness of one’s own thinking style and the
thinking styles of others combined with the ability to act
outside of one’s preferred thinking style is known as
“Whole Brain Thinking.” This methodology has been
scientifically proven to help individuals at all levels to
become more cooperative and productive, and can lead
to heightened levels of employee and team performance.
By taking advantage of Whole Brain Thinking and
its many applications, companies have addressed issues
including leadership, creative problem solving,
communication, productivity, and more. Companies
who’ve applied the principles of Whole Brain Thinking
have found that once employees are aware of their own
and others’ thinking preferences, they’re much more
likely to want to improve their skills in less preferred
quadrants or to make sure they use other resources to
“bridge the gaps.”
While individual performance improvement is
certainly important, companies are finding that the richest
rewards come from the long-term business results they
WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
The highly validated Whole
Brain Model is scientifically
designed to help people learn
to think better. Training that
utilizes Whole Brain
Technology™ focuses on
showing people how to use
their whole brain – not just the
parts with which they feel most
comfortable.
The Herrmann Brain
Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) evaluates and
depicts the degree of
preference individuals have for
thinking in each of four brain
quadrants:
Rational —Blue / A / upper left
Practical —Green / B / lower
left
Feeling —Red / C / lower right
Experimental —Yellow / D /
upper right
Research has shown that
everyone is capable of flexing
to less preferred thinking styles
and learning the necessary
skills to diagnose and adapt to
the thinking preferences of
others. Presenting information
in a way that recognizes,
respects, and is compatible
with different preferences is
crucial to meeting co-worker,
customer, and client needs and
expectations.
The Brains Behind Your Organization’s Success 3
get when they apply this “technology” across their organization and to their customer
relationships.
The most natural place to start applying this “technology” is to diagnose the brains in
your organization. Although a number of different diagnostic tools and assessment
instruments exist for measuring brain dominance, their proponents agree about these basic
points:
• Preferences cannot be labeled inherently good or bad
• People can learn how to act outside their preferred styles
• Understanding others’ preferences supports good communication and promotes
collaboration
Scientific studies have shown that instruments
that classify and describe how people perceive and
interact with the world around them can be powerful
tools in developing employees and achieving
business objectives.
The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument™
(HBDI™) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™
(MBTI™) are two of a number of assessment
systems that have earned scientific and experiential
credibility. The profiles they reveal build selfawareness,
self-esteem and performance. By
helping individuals understand why they “get” some
people and not others, the profiles encourage
individuals to communicate and collaborate more
effectively.
The MBTI is a psychological profile tool to
assess personality type, while the HBDI specifically
measures not only a person’s preference for rightbrained
(intuitive) or left-brained (realistic) thinking,
but also for (cognitive) upper or (visceral) lower
thinking. The HBDI model is more complex because
it is based on scientific research conducted specifically on thinking styles, and thus has
applicability beyond individual profiling. But because it is based on the way our brains are
organized, it is also intuitive and easy to remember. In the HBDI, the different thinking
preferences are categorized into four distinct quadrants, and a person who uses the HBDI
process can easily learn which quadrant(s) for which he or she has a preference and how
those preferences may differ from others they work with.
Valuing different thinking preferences is the key to fewer mixed messages, improved
working relationships, and gaining business advantage. People who understand the nonjudgmental
differences between quadrant preferences can expand the range of their own
behaviors and work productively outside their preferred styles of thinking.
Taken from www.hbdi.com
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