Two to tango, four to square dance

Excellent article in Slate that looks at creativity in partnerships and takes on the pervasive cultural myth of the lone genius.  Joshua Wolf Shenk even takes on the whole notion of a separate "self" - an idea that's been questioned by such paths as Buddhism and Advaita.  
Do we really exist outside of relationships?

I've always been annoyed by the phrase, "We're born alone, and we die alone."  I can't speak about the death part of it, but having given birth, I can say most emphatically that we're not born alone!  Some woman (and likely a whole bunch of other people) are on the scene and working very hard to make that birth happen.  And, as the article points out, babies are interrelating right from the start.

We Americans seem to be especially in love with what Shenk calls "the atomized person."  I can't help thinking that this notion is partly responsible for the polarization of the country today, and the apparent loss of the sense of the collective good.  If we saw harming our neighbor as actually harming ourselves, we might have a different view.  In the piece, John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago says:  "We're ready for a Copernican revolution in psychology." 

Which sets me to thinking about how what aspects of learning design may be based, unknowingly, on this underlying belief in individualism.  Are there ways to do it better?

At Workplace, we adore collaboration.  From the basic pair who run the company (Dan and Beverly Feldt, who are husband and wife); to our fabulous interactors; to our clients, whose great ideas are always incorporated in our "flight simulators"; to our focus groups and participants, whose grappling with the situations we present creates the learning - it's all glorious groups.  Could we be the wave of the future?

Yummy food for thought.  Maybe I'll go talk to Dan about it...

Good words

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't as all. You can be discouraged by failure - or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you will find success. – Thomas J. Watson

The clock is ticking, part two

I had a chance to try out the 10-minute rule at a program we did for Northwestern University last week.  The workshop is called "Grace Under Pressure," and it focuses on how to recognize and relieve adrenaline flooding - the fight-or-flight response that shuts down your ability to think clearly.  It's really cool material, mostly developed by Andra Medea, who wrote Conflict Unraveled and certified me to teach this stuff.

We have two fantastic interactors who demonstrate flooding and its solutions, and of course they're riveting.  But there's also a lot of information on the physical signs and symptoms of flooding that I have to convey at the beginning of the workshop.  Last time we did it, a participant complained about the "lecture" (!), so I wanted to tinker with this section to see if the 10-minute rule might help keep the learners more engaged.

I redesigned this chunk it so that I changed direction about every 9 minutes, bringing in the interactors, discussion, etc.  I also made sure that I explained BEFOREHAND exactly how the information would be useful to the learners.  (I'm an awful nerd sometimes, and I tend to get enthusiastic and not notice that listeners may be thinking, "And you're telling me this WHY?")

The redesign worked beautifully!  In fact, one of the participants, commenting on the half-day program as a whole, said, "I don’t think any of us were bored for even one second."

Granted, most of this was due to Ta-Tanisha Jordan and Jack Hickey (pictured above), and their skill at demonstrating conflict and calm.  But at least I didn't get in their way!

Photo:  Jill Brazel

The clock is ticking

Found this interesting item on John Jamison's ImagiLearning blog:                                    

There is something about the human brain that causes it to begin to refocus every 10 minutes. So after doing your best for 9 minutes, spend the next 60 seconds doing something to re-capture the brain's attention, to 'hook' it into sticking around for the next 10 minutes. If you lecture for 60 minutes...or create online courses...chunk them into 10 minute 'modules' divided by a 60 second "hook"...something that will cause the learners' brains to say, "Say what?" This buys you another 10 minutes.

 Don't know what research this comes from, but it's interesting enough to try out.  I'll watch in my next training program to see if folks get restless in 10-minute intervals.  Anybody notice this in their own classroom work?

Good words

Tell me and I'll forget.

Show me and I'll remember.  

Involve me and I'll understand.  - Confucius

Vulcanizing

This brief article in NewScientist, "We Humans Can Mind-Meld, Too," says people listening to a story produced the same brain patterns as the narrator -- just a few seconds later.  In a few cases, the listeners' patterns even preceded the storyteller's.  (I've experienced that myself: watching certain television shows or movies, I can often say the next line before the character does.  Poor writing, not my genius!)

These findings seem like neurological support for the well-documented phenomenon of entrainment, when people in conversational sync spontaneously mirror each other's movements and rhythms.  Guess we do it on the brain level, too.    Does this explain why my sister and I so frequently say the same thing at the same time?  We even do it while instant messaging.

So, fellow trainers, how can we encourage this shared neurological dance with our classes?  And does this give you new ideas about the effectiveness of story in adult learning?

Wait, I know what you're going to say...

What really motivates us?

Cool story on NPR yesterday:  an interview with Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality, about how effective money is as a motivator.  More money, more motivation?  Sometimes.  More money, less achievement?  Also true:  we're more likely to choke when the stakes are high.

And how important is it to see our work last?  Ariely devised a fiendish experiment about that, too.

If you have eight minutes, listen to the interview.  It's fun, and there are surprises lurking.