Great Work Everyone! Here's an Avocado for your Efforts!

Do you regularly give out candy as a reward during your F2F training sessions? Well, you're not doing your learners any favors. Instead put out piles of beans, eggs, fish, berries and, ok, dark chocolate.

In this fascinating article (and quick read) by Jeremy Teitelbaum, he challenges us to think about our "tried and true" methods of delivering training and learning, using what we know from 25 years of brain research. Suggestions include:

Stop forcing people to multitask.

He cites research by Stanford University which determined that even when people claim they are multi-tasking, they really are not processing more than one piece of information at once.

Feed the mind to teach the mind.

The author makes an interesting point: In recent years physical fitness training has included the mind and the way it thinks about fitness, body image, health, eating habits and the like; but the opposite hasn't proven true. Nobody training the mind thinks about what the body needs to enable the mind to be successful. Hmmmm

You are unique - just like everyone else.

Brain research focuses on generalizations based on small samples of "brains." This might cause us to categorize people, types of learning, or personality factors.

Hard and Soft Skills Aren't as Important as Emotion

All learning has an emotional component - something most of us in training simply ignore as we 'get down to business.'