How do you win senior management’s confidence and commitment when your initiatives are competing for time, attention and budget?

Learn how you can better harness your own thinking preferences and the brainpower of those around you to make your case. Ann Herrmann-Nehdi shows you how in the free HR.com webinar, Getting Buy-in for Your HR Initiatives: Applying C-Level Thinking for Faster and Better Results.

In her signature high-energy, interactive presentation style, Ann demonstrates ways you can adapt your thinking to the circumstances to quickly get the buy-in you need, exploring the distinct thinking styles of C-level leaders and the specific questions they focus on when making key business decisions. Ann will show you how to align your own thinking with theirs to increase your strategic outlook, build your influence and present a compelling business case.

If you’re in Human Resources, Training, Learning & Development, or any role that needs to present a compelling case to senior management, this technique- and tip-filled webinar is a don’t miss, as several participant evaluation comments from the live session attest:

It was very good the first time around and I am going to watch it again because there was so much good information I may have missed something and want to absorb as much as possible. Thanks!

This speaker and her slides were awesome!!!! I want to review the information again and again. This is a tool that will help me develop a roadmap to getting better buy-in with the changes that need to occur in the world of benefits.

Excellent research and timely topic as we are doing more with a whole lot less! I definitely gained more insight for effective communications with senior leaders.

The webinar archive with downloadable handouts is available on demand to HR.com members. If you are not a member, simply sign up for a free HR.com membership.

From business magazines to HR publications to health and wellness websites, employee engagement is one of the hot topics of the moment.

The Googles and Zappos.com’s of the world are often name-dropped as examples of companies that are doing it right, keeping their employees happy and, well, keeping their employees.

But what makes them happy? Is it the perks like free food and dry cleaning? The financial incentives? The social activities?

Before you install that coffee bar, take a look at what employees say really matters to them.

While Google offers many perks, the research shows that these aren’t actually the primary drivers of job satisfaction. Referring to the results of his study of more than 1,400 US-based companies, Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, put it bluntly about what motivates employees:

“What they really need is a workplace that isn’t going to irritate them.”

What actually makes Google so successful, he adds, “is the competition of ideas, the pure meritocracy, whoever has the best idea wins.”

Blessing White’s Employee Engagement Report echoes these findings. In their survey of more than 11,000 people around the globe, they found that “employees worldwide view opportunities to apply their talents, career development and training as top drivers of job satisfaction.”

And managers, they point out, aren’t necessarily focusing on the things that matter most to their employees.

No wonder employees are irritated. And no wonder the high potentials at those organizations are looking for other opportunities.

What motivates one person won’t necessarily motivate another, but applying what we know about the brain makes it easier for leaders to understand how different employees prefer to think and approach their work and what they pay attention to. Because thinking drives behavior, it gives leaders the clues and framework to focus on what will really engage, motivate and retain their employees.

If you’re an HBDI® Certified Practitioner, be sure to register for the January 25th THINC™ Webinar, Don’t Lose Your Top Talent! Engaging Employees With Whole Brain® Leadership, for specific tips and takeaways on how to help your managers take action to engage their employees in a meaningful way.

In an HR.com webinar last month, Ann Herrmann-Nehdi showed participants how to develop their leaders’ “mind management skills” so they can successfully navigate in an increasingly noisy and demanding environment. If you missed the session, or if you want to view it again and download the slides, the recording is now available on the HR.com website.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to align leadership competencies with the type of nimble thinking skills that are critical in an age of smartphones, overflowing email inboxes and continual change. Ann gives you an easy-to-apply approach for helping your leaders get more strategic while getting more done.

Access the recording and handouts here:

From Mind-Full to Mindful: Developing Strategic Leaders in an Age of Information Overload

NOTE: If you are already a member of HR.com, simply log in to access the webinar. If you are not a member, you will need to sign up for a free HR.com membership, which will take only a moment.

Once you have confirmation of your membership, you will be able to access recordings and register for other educational opportunities, including Ann’s upcoming HR.com webinar, Getting Buy-in for Your HR Initiatives: Applying C-Level Thinking for Faster and Better Results.

For more learning and insights on thinking, mindsets and brain science, check out my full video report from the 2011 Neuroleadership Summit.

In our presentation on the Neurobiology of Leadership Assessments at the Neuroleadership Summit last week, Mark Schar from Stanford and I concluded that in this early stage of this field of research, there are four points we have to pay attention to.

We need to define leadership:  The clarity of the research on this is cloudy at best. It seems obvious that if we want to assess leadership, we need to have some clear definition of what it is and what we are trying to measure.  

Two differing perspectives can be found in the business and academic worlds. Business tends to look at leadership as a vital key to organization success, often citing guru CEOs like Jack Welch: “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”  

Academia however, is much more skeptical, perceiving leadership as poorly defined, difficult to measure and situational, better represented by a Casey Stengel quote: “The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.”

Defining what it is and what we intend to measure is critical the evaluation of a leadership assessment. In a pilot study we conducted for the session, it was clear the assessments known and most used by business were not the same as those known and used by the academic community. Their reasons for using assessments are also different: Business uses them to make better decisions; academia is typically looking to make a discovery.

We learn about leadership from assessments: Be clear on what YOU want to learn. The hundreds of thousands of assessments processed each year would seem to indicate that we are learning something. Our pilot study showed that those in business had a range of application arenas, as shown below.

Whatever the application, one helpful way to differentiate between assessments is to look at the construct each instrument is based on. The 16 assessments in our pilot study were equally divided between these four construct clusters:

Personality: Individual, intrinsic motivation

Behavioral: Individual behaviors as perceived by others

Talent/Interest: Individual skills and interests

Cognitive: Individual preferences in processing and problem solving

We focused on the cognitive construct to address our next question.

Neuroscience might measure leadership: What do your learners need to know and why? Did I mention this was a huge topic? Assuming we can all agree on the definition of what we are measuring as leadership, our initial scan of the research uncovered two assessments where there is a neurological research connection.

The research on the Neo Five Factor showed a relationship between brain volume and several of the factors. The research on the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument’s (HBDI®) revealed neurological data that related to each of the four factors of the Whole Brain® Model. The real question then emerges: What does this tell us? How do we decide what constitutes “validity?”

We asked the audience to select what was most important for them in the selection of an assessment:

A. Statistical validity, research basis and pedigree.

B. Reliability, administration, practicality, longitudinal studies and references.

C. User’s perceived value and experience, ease of applicability and face validity.

D. Observed insights, visual appeal, discovery/aha’s and conceptual framework validity.

Our audience then split into four groups based on their answer to the above question and discussed what was most important to measure—and how that differed for business and academia. Members of each group* vehemently defended their point of view.

What is yours? How about your learners? What do they need to know and why? How does that impact your selection process?

Academia and business should converge to advance research on the neurobiology of leadership assessments. There is a great opportunity to further pursue research in this domain. We need more research! If the worlds  (you might even call them tribes) of business and academia came together we could take this research to the next level.

A special interest group emerged at the conference on this topic. Let me know if you are interested in the conversation or if would to learn more about our findings. Email me at ann@hbdi.com, and post your thoughts in the comments below.

*discreetly sorted based on the four quadrants of the Whole Brain® Model

Last year the McKinsey article Getting More From Your Training Programs made an interesting point about sales training and how organizations are investing their time and resources to optimize their sales organizations:

 The content of the training itself is not the biggest issue…The most significant improvements lie in rethinking the mindsets that employees and their leaders bring to training, as well as the environment they come back to afterward. 

 Why are thinking and mindsets so important, particularly in the sales arena?

•  Thinking is at the core of everything we do. We can’t change behavior and make it stick without first addressing the thinking that drives behavior (and results).
• Sales leaders today are faced with a near constant stream of diverse mental tasks. If they can’t nimbly and effectively adjust their thinking to the situation, they won’t be able to get ahead of the “fire drills” and start planning and creating the future.
• Speed matters now more than ever. Whether the issue is performance improvement through coaching, time to job mastery, or process efficiency, speed has never been more important to filling the pipeline, gaining a competitive foothold and maintaining customer loyalty. To grease the wheels, you have to align mindsets.

Our newest white paper explores how sales leaders can develop their Whole Brain^® Thinking skills and organize current processes and people development strategies around a common set of tools and methods derived from what we know about thinking preferences and performance.

It lays out an easy-to-apply framework that will save sales leaders time, money and energy while delivering the increased speed, skills and productivity necessary to close deals faster and generate more revenue.

Download the free white paper, The Mind of Successful Sales Leadership. 

WWSD? (What would Steve do?)

He would change!

Since the passing two weeks ago of one of the world’s greatest thinkers, we have had a media deluge of information about Steve Jobs, his life, his words and his brilliance. As a student of great thinkers and a lover of quotes, I have compiled in this post many of my favorites and some food for thought as you contemplate what we can learn from Steve.

Most of all, it is not about trying to imitate his thinking! The irony, I believe, is that what is happening—in a way, making him a thinking “God,” as we strive to push our own innovation and thinking by studying him to replicate what he did— is the last thing Steve would have wanted. As he said in the Stanford commencement address:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

As a thinker, Jobs was a leader who could “see around corners”—a trait I hear many are working to develop in this increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” (Inc. Magazine)

His thinking epitomized the future-oriented, conceptual, design-focused thinking preference (Yellow D-quadrant thinking in our Whole Brain^® parlance.) Yet his ability to serve all needs of the business while still honoring his core tenants, great design, usability and user friendly technical innovation showed how his thinking actually served a Whole Brain^® outcome.

I believe this contributed to what made him the truly remarkable business person he was: his ability to drive the top and bottom line, create a culture of extreme change and project the needs of the customer before the customer knows what they are. In addition, his obsession with quality and execution rounded out his thinking approach:

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

Most of all, like most great leaders I have observed, Steve understood what he was good at and where he struggled:

 “My model for business is the Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. They believed in each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts.” (60 Minutes interview, 2008)

 One of the most important lessons we can learn from Steve is this: The secret is leveraging the thinking of others who complement your thinking. Steve’s “islands of brilliance” were more oriented to those traits we often associate with the right brain. COO Tim Cook complemented him as more of the traditional left. The 2009 Harvard Business Review article Innovation in Turbulent Times noted:

Apple may have the best-known both-brain partnership. CEO Steve Jobs has always acted as the creative director and has helped to shape everything from product design and user interfaces to the customer experience at Apple’s stores. COO Tim Cook has long handled the day-to-day running of the business.

Ironically, I understand that much of Steve’s net worth was actually in Disney assets. Steve was acutely aware of what happened after Walt Disney passed. If people would ask, “What would Walt have done?” Steve knew the answer: Walt would have changed! The last thing Steve would have wanted is for people try to think like he did to solve problems we will face in the future.

 Those who knew him personally as a friend are grieving a great father and family man. May he rest in peace.

And for us, instead of trying to figure out what Steve would have done, we should follow one of his key messages: Celebrate your own thinking. Be inspired. Take action. Live!

What can you learn from Steve Jobs that will help you celebrate your thinking? Which of his quotes that follow are your favorites, or are there others that inspire your thinking? Share them with us in the comments.

Steve Jobs on…

Simplicity:

“That has been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”– Businessweek

“We’ve gone through the operating system and looked at everything and asked how can we simplify this and make it more powerful at the same time.”– ABC News, Jobs on Mac OS X Beta

Life and Finding Your Calling:

”You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.”– Stanford commencement address

“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it and like any great relationship, it just gets better as the years roll on.”– Stanford commencement address

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”

 “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”– Fortune

“Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”– Stanford commencement address

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…the ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules…You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”– Apple “Think Different” campaign

“Are you a virgin?”– Steve Jobs recruiting ‘”pirates” in the early 80s

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”– Stanford commencement address, quoting the Whole Earth Catalogue

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”– Stanford commencement address

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”– Stanford commencement address

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”– Stanford commencement address

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.”–The Wall Street Journal (source: WikiQuote)

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…It’s very character-building.”– Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company (2004), by Owen W. Linzmayer

“When I went to school, it was right after the ’60s and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in…The idealistic wind of the ’60s was still at our backs, though, and most of the people I know who are my age have that engrained in them forever.”

“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”– As quoted or paraphrased in Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur’s Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own (2009), by Robert Tuchman

Innovation:

 “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”– Businessweek

“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”– Businessweek

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”– Businessweek

“It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”– The Seed of Apple’s Innovation

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”– 1995 interview with Smithsonian Institute

 “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”– Fortune

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know–just explore things.”– CNNMoney

People:

“My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”– CNNMoney

“The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”– Macworld

“I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”– CNNMoney

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else.” – CNNMoney

Design:

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”– Fortune

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”– Fortune

“Click. Boom. Amazing!”– Macworld keynote

“That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”– New York Times, The Guts of a New Machine

Apple:  

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.”– CNNMoney

 “I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”– The Seed of Apple’s Innovation

 “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”- As quoted in Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company (2004), by Owen W. Linzmayer

“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!”– Businessweek

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth—and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”– Fortune (1996)

 “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”– Fortune (1996)

“Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could—I’m searching for the right word — could, could die.”– TIME, 1997

Technology:

“The Web is not going to change the world, certainly not in the next ten years. It’s going to augment the world. And once you’re in this Web-augmented space, you’re going to see that democratization takes place.”– Wired

 “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone.”– Playboy

 ”Older people sit down [at a computer] and ask, ‘What is it?’ But the child asks, ‘What can I do with it?’”– via David Sheff, Playboy

 ”This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy.”– Playboy

 ”[A computer] takes these very simple-minded instructions—’Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number’ —but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, one million per second. At one million per second, the results appear to be magic.”– Playboy

 “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”– Classic Gaming

“But good PR educates people. That’s all it is. You can’t con people in this business. The products speak for themselves.”– Playboy

“The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind’s problems. I believe that very much.”

“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.”– Stanford commencement address

Thanks to the following sources for the quotes:

Macstories

Mashable

MacDailyNews

InvestingAnswers

The Whole Brain^® Model (shown above), based on 30 years of research, is a validated metaphor for how we think, providing a useful framework to diagnose and describe the different types of thinking involved in any organization. It divides thinking into four quadrants, two on the “left brain” side and two on the “right brain” side. All four of the different thinking modes are in use and available to all of us, but we tend to prefer certain types over others.

 In what kinds of situations can Whole Brain^® Thinking be used?

 Any situation that requires thinking that goes beyond a given quadrant’s specialized mode can benefit from Whole Brain^® Thinking. To insure that each quadrant has been explored in a given process, an approach called a Walk-Around™ is used. (The Walk-Around™ pad is a great tool for facilitating this.)

Here are four examples of frequently used applications of Whole Brain^® Thinking:

Decision Making

Most decisions benefit from a thought process that includes the review of multiple options and perspectives. A typical example is the purchase of a car. Quadrant A thinkers look at information on the actual performance of the vehicle. Quadrant B thinkers read a consumer report to gather research on the reliability and practical features (trunk size, safety records, etc.) of the vehicle. Quadrant C thinkers test drive the car to see if it “feels” right. And Quadrant D focuses on the aesthetics, color, styling and innovations of each model.

Using Whole Brain^® Thinking—the thinking of all quadrants—contributes to a better choice and avoids unpleasant surprises. Overlooking even one quadrant can result in a less than ideal outcome.

Problem Solving

Every problem situation can benefit from a Quadrant A review of the data and facts, as well as an analysis of the real problem at hand; the Quadrant D “big-picture” context and possible creative ideas; Quadrant C viewpoint of the “customer” of the problem and how the problem affects others; and Quadrant B step-by-step process to solve the problem and implement the solution.

Improving team interactions and performance

Most teams are formed to make the most of the differences among team members. But very often those differences stand in the way of the team living up to its potential. Whole Brain^® Thinking can help a team to acknowledge the differences among team members and then use those differences to make the most of the ideas of each team member. In addition, once a team knows its preferences it can use that knowledge to enhance its communication with other teams and work groups which may have thinking preferences that are quite different.

Communication

The objective of most communication is to convey an idea, transfer information or persuade someone. How many times have you experienced the frustration of delivering a message only to realize that the other person “just didn’t get it.” In order to communicate effectively, it’s important to understand the “language” and mindset of the person(s) you are communicating with. A diagnosis of the thinking preferences of the audience can provide the critical planning information you need to tailor your language and presentation to the audience. When the audience’s preferences are in doubt, taking a Whole Brain^® approach to communication ensures that you’ve covered all the “languages.” This reduces the possibility of miscommunication and improves the chance that your message will be successfully received by the audience.

This guest post was contributed by Herrmann International Asia.

In addition to the thinking preferences of people, we can also use the Whole Brain^® Model to diagnose processes, organizational cultures, vision and value statements, and a host of other systems we engage with on a daily basis. How are you applying Whole Brain^® Thinking to get better results?

When it comes to sales effectiveness, are you paying attention to what really matters?

If you’re not focusing on the thinking that drives sales growth, you won’t get the best from your people and processes. It’s that simple.

How we think impacts everything we do—and the results we get. Our newest white paper will be filled with proven tips and tools based on what we know about thinking and performance to help you sell more, waste less and set your team up for success:

“We don’t have to throw out everything we’ve been doing in our sales organizations. Instead, we need to take a closer look at the engine that  drives our sales results: the brains of those who make it happen and the systems they engage to achieve those results. Too many of us are wasting time, energy and effort and risking revenue because we’ve haven’t paid attention to the core—the thinking that produces results.”

You can get your copy by attending our upcoming free webinar, Optimizing Your Sales Organization for Long-Term Growth.

Join us on September 28^th for an exploration of how to apply agile thinking and a Whole Brain^® approach to drive sales results, and get priority access to this new paper.

Reserve your spot today!

Like many others, I recently took off on vacation for a week. In the process I validated something learned earlier this year, that the most productive day of the year is universally the same day across the world: The day before you leave on vacation. 

In order for me to mentally disconnect, I found myself in a very focused way, reviewing all of the short- and long-term projects and goals I have on my plate.

We are all carrying around a much greater “cognitive load” these days, and vacation time, even if it is just a long weekend, provides an opportunity to give ourselves a necessary breather. Our brains need the break to function optimally.

Most people consider their cognitive load in a traditional and linear format—like a to-do list. The challenge is this format does not lend itself to the complex and interdependent work we live in today.

Today’s world creates a lot of cognitive load, where our work and personal lives overlap and create even more complexities. We’re checking e-mails in the evening and on weekends, and making phone calls to resolve personal issues during the day.

One colleague from IBM said it this way: The issue is no longer work-life balance; effective work-life integration is the challenge!

So how can you lighten your load? One solution is to draw out a map of your cognitive load.

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper (or use a Walk-Around Pad), and map your cognitive load against the different thinking styles as depicted in th four quadrants of the Whole Brain^® Model:

A Quadrant: Financial, technical issues

B Quadrant: Unfinished projects, plans, organizational issues

C Quadrant: People and interpersonal issues

D Quadrant: Long-term concerns, “big picture” issues

 2. “Unload” by writing down the key areas that represent cognitive load for you, those areas that weigh heaviest in your mind, for both work and personal.

 3. Now look at the list. Is there anything you can outsource or delegate?

Leaving for a business trip or vacation is the perfect time to do this review since we will be doing it anyway. I went through this process and realized that in some areas, I was holding on to items I could easily outsource to others. Some call this delegation. I do plenty of that, too. However, the concept of outsourcing clearly implies the ownership is actually with the other entity.

On my list I had several items that I could just drop or defer to later in the year. Those were unloaded from the list.

In addition, I had “worrying about the stock market and our position in it” in the A quadrant. We are all struggling with the volatility of the market, overload of information and the worries that can create. My husband usually manages our stocks in our household, yet I was still hanging onto the “worrying.” I realized that by officially outsourcing this to him, I could let go of the worry with it.

What cognitive overload could you drop, outsource or delegate? 

How will organizations succeed in attracting the next brightest minds? By paying attention to their development.

That’s the conclusion of a recent Business Insider article, which references the results of recent global surveys by PricewaterhouseCoopers, explaining that Generation Y employees consider training and development to be a more important benefit than cash bonuses.

PwC’s Millenials Survey also found that 98% of millenials believe having a strong mentor is critical for their development.

It’s no surprise, then, that there has been a resurgence of interest in workplace mentoring programs recently. But it’s not as simple as setting up a mentoring program. Whether or not a mentor pair is successful is highly dependant on the effectiveness of the mentor-mentee match.

A great example is the work that HBDI^® Certified Practitioner Lynne Krause has done in creating mentor pairs based on HBDI^® Profile data.

Through her work with the US Naval Command and others, Lynne found that matching mentors and mentees with similar thinking preferences led to better communications, faster bonding and increased trust. The result is longer lasting and more mutually beneficial mentoring relationships.

In the US Naval Command project (which is described in this case study), matching mentors and mentees based on their thinking preferences led to a 99% success rate in terms of the pair “sticking,” a huge improvement over the previous success rate of just 50%.

Lynne explained how it works in a recent THINC™ Webinar, Match Point: Creating Mentor Pairs That Go The Distance. If you missed it, you can still view the recorded webinar to learn some of the tools and methods she uses to build successful mentoring, coaching and development programs with a foundation in Whole Brain^® Thinking and the HBDI^® assessment.

Looking for more on Generation Y? Check out these on-demand webinars:

• Engaging a Multigenerational Workforce: A Whole Brain^® Approach to a 21^st Century Challenge
• Bridging the Generational Divide with Whole Brain^® Thinking

 Access our full library of recorded THINC™ Webinars.