How can we help our employees, neurodivergent and neurotypical, focus and process information better, and have meaningful interactions with management and peers?
A healthy brain is as important as a healthy body when it comes to employee learning and productivity. Wise company leaders support both facets. Healthy employees are more productive and that helps improve the bottom line. That’s what is behind the rise in employer-supported programs that address nutrition, exercise, and wellness.
Implementing supports that maximize your employees’ brain power delivers a significant ROI.
Support Diverse Ways of Working and Learning
I’ve worked with neurodivergent people for many years. Yet, even among those we consider neurotypical, we all have our own way of processing information and completing tasks. From assembly line workers who perform prescribed movements to truck drivers or landscapers employees learn in slightly different ways from the person next to them.
This learning difference is even more pronounced in office environments, especially when the work is goal-oriented and the employee can take different paths to reach their goals.
Here’s what I mean. I’ve known for my entire adult life that I cannot sit for a long time and focus my attention on a speaker in front of me. I tune out and I don’t retain as much information. I’m not alone. But, if I can look down and take notes as I listen, or even doodle little cartoons on a sheet of paper, I retain much more of what is said. I can write down questions about what’s being said. If I have a tablet in front of me, I can look up more information.
When I present a training, I often supply mandala coloring pages and markers for my audience to color while listening. Countless participants over the years came up to me after my workshop and thanked me for allowing them to color a mandala. They’d say, “I was worried I’d struggle to pay attention, but coloring the mandala not only helped me to listen, it made the time fly by.”
“An estimated 80% of students and 25% of adults admit to being chronic procrastinators, and with the internet and smartphones offering an endless number of distractions from what we should be doing, it may be getting worse.” Why? There are too many distractions interfering with our ability to focus and get things done.
To a manager leading a meeting, what I’m doing might look like I’m goofing off. I know it can be frustrating to see that. In a big room or on a remote video call, you probably aren’t able to see what an employee is doing and can’t tell if they’re playing mobile Scrabble or taking notes.
Given that people learn and process information differently, it’s possible that your employees aren’t goofing off. They’re utilizing — consciously or unconsciously — a stronger learning path: visual learning.
Use Compelling Visuals to Assist Learning
Research over several decades shows that three days after a training session, employees retain only 10 percent of the content presented through listening. But they retain an astounding 65 percent of content when the training is visual.
You can use this knowledge to your advantage, both in training and employee engagement.
An informative, eye-catching slide can amp up an employee’s learning better than hours of lecture or reading through written information. “The brain processes visual information 60,000 times better than text,” the Visual Teaching Alliance reports. This visual approach is critical if you have employees with dyslexia or who are in the autistic spectrum. These neurodivergent thinkers need visual input to process verbal and or textual information.
Mind Mapping Is An Active Learning Activity
Instead of getting frustrated, managers can encourage their employees to use “mind mapping” during a meeting. Encourage them to doodle, create improvised flowcharts, take notes, or whatever they need to do to visualize the topic being discussed.
I’ll give you a real-life example. I was working with a vice president at a company that does a lot of electronic media publishing. When I talked about the mind-mapping concept, she snapped her fingers. “That just happened in a meeting!” she told me.
“I was on a Zoom call with my team, and one of my people had her head down almost the entire time. She wasn’t talking or contributing except to nod her head a little bit. She’s a lead developer so her input was important, but during this meeting, when we were problem solving a critical issue, she wasn’t contributing. I didn’t want to call her out and embarrass her,” the VP told me. “So near the end of the meeting, I asked if she had anything to add to the discussion. She looked up and said, ‘Yes. I’ve been mapping out the conversation. I think I have a solution.’ And she held up a hand-drawn flowchart that she had put together while we were all talking about the problem. She had identified the break in the process by mapping out the conversation!”
That’s the kind of visual learning that managers need to encourage. That employee was listening the entire time, but she was also processing the information being communicated and putting it into a visual map. Seeing the problem visually, allowed her to problem solve, figure out the break in the system, and come up with an innovative solution.
Improve Learning Agility
Being able to roll with change is a soft skill that some employees are not very good at. Leaders who create workplace environments that support and encourage learning agility helps employees adapt to changes.
“The hard truth is that not everyone is born an agile learner,” says Elenie Zoe in an eFront blog post. But that competency can be taught.
We saw a real test of agility all through 2020. The most successful companies were able to help employees adapt to dramatic changes in work hours, work locations and, well, everything! Projects were changed or cancelled. Industry events evaporated.
There is an emotional and mental toll at this level of adaptation. A healthy company recognizes this. But the ability to adapt to new processes or routines can be taught and supported with the right approach.
Consider bringing aboard a learning manager who can guide your company and employees on how to deal with uncertainty and improve learning agility across the organization.
Support “Brain Breaks”
Most white-collar workers are engaged in deep work of some form for several hours in their workday. But as those hours increase, an employee’s effectiveness decreases. It’s important to build in what teachers call “brain breaks” and literally rest the brain to increase overall brain power.
These breaks can and should take many forms. It can be a walk around the office, an hour at the gym, a simple five-minute stretch routine, a twenty-minute nap, or playing casual games on their phone for five minutes. A brain break works best when the person completely disengages from the deep work they’re doing and does something undemanding for a few minutes.
Think of this type of break as a short but fast recharge for the brain.
Help Employees Build Connections
When someone says “build connections,” most of us think of mixer events like the social hours at conferences where people network. Those are valid connections, but not all employees do well at mixers and employers shouldn’t rely solely on these types of events.
Instead, they should look at the many pathways available to help employees build connections with their peers, both within the company and in the industry. These are crucial career development steps, but they’re also personal development steps. We need peer interaction. It’s healthy for us. It keeps our brains stay pliable, and it teaches new skills that make an employee an even better performer.
Building connections internally is equally important and there are plenty of ways to do it. A company can set up an internal social page where employees can share pictures, stories and anecdotes. Another option is setting up a peer-to-peer reward program so employees can cheer each other on and recognize another’s effort.
Implementing any one of these ideas will help our employees focus and process information better. Those that encourage soft skills and connections create the opportunity for meaningful interactions with management and peers. Remember, A healthy brain is as important as a healthy body when it comes to employee learning and productivity. Wise company leaders support both facets.
Source Links
https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/2019/03/learning-agility-what-is-how-nurture-it.html
https://trainingindustry.com/blog/performance-management/10-tips-to-train-the-brain-for-high-performance/
https://www.getbridge.com/blog/10-stats-about-learning-retention-youll-want-forget/
https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1379/brain-science-the-forgetting-curvethe-dirty-secret-of-corporate-training
https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/bid/350326/studies-confirm-the-power-of-visuals-in-elearning
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/3fox-your%20brain%20on%20the%20job.aspx
http://visualteachingalliance.com/