Molecular biologist John Medina, speaker and author of the
best-selling book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, didn't set out to become a media star. But he
got so fed up with encountering myths about the brain - that you use
only 10 percent of it, for example, or that there are right- and left-
brain personalities - that he once threw a magazine across a seat on an
airplane. (The flight, he notes, wasn't full.) "So I decided to write
Brain Rules," Medina said, "as an attempt to say, ‘Look, here's what we
do know, here's what we don't know, here are a few things you can try
that might have an application in the business world - and the meetings
world as well.'"
Not that Brain Rules will tell you how the brain
operates. "We don't know squat about how the brain works," said Medina,
who has focused on brain research for nearly three decades. He added: "I
don't know how you know how to pick up a glass of water and drink it.
But we do know the conditions that [the brain] operates best in, even if
we don't know all the ins and outs of that operation."
Which of the 12 Brain Rules has the most impact on meetings?
Well, probably, the biggest one would have to be about attentional
states. This rule is very simple: People don't pay attention to boring
things. So if you really want to have a lousy meeting, make sure it's
boring. If you want to have a lousy classroom, make sure it's boring.
And if you want to vaccinate against the types of things that really do
bore the mind, we have some understanding of that.
So how do you design a good meeting?
Here are the top three "brain gadgets" that probably have a bearing
on the question. First, the human brain processes meaning before it
processes detail. Many people, when they put meetings together, actually
don't even think about the meaning of what it is they're saying. They
just go right to the detail. If you go to the detail, you've got
yourself a bored audience. Congratulations.
Second, in terms of
attentional states, we're not sure if this is brain science or not, but
certainly in the behavioral literature, you've got 10 minutes with an
audience before you will absolutely bore them. And you've got 30 seconds
before they start asking the question, "Am I going to pay attention to
you or not?" The instant you open your mouth, you are on the verge of
having your audience check out. And since most people have been in
meetings - 90 percent of which have bored them silly - they already have
an immune response against you, particularly if you've got a PowerPoint
slide up there.
How do you then hold attention?
This is what you have to do in 10 minutes. You have to pulse what I
just said - the meaning before detail - into it. I call it a hook. At
nine minutes and 59 seconds, you've got to give your audience a break
from what it is that you've been saying and pulse to them once again the
meaning of what you're saying.
What is the third "brain gadget"?
The brain cycles through six questions very, very quickly. Question
No. 1 is "Will it eat me?" We pay tons of attention to threat. The
second question is "Can I eat it?" I don't know if you have ever watched
a cooking show and have loved what they are cooking, but you pay tons
of attention if you think there's going to be an energy resource. Question
No. 3 is highly Darwinian. The whole reason why you want to live in the
first place is to project your genes to the next generation - that
means sex. So Question No. 3 is "Can I mate with it?" And Question No. 4
is "Will it mate with me?"
It turns out we pay tons of attention to -
it actually isn't sex per se, it's reproductive opportunity. [It is
also] hooked up to the pleasure centers of your brain - the exact same
centers you use when you laugh at something. Oddly enough, I think
that's one of the reasons why humor can work. If you can pop a joke or
at least tell an interesting story, it's actually inciting those areas
of the brain that are otherwise devoted to sex. You don't become aroused
by listening to a joke. I'm saying those areas of the brain can be
co-opted. You can utilize them, and a good speaker knows how to do that.
What are Questions 5 and 6?
"Have I seen it before?" and "Have I never seen it before?" We are
terrific pattern matchers. There is an element of surprise that comes
when patterns don't match, but the reason why that happens is because we
are trying to match patterns all the time.
Is there a Brain Rule that addresses whether you should try to control the use of laptops and phones during a meeting session?
I have this rule response, based on data, and then I have a visceral
response, also based on data. In other words, I'm about ready to tell
you a contradiction. Are you ready?
Yes, I am.
Alrighty. I do believe what you can show is that there are
attentional blinks. The brain actually is a beautiful multitasker, but
the attentional spotlight, which you use to pay attention to things, [is
not]. You can't listen to a speaker and type what they are saying at
the same time.
What you can show in the laboratory is that you get
staccato-like attentional blinks. Just like you come up for air: You
look at the speaker, then when you're writing, you cannot hear what the
speaker is saying. Then you come up for air and hear the speaker again.
So you're flipping back and forth between those two, and your ability to
be engaged to hear what a speaker is saying is necessarily fragmented.
At
the same time, if your speaker is boring, you could have checked out
anyway. So you see, in many ways it depends upon the speaker.
How so?
If the speaker is really compelling and is clear and is emotion- ally
competent, and has gone through those six questions, letting you come
up for air every 10 minutes, I've actually watched audiences put their
laptops away just to pay attention.
I have a style that is purposely a
little speedier. And the rea- son why is that it produces a tension
that says, "I need to pay attention closely to him or I'm going to lose
what he's saying." I don't make it so fast that it's unintelligible - at
least I hope I don't. But I do make it fast, and occasionally I see
comments that say, "Great speaker, but you know, you were too freaking
fast."
This interview originally appeared in the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) magazine Convene.
1.30.2012
Brain Rules for Meetings
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