5.2 Why the brain likes it when you begin before you begin?
Story-Strategy Act 2, Episode 5 continues – The Journey: Current Reality 2
Whether you use high levels of participation as in the example of Ross Kidd and the posters, or implied participation through the use of story as in the Blue Beard example, it is how the strategy captivates the human brain that lends to it the power of transformation.
According to the AGES model Attention is one of the key components of learning that sticks and it is the job of the conference designer, workshop facilitator or speaker to make sure it is captured and held. Both story and participation captures attention because it involves emotion. When emotion is connected to an event, the brain builds a stronger memory of it. Additionally, the emotion activates the Amygdala which signals to the Hippocampus that the event is salient and must therefore be more deeply encoded.
Both the involvement of emotion and the activation of the visual cortex through pictures helps the brain to Generate more associations with the ideas presented. Stories generate pictures in the mind of the listener, and the use of posters also stimulate this part of the brain. If you then also introduce a social aspect where people share their impressions of the story or the participative exercise, you create even more opportunity for generating multiple perspectives and associations.
Both Generation and Emotion are also aspects of the AGES model to help us understand how the brain takes in information so that the learning sticks. Between simply telling a story or allowing people to work with and talk to each other about the ideas through participation, the latter strategy is obviously more powerful for helping the brain to remember, but it is not always the most practical.
If you need more motivation to increase participation levels when you speak, train or conference, take a look at the SCARF model of David Rock. By letting people form an opinion about the story in the room and giving them a voice even before the facilitator or speaker has begun, you heighten the Status of the participants significantly. Suddenly they are not inferior to the facilitator, but co-creators of meaning. Allowing them to choose which pictures to comment on and what words to write down increases Autonomy too. Talking with each other directly, or indirectly by the way in which people notice each other’s comments on the news print also builds Relatedness. Finally putting everyone through the same process and making them co-creators of meaning increases the feeling of equality and Fairness.
The only element of the SCARF model that is not directly involved is the sense of Certainty. It is usually also this aspect that makes people dislike participatory methods. The sense of fear and uncertainty caused when walking into a room where things are not as you expect the, to be can cause a fight or flight response. But with careful structuring it is possible to change this emotion to one of excitement and novelty which draws Attention and uses positive Emotion.
Click here for examples of how you can begin before you begin.