right brain coaching

Right brain thinking – or whole brain thinking
You’ve asked for ideas for right brain exercises. I’m assuming here that you are running a session on creative thinking. It is a common misperception that creative thinking is a right brain activity. In fact the greatest creators are whole brain thinkers able to tap in to both logical left and more intruitive right brain thinking. For example, Picasso, an artist made very careful notes about the specific compilation of colours, Einstein, a scientist, which required a heavy use of left brain logic, was nearly thrown out of school for daydreaming.

It is true that in the West our upbringing, society and a traditional education means our left brain thinking is in most cases better developed, but we need to be wary of undervaluing left brain thinking when trying to train creativity. (For more on whole brain thinking have a look at some of the work of Tony Buzan).

Instead of right brain thinking, you might like to consider a session on something Michael Michalko calls productive thinking. This is about looking at problems from a wide variety of perspectives instead of relying on past experience to solve problems.One way to do this is to pose a lateral thinking question, (one of those obscure ones is best) and instead of encouraging the right answer (which in my experience has little to do with creative thinking) try to get your participatns to identify as many different potential answers as they can. This will involve them looking at the situation from lots of different perspectives/angles and generating a wide variety of ideas.

If you’d like more help/ideas let me know.

2 Responses

rodwebb says:

April 10, 2003 at 10:37 am

Right brain thinking – or whole brain thinking
You’ve asked for ideas for right brain exercises. I’m assuming here that you are running a session on creative thinking. It is a common misperception that creative thinking is a right brain activity. In fact the greatest creators are whole brain thinkers able to tap in to both logical left and more intruitive right brain thinking. For example, Picasso, an artist made very careful notes about the specific compilation of colours, Einstein, a scientist, which required a heavy use of left brain logic, was nearly thrown out of school for daydreaming.

It is true that in the West our upbringing, society and a traditional education means our left brain thinking is in most cases better developed, but we need to be wary of undervaluing left brain thinking when trying to train creativity. (For more on whole brain thinking have a look at some of the work of Tony Buzan).

Instead of right brain thinking, you might like to consider a session on something Michael Michalko calls productive thinking. This is about looking at problems from a wide variety of perspectives instead of relying on past experience to solve problems.One way to do this is to pose a lateral thinking question, (one of those obscure ones is best) and instead of encouraging the right answer (which in my experience has little to do with creative thinking) try to get your participatns to identify as many different potential answers as they can. This will involve them looking at the situation from lots of different perspectives/angles and generating a wide variety of ideas.

If you’d like more help/ideas let me know.
TrainingZone says:

April 17, 2003 at 3:30 pm

Use ALL your Brain!
Hi Michael,
Like your other respondent, I would ask you to make sure your participants make full use of the faculties of both hemispheres!

Check out Tony BUZAN’s books & work:
“The Mind Map Book”, “Use your head”, “Head Strong”.

If you’d like to contact me directly, I can make some more specific suggestions.

Dave