Building Intellectual Capital, for ourselves, and the company we work for, is one
of the most important things we can do to get ahead. Mental enhancement
not only facilitates peak performance, but it also empowers us to go anywhere
and do anything with authority and conviction. Cognitively enabled employees
have the necessary skills, knowledge, and ability to do their jobs.
Unfortunately,
few of us realize brain building is possible, or how to begin.
Technically
speaking, brain building is called cognitive skill development and has
been in the psychology domain since the early 1960s. J.P. Guilford, eminent
professor at University of Southern California, and a President of The
American Psychological Association, designed the "Structure of Intellect",
winning several prestigious awards for it. This intellectual model consisted
of a cube of 156 different mental abilities. (See
J. P. Guilford & R. Hoepfner, 1971, "The Analyses of Intelligence"
New York: McGraw Hill; R. J. Sternberg, 1991, "Competence Considered,"
and 1992, "Intellectual development," both Cambridge, MA: Yale University
Press).
Historically,
cognitive skill improvement was isolated within progressive coastal school
districts and Psychologists' practices. Cognitive skill improvement was
used successfully as a treatment in these arenas for learning problems.
Unfortunately, its use as a training tool was ignored, in spite of obvious
work place implications.
Most of
us do not like to admit we have trouble processing information. We may
feel insulted, and even become defensive at the very thought. However,
we do not have to feel self conscious about this type of self-improvement.
Each of us is a unique individual, and information processing can vary
across a considerable range from person to person. But, where possible,
each of us should seek to optimize our mental abilities. Think of your
mind as a valuable core aspect of your ability to be productive. Consider
shaping it up, as you would fine-tune the engine of a sports car.
Many,
becoming aware that a way to speed up information processing exists, become
excited about personal advancement and heightened work efficiency. It all
boils down to getting more work done in less time, with less stress and
effort.
With
the technical demands of the next century hovering over us, and the elimination
of training jobs because of new technologies, it behooves us to consider
how we might rev up our brains to develop our own intellectual capital
bank.
The
Beginning: Understanding Our Brain Foundation. Unless our mental profiles
are empirically tested, we can only guess what our individual strengths
and weaknesses are. Psychologists are trained to test and re-train cognitive
skills on an individualized basis. However, formal testing evaluations
are expensive and time consuming, so this becomes impossible for most of
us.
As
a learning disability specialist, I tested and trained learning problems
for years. Assessing specific learning difficulties, severe cases ADD,
dyslexia, and ADHD, I wondered what the typical mental profile would be,
and how it related to the workplace. It soon became evident.
My clients
from the general population soon included a wide array of people, from
students, professionals, executives, engineers, the average employee, to
athletes. I conducted many field tests with corporations and over a thousand
students, as they are intact seated learning groups and do not travel on
business missing training. I evaluated performance improvement change with
nationally standardized cognitive skills measures and achievement tests.
Although it is known we all have different learning style profiles, and
there are more than fifty, I made some interesting discoveries.
We
can modify or add to our existing learning style inventory. In other words,
we can enhance the learning styles we have by improving our non-functional
learning styles. Developing our weak or inactive learning styles is possible
through training.
We each
have a unique mental profile with high and low areas. Weak areas often
clash with strong areas. Our information processing gets out-of-sync. Not
knowing what the problems are, we simply guess, and cope the best we can.
Unfortunately, anxiety and feelings of insecurity can be a by-product.
Training
can solve the problem and allow all the high and low areas to work together,
putting our information processing memory track back in-sync. I recently
tested one of my employees, an accounting student. While she was happy
to discover she had very superior visual speed and was overly proficient
with memory for numbers, she was also dismayed she was spatially slow with
visual relationships. She confessed, "It always did seem hard for me to
visualize building or house plans, so I decided not to go into architecture."
Fortunately, she hadn't made a big educational time commitment to a visual-spatial
discipline.
Her
deficit, discovered by testing, was born out in her daily work. She has
difficulty designing spatial layout presentations for my office. Clearly,
she would not be comfortable or successful in a job requiring significant
layout and design requirements. She then continued, "Well, I'm glad I'm
informed about this, but it isn't money in my pocket."
Wrong.
Having strong mental abilities is certainly important for work-life career
success, but few people are universally competent.
So, knowledge
of your strengths and weaknesses gives you the power to match yourself
with the demands of potential careers and their skill requirements. Different
careers require different skill sets, some more analytical, some more verbal,
some more spatial, or organizational. Knowing what your strengths are can
save you valuable time, frustration, and money. Such self- knowledge not
only translates into better work proficiency, but also higher income potential.
For example, a former client, who had been labeled in school as severely
Developmentally Disabled, was retrained, graduated from college, and now
is an educational homebound teacher and consultant for parents in the Kansas
City, Missouri school district.
Another
was traded in a professional baseball club for $2 million in a professional
baseball signing, after testing and retraining. Another recently won the
Kansas Open golf tournament. Another, a mid-manager for a telecommunications
company, at age forty, had never received a promotion. He confessed it
was because he was slow to encode new information. Following encoding-decoding
brain building, he is now the Director of the Kansas City suburban plant.
Still another shortened medical school by two years because he could handle
more course work at one time after brain training. Coincidences? Unlikely.
It is obviously beneficial to empower your mental skills, or the gray matter
collateral existing above your hairline. What Can We Do? Become Aware.
Unfortunately,
testing and measurement is serious business, and can legitimately be done
only by skilled professionals licensed to do so. However, there are simple
exercises you can try, which are based upon formal measurements. They can
give you an idea where you stand. My former article, "Jazz-Up Your Short-Term
Memory", received the interest of many who played the exercises and checked
out their visual and listening short-term memories. (Erland, J. K., ASTD
Performance In Practice, Summer, 1998, and KC-ASTD September VISION).
Many other
games and checklists for assessing your right- and left-brain dominance
are on the market in bookstores. This is a good start. Also, we must realize
that Short-Term visual and listening memories are the foundation of understanding
and knowledge, and can be trained to work for you. The next important piece
of ammunition in the battle to process information is understanding how
well you can organize or sequence information. Fundamental to office and
work management, we can learn to develop the underlying skills. Unfortunately,
if you can not sequence (a left-brain activity) or classify information
well, you appear disorganized and confused. This does not garner respect
or a promotion.
