What Do Rats Tell Us About How We Learn?

What Do Rats Tell Us About How We Learn?

Updated July 25th 2023

My mother is terrified of rats. Actually anything that resembles a rat, e.g. mice, guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters, in fact anything that is small and furry, with a tail, and could potentially sit in your hand. This fear does not extend to miniature dogs…yet!

I haven’t got to the bottom of what caused her fear, but I am now scared of rats too! I don’t even know how this happened, because I used to think her fear was ridiculous!  It’s something I am now working on getting over!

As terrifying as they may or may not be, the great thing about rats is that they tell us so much about our own brains and behavior.

Did you know, that when rats are raised in a complex and challenging environment, their brains increase in the size of the cortex, the length of neurons, the number of synapses, and the level of neurotransmitters and growth hormones (Guzowski, et al., 2001; Ickes et al., 2000; Kempermann et al., 1998; Kolb & Whishaw, 1998).

The benefits of stimulating environments are not just reserved for the young. When adult rats are exposed to training and enriched environments, the effects of earlier nervous system damage and genetically based learning deficits can be ameliorated (Altman et al. 1968; Kolb & Gibb, 1991; Schrott et al. 1992; Schrott, 1997).

Although it is not possible to do such invasive research with humans, there is much evidence to suggest that our brains react in the same manner (Cozolino & Sprokay, 2006).

The brain has been shaped by evolution to adapt and readapt to an everchanging world (Cozolino & Sprokay, 2006).

The ability to learn is dependent on modification of the brain’s chemistry and architecture, in a process called “neural plasticity”. Neural plasticity reflects the ability of neurons to change their structure and relationships to one another in an experience-dependent manner according to environmental demands (Buonomano and Merzenich, 1998; Trojan and Pokorny, 1999).

My point is, that everything you think you know and feel now, can change for better or worse depending on what you focus on. Although rats freak me out, I can get rid of this fear!

All this applies to things like communication skills training and customer service training – Courses just actually need to be designed to take what we know about the brain and learning into account. We obviously make every effort to do this at Adaptas™.

By the way, I am still one step ahead of my mother because I am at peace with guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters!

I believe there is a hamster hotel in France, that gives guests the chance to live like a hamster – where you can eat grain, run in a giant wheel and sleep on hay. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJW4RAUDBBo for a short video.

Let us know if you visit it!

Communication Skills: Listening or Hearing?

Updated July 25th 2023

In business and in life, it is essential to know how to listen properly. When we sense that someone genuinely listens to us, a foundation of trust and respect is built. For managers, neglecting to truly listen to their colleagues’ concerns or issues can severely harm the relationship and, consequently, the organisation. If a customer is not being listened to, we lose them as a customer, and potentially also lose a lot of their own friends and family as customers; word of mouth is powerful!

Recently I have found myself attempting to explain, to previous and prospective clients, many of the new processes we use in our communication skills training.

Many of our processes at Adaptas™ are situational-based tasks, taking the form of pseudo-life scenarios. Some tasks involve observing examples of human behaviour, others require immersion within a situation. All involve ‘doing’ and much self-reflection. Without self-reflection and awareness, no real change can take place in how we feel and behave.

Our processes present participants with tasks carefully crafted to mirror the real-life situations encountered in our workplaces and daily lives. Each process centers around a specific aspect of communication and behaviour, enabling every participant to delve into their comprehension and proficiency in that particular area.

One example of a game-based process called ‘Worldwide Whispers’ tests our ability to listen to other people. The game is not the same as, but is definitely inspired by the game ‘Chinese Whispers’, which many of us played as children.

In ‘Worldwide Whispers,’ participants are immersed in diverse scenarios, putting their listening skills to the test. Success in this game depends entirely on how effectively they can listen. Through this process, individuals gain valuable insights into their genuine listening abilities and identify areas where they can enhance their effectiveness as listeners. Instead of assuming their listening prowess, participants quickly grasp their actual strengths and weaknesses in this crucial skill.

Here are some tips on improving listening skills:

1) Listen to hear the meaning behind what others are saying.
Pay particular attention to nonverbal cues. Emotion expressed nonverbally may be more telling than the words people speak. Focus on tone of voice, pace of speech, facial expressions, and gestures.

2) Be an active listener.
Active listening is a person’s willingness and ability to hear and understand someone else. Active listeners are able to reflect the feelings expressed and summarize what they are hearing. There are several key skills all active listeners share:
-They pay attention to others.
-They hold judgment.
-They reflect by paraphrasing information. They may say something like “What I hear you saying is…”
-They clarify if they don’t understand what was said, like “What are your thoughts on…” or “I don’t quite understand what you are saying, could you repeat that…”
-They summarize, giving a brief restatement on what they just heard.

Also, see a great video on listening skills for leaders:  ‘Why I’m a listener: Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer’

Communication In The Workplace – Not An Easy Task

Updated 11th July 2023

Communication is complicated. Perhaps because we do it so easily and often, we generally do not appreciate just how complicated a process communication is. Without even considering the non-verbal elements of communication, just speaking on its own requires the speaker to perform two cognitively demanding tasks simultaneously: conceptualizing the information to be conveyed, while also formulating a verbal message that is capable of conveying it. The number and complexity of the factors that must be taken into account is dauntingly large (Levelt, 1989).

The level of awareness we need to have to be clear communicators is not something we talk about in everyday life. We take it for granted. The first time many people really start thinking about the complexities in communication is if they attend counselling, or a personal development course or a staff training on communication in the workplace or customer service. People generally leave these courses or events with very little change having taken place in the level of positive and worthwhile communication in the workplace and beyond.

Consider this: The meaning of even the most banal utterance is grounded in a set of fixed assumptions about what the communicators know, believe, feel and think. People experience the world from different vantage points, and each individual’s experience is unique to the particular vantage points he or she occupies. The vantage point all depends on so many factors including, background, experience, knowledge, education, gender to name only a few! To accommodate conflict or variation in perspective, communicators must take each other’s perspectives into account when they speak. As the social psychologist Roger Brown put it, effective communication “… requires that the point of view of the auditor be realistically imagined” (Brown, 1965).

However, the content of another person’s point of view is not always obvious. In his classic studies of childhood egocentrism, the Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, demonstrated that the ability to take on another person’s perspectives represents a major milestone in the child’s intellectual development. Young children are unable to detach themselves from their own point of view, and, in effect, seem to assume that the world appears to others as it does to them (Piaget &Inhelder, 1956). This reduces their effectiveness as communicators (Krauss & Glucksberg, 1977). Although adults do better, they are far from perfect, and like children their judgments of others’ perspectives tend to be biased by their own points of view. Under time pressure or when preoccupied, adults are likely to formulate messages that neglect their addressees’ perspectives (Keysar, Barr & Horton, 1998). Moreover, adults perspective-taking efforts display an egocentric bias similar to that found in children.

Furthermore, we rarely are given the opportunity to be told or to receive feedback graciously regarding how our communication is effecting others around us. People may get irritated with us, but even then they are unclear half the time what it is you did that rubbed them up the wrong way. How often do employees wane in their productivity because of lack of comprehension of the task at hand, often because the communicator (their colleague or team lead) has failed to take their perspective. How often do clients and customers just walk away because you didn’t take their perspective on board? Most of the time they won’t tell you either. In fact, they just won’t come back.

Did you know that any conversational speech is produced at a rate of about 2.5 words per second, often in noisy environments and with less than-perfect articulation. Production and comprehension could pose formidable problems for two individuals. Yet participants typically come away from conversations believing they have communicated successfully, and objective evidence probably would indicate that they have. But as stated already it is not this simple, and other people rarely provide us with useful feedback to let us know what we did wrong and what we might do better next time!

Communications skills training is perhaps the most important thing an organisation must consider if it wants its people and its customers to avoid many mistakes that are made in seemingly simple interactions. Getting communication in the workplace correct is inherently difficult as we are not taught elsewhere to be aware of the intricacies of communication and do not appreciate how complicated a process it actually is.

If you would like to have the people in your organisation become more aware of how their communication style is serving or not serving them, contact us and we can discuss how we can help you.

 

 

Being Human – Effective Communication Training

Updated 11th July 2023

The ability to communicate is vital to a species’ survival. All animals have the ability to communicate, some in ways that are impressively proficient. However, no other species have achieved the precision and flexibility that characterises human communication, a capacity due in large part to the uniquely human ability to use language (Deacon, 1997; Hauser, 1996).

When it comes to communication, animals have it easy, in many ways, compared to us humans. Robert Krauss (2002) points out that, upon returning to its hive, a foraging honeybee communicates the direction and distance of a source of nectar by engaging in an elaborate waggle-dance (von Frisch, 1967).  Vervet monkeys (native to East Africa) have three distinctive vocal alarm calls that signal the presence of leopards, eagles and snakes, their three main predators. Upon hearing one or another call, a Vervet will respond appropriately–climbing a tree in response to the leopard call, scanning the ground when the snake call is sounded (Seyfarth, Cheney & Marler, 1980).

We humans similarly use sounds and body language to communicate. However, we have this complicated system of words and a developed frontal cortex which make us more advanced and effective communicators. Unfortunately, this advanced system also just seems to make the process of communication way more complicated than in the animal world.

Bertrand Russell once remarked that “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his father was poor but honest.” Krauss (2002) points out that although the observation is self-evident, even banal, it points to a fundamental difference in the expressive capacities of language and other communication modalities.  Vervets can signal the presence of a predatory eagle, but even the most articulate Vervet cannot refer to the eagle that attacked a week ago; their communication is limited to what is immediately present. Perhaps more than any other feature, it is the capacity of language to convey displaced messages that distinguishes it from other communication modalities.

The ability of language to generate an unlimited number of meaningful novel messages that are not bound to the here and now, combined with the cognitive capacity to exploit these properties, allows human communication to be extraordinarily effective and versatile… and complicated in my view.

We learn to speak from a very early age, which shapes and defines our communication. This is something I am always harping on about and build into almost all staff training programs. As babies we learn to communicate by picking up all the signals around us, we learn about the structure of our mother tongue and how to write in school. Many of us, also have to opportunity to learn the languages from other countries and cultures. Nevertheless, we do not have a class in ‘communication’ and all the subtleties that go with language, body language, the parts of communication that are conscious and unconscious and all the nuances that go with this. The complications of language – verbal and non-verbal cause arguments time and time again amongst people, both people who know each other and who don’t know each other. In families and organisations alike, an inability to understand and utilize communication effectively, and results in things not getting done, because people don’t know how to ask or how to empower others through their communication. On the frontline, staff don’t know how to ask customers/ clients what they need, or to pick of subtle cues of interest or disinterest in their customers.

The way we communicate sets us apart from other animals, makes us human. But in order to utilise this we must learn how to communicate with others effectively. So many problems can be avoided and so many possibilities can arise when people understand the subtleties of communication. When the majority of people spend a minimum of eight hours of the day at work with or near other people (colleagues an customers) it is vital to improve communication in the workplace.

In fact, if people attend effective communication training there is often a knock-on effect on their private and family lives, meaning people arrive happier to work in the first place, and are therefore more productive.

Contact us if you would like to know more about how Adaptas™ can develop and deliver effective communication training for your organisation.

Is Communication Skills Training “Fluffy”?

Updated July 3rd 2023

Recently a colleague of mine referred to staff training and development and communication skills training as being ‘fluffy’. This got me thinking, isn’t it funny the approach that is taken to learning about improving communication and behaviour in society? At school we learn all sorts of subjects. In history class we learn about all the war and destruction the world has seen but not about how ineffective communication has lead to much of this destruction. We study language, our own mother tongue, and if we are lucky, the languages of other countries. We are not, however taught how to communicate effectively, in our own or other languages, with our friends, family, and people in general. Some of us learn about business organisation at school, but how much of the syllabus talks about how important an understanding of each other’s needs is in making organisations work effectively? And even my colleague, who is an extremely successful management consultant, working with leaders and managers on a daily basis, calls staff training and development and communication skills training ‘fluffy’.

Fluffy is a term used to describe cotton wool, teddy bears, bunny rabbits and woolly sweaters and in an online dictionary I just looked up as ‘sentimental or over-romantic; not very intelligent’. To taking a positive swirl on this, when people refer to staff training and development and communication skills training as fluffy they perhaps see effective communication as an impossible dream. We are perhaps looking to do something that is idealized, because in a results-based society the impact of training is often difficult to measure. Many decision makers can’t align results with training, yet all success depends on the growth and communication of individuals.

I cannot tell you how many times recently, coming up to Christmas I walked into stores to buy gifts for family and friends, just as quickly to turn around and walk out to go to one of their competitors. Why did I turn around and walk out? Well a whole range of things. Absolutely nothing to do with what was on the shelves or how glitzy and eye-grabbing the branding was. My exit was solely related to the people on the floor, the lack of interest, enthusiasm or willingness to help. On one day there may be five particular stores that I would have spent money in. But my money was spent in other stores where I received the interest, enthusiasm or willingness that I expected or at least a glimpse of what I expected to be honest!

I am only one person; How many other people out there did the same as me coming up to Christmas? How many of those businesses I walked out of might in the coming year go into liquidation or similar because their staff on the cold face with customers do not know how to make the best of their personalities, to make the shopping experience an enjoyable one. How many of those customer will leave knowing that next time they need to buy a similar product they will be returning to this store to see the same smiling face or a similar smiling face to greet them an assist them with their purchase?

If we are not taught how to communicate effectively or how to recognize the impact of our behaviours in school, or by our parents, or by our peers or through the media, and we can’t lick it off the ground, then where are we supposed to learn it?

Communication and behavior change is simple really, yes maybe it is ‘fluffy’, but it is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to get right if a business wants to be successful in the long-term. Any business I have interacted with and that I have been impressed by continually spend on effective staff training and development and communication skills training, and it is generally clearly obvious to me, based on the interactions I have with those organisations, those who do and those who don’t. But then maybe I expect to much?!

If you haven’t already, check out some testimonials given by our clients… You can hear from others just how fluffy adaptas™ can be.