Brain in Business

Hi everyone,

At the last BFLG meeting Ally and Paul did a fantastic session called "Music is the Swiss Army Knife in your training toolkit".

If you are a member of the BFLG keep an eye out for some great pictures!

After a lively and pretty tuneful intro (which is a miracle as some of us, especially myself, are not known for our singing abilities)we looked the brain and how it is influenced by music. Throughout the session we were considering how we would use music in training and I was struck by how many different ways it could enhance the learning experience. We learnt how choosing the right piece of music for the right situation was important, thinking about volume, beats per minute, words etc in conjunction with what we are trying to achieve.

We covered a massive amount in a short space of time, including active and passive music, the art of listening etc and it was incredibly interactive throughout. What struck me personally was not be frightened of using music, to know the audience and to experiment . If you were there please let us know what you took away from it.

Kerry, Trevor and Johnathon had some questions for the clinic after lunch and will be posting these together with suggestions and how they got on.

Overall another great meeting and hope to see you at the next one.

Tina

Hi All,
I borrowed one of the ideas that Paul and Ally shared at their workshop and used it with one of my groups very successfully this week.
It was a listening exercise:
SPlit people into pairs and ask them to be listener and 'speaker' - No words to be used though. Instead of speaking the 'speaker' beats out a short rhythm (with Ally and Paul we had lots of lovely instruments but with my group they clicked, clapped or tapped pens, the table - whatever was within reach). The listener then had to repeat the rhythm back - we'd already covered 'mirroring' in the workshop so they got that concept really easily. Once they'd done some repeats they then started 'conversing' - so the speaker played a rhythm and then the listener played back something appropropriate.
Which then turned them both into 'speaker' and 'listener'.

There was lots of amusement, energy and listening.
We had a feedback session where we discussed the skills of listening, building rapport when listening, barriers to effective listening and what helped.
There were some great insights so I'm going to be using that exercise again.