5 Ways to Develop Your Adaptive Thinking Skills

Adaptive thinking represents people’s ability to adjust their thoughts, perspectives, and behaviors in response to changing circumstances or new information. Becoming an adaptive thinker isn’t just about delivering business results. It’s also about helping yourself and your team make better decisions that further organizational goals.?

This week, we’re sharing a few ways to develop adaptive thinking strategies with a little help from Whole Brain? Thinking.

• Learn something new: Look for formal and informal professional development opportunities from your employer and on your own. Change might still be challenging, but when you’re primed to try new things and reimagine existing paradigms, change won’t be as intimidating.
• Embrace Ambiguity:? Recognize that not all problems have clear-cut solutions. Give team members opportunities to try new things, even if you’re not 100% sure they’ll succeed initially.?
• Seek Diverse Perspectives: Seek conversations with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and disciplines. You don’t have to (and won’t) agree with every perspective, but you’ll be more informed and might even get a spark for your own ideas.
• Practice Reflective Thinking. Set aside time for reflection, introspection, and deep thinking to evaluate your thoughts, assumptions, and decision-making processes. This reflection might be as simple as freeing your mind of worries and stress before returning to work. Or it might serve to review work situations and identify things you could have done differently.?
• Develop Cognitive Flexibility. Engage in activities that require you to use different thinking styles or explore unfamiliar subjects. For example, if you know you have a strong preference for analytical (blue) thinking, that means you prefer to deal in logic, data and quantifiable things. To become a more adaptive thinker, you can challenge yourself to be more abstract and imaginative (Yellow) when faced with a thorny challenge. Similarly, when you face a customer service problem, consider temporarily setting aside data-driven calculations to consider the effect on customer relationships (Red).?

Give it a try and share what you learn about yourself and your team!

Your Whole Brain? Reading List

• Thriving in a VUCA World: Building Resilience
• Tips for Navigating Uncertainty Like a Pro
• Leading Transformational Change In Your Team

Now On Demand! Create Everyday Learning That Drives Enterprise Wins

Productive teams drive enterprise success, but only if they keep learning and growing. Our latest webinar, now on demand, will show you how Whole Brain? Thinking tools can create everyday learning and unleash your team's productivity.

Hear from Ann Herrmann-Nehdi , chair of the board and chief thought leader at Herrmann International, and Noam Farago (He/Him) , head of talent management and organizational development at PTC Therapeutics, Inc. on how you can use Whole Brain? principles to unlock innovative solutions, improve collaboration, and achieve measurable wins for the enterprise.

Watch the webinar.

Become a Whole Brain? Champion!

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the Whole Brain? Champion program. This innovative program gives existing Herrmann customers another way to accelerate their transformation to Whole Brain? Thinking and long-term organizational effectiveness.?

The Champion program is a self-paced training initiative that empowers internal leaders to become advocates and champions of Whole Brain? Thinking and cognitive diversity. These Champions complement Certified Practitioners (CPs), supporting them as they empower organizations with Whole Brain? Thinking?

Learn more about the Whole Brain? Champion program.

About This Newsletter

Are you bringing your Whole Brain? to work?

We created this newsletter to help employees at all levels decode and harness their cognitive diversity through the Whole Brain? Thinking Model. Each issue highlights actionable tips for better understanding your thinking preferences — and other people’s preferences — so you can unlock better thinking, performance, and results in your flow of work.

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