Topics on Potential: Supervising Diverse Thinkers
You’re an expert in your field who supervises others. A physician, professor, general contractor or small business owner for example. You know your specialty and want others to not only do their best, but your best too! Sometimes, you may supervise bright individuals who simply don’t perform to the level you expect for them.
How can this be? The fact is that people have different brains and that plays out at work in many ways. This is what we call cognitive diversity. Despite the passion people have for their work or learning, they just might not come to that passion the same way you did. There may also be underlying challenges with reading and attention that were never noticed so they didn’t get the help they need. The challenge with being an expert is that you probably chose a field that came naturally for you to learn. When this happens, experts tend to believe that everyone learns and approaches work the same way they do. This is rare. Unfortunately, these cognitive differences can lead to an academic crisis or potential job loss that could have been avoided. As an expert, you may not realize how differently people think and approach their work until it’s too late. Your employee may not even really know what’s off. You value your employee and want to help.
BRAIN TIP: The National Academy of Sciences’: How People Learn II documents the science behind all the amazing cognitive variation in all of us. As a supervisor or human resources manager, the first step is to understand these cognitive differences. Ask your employees what allows them to do their best work. What are they doing when they’re really “in the zone?” When you understand that people approach work and learning differently than you do, you can see the benefits of having all kinds of brains working together. Encourage your employees to make a checklist to follow a sequence of steps if needed, encourage self reflection about basic areas such as reading, writing, prioritization, planning and organization....or focus and attention. Perhaps direct them to Potentia’s blog posts and My Brain Explained Tools so that they can generate solutions to improve their performance. At Potentia we’re here to help your workforce reach their potential! We got you!