How and what do you think about what happened to me? Our Brains
The world around us is incredibly complex. All our senses are continuously stimulated. Just be aware of what you feel, hear, taste or smell as you read this. Do you notice how much is happening around you that you only noticed when you consciously paid attention to it?
The task of our brain is to bring calm and overview to that abundance of observations. It ensures that while you read this book, you can concentrate on the text and that you are not distracted by all those other stimuli in your environment. Very handy. But there is also a downside. Because our brain ‘selects’ to create that peace and overview, we sometimes do not see what is actually happening, but we see its interpretation. We perceive the world as what our brain makes of it. Not like how the world really isas a trade fair organizer you have to combine different things and at the same time think about the intended result, being able to think about the big picture it is like setting up a new company every time, sometimes four or five times a year.
As creator and developer of successful new exhibition concepts you have to be able to take into account of many things at the same time, thinks like thinking like a man and woman at the same the exhibitor and his client we have our own standards for this, three buttons are very important light temperature and sound, everything should be pleasant for everyone and unique. everything should be pleasant for everyone andif posseble unique.
Peples unconscious decisions, throughout the day, affect our behavior much more than we think. That starts very early. From the moment we are born we look at other people and try to label them, to make it easier for our brains. We also continuously learn from an early age from the people around us – from the people who are like ourselves. It is simply impossible not to be influenced by the people around you, the culture and the society in which you grow up. The ideas, opinions, norms and values of our environment make a deep-rooted impression. (Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul even writes, “We are the product of the five people we interact with the most.”) Their views take hold in our subconscious.
Based on all those ideas, beliefs and values, we are constantly labeling and categorizing our environment. That is a survival strategy of our brain. And at every moment of the day we are surrounded by information – sounds, images, smells, facts, events and feelings. It would be impossible to constantly factor every metric into everything we do or every decision we make. And we don’t do that. We are constantly based on assumptions and expectations that set the automatic part of our brain in motion.
Our brains block more diversity
Managers are open to diversity. They also see women as equally competent leaders as men. And of course, managers do everything they can to select the best people for their teams. Why wouldn’t they? They want the best people, for the best results. That is their interest. And that is often precisely the reason why they resist policies that ‘force’ them to have more diversity in their own teams. They now choose the (in their eyes) best candidates, and if they have to hire other people for more diversity, they see that as a step backwards. ‘Are you really saying that we need to appoint other people for more diversity? We just want to keep choosing the best,’ is often the first reaction of managers when an organization takes such measures. That response makes perfect sense. But there’s a catch in it. As managers, we all like to pick the best and we think we do – but we can’t. Not just. And important to remember: if we really picked the very best, teams would naturally be much more diverse.
