The idea that intelligence is static (you are either born smart or you are not) is wrong. Yes, there is a certain amount that is determined from birth, but nevertheless, a person can greatly go beyond the limits given from birth. Simply put, with brain training, a person will be able to perform more complex mental tasks. And at the same time, mental capabilities degrade greatly, even in gifted people, if you don’t develop your brain.
And that goes for company employees as well. You can find really gifted employees, but it will cost a lot and it’s not always effective. Or you can take more ordinary employees and increase their intelligence. The following three ways will help you do this.
Tell your employees that they can be smarter
Give your team materials that tell them how to increase their intelligence. You never motivate your team by telling them they are dumb and can’t do anything. If you tell them that, they will actually be like that. For example, in blackjack casinos, you can always win by bluffing. A professional can simply insinuate to his opponent that he can’t do anything. This demotivates even a psychologically stable person.
The most creative and successful people believe that intelligence can be expanded. And because they believe they can develop their brains, they begin to develop their brains and do achieve success.
A simple example. If a person has never learned a foreign language, it may take them a hundred repetitions to memorize one word. But if a person has recently learned one foreign language and then a second language, when learning a third language, it will take far fewer word repetitions to memorize each word.
Brain development is not only about memorization, but also about thinking in general. If a person is constantly faced with all sorts of tasks, they start to find the solution faster, and the solution gets better each time. And this is exactly what you need.
There’s plenty of research to back up this view. Psychologists from Columbia University and Stanford University observed nearly 100 students who had problems with maths. Many of the students thought their intelligence was already set for the rest of their lives. They were given advice on how to better organize their study time and were divided into two groups.
The first group read an article called “You Can Boost Your Intelligence” about how nerve cells in the brain strengthen connections after learning something new. The other group read an article about ways to memorize new information.
The members of the first group had a change of heart: they believed they could increase their intelligence and made great progress in their studies. You can also give your team similar material, after which your team will believe in their own abilities and actually perform better.
Take your employees out of their comfort zone
If you don’t set challenging goals for your team, they won’t achieve them. Your team really does need to solve out-of-the-box challenges all the time. And encourage your team to solve problems in new, unusual, and more effective ways. Your team’s creativity will then continually improve.
Allocate free time for discovery
Many companies give people time to use some of their time and other company resources to work on their own projects. But it’s not just time that can be spent on their own personal endeavors. These companies ask for a report, the employee has to show that they are actually solving some task. Let these tasks be useless, let them be crazy. The crazier the task, the more original solution to your main task the employee will be able to offer.
From such seemingly crazy ideas, sometimes really cool ideas that change the world are born. Don’t let your employees’ intelligence go to waste. Care about the level of development of your team. People are no longer just cogs. The success of the company is determined by the intelligence of your entire team. The higher it is, the greater the heights your company can reach.
