New Zealand Edition

The impact of success and failure on your brain

Breakthrough research in neuroscience has shown that success triggers plasticity – the brain’s ability to alter in response to experience. Perhaps more interesting, is that failure seems to have no impact on the brain at all.

The brain tracks success and failure in the prefrontal cortex and a study undertaken at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, saw noticeable changes in brain activity when a task was completed successfully but very little change after failure.

Lead researcher, Earl Miller, says that if you get a reward for success, then the brain remembers what it did correctly and becomes more efficient. But with failure, unless there is a clear negative consequence (such as getting a shock when attempting to climb over an electric fence) the brain doesn't change at all.

Being aware of this is useful because it gives us more reason to keep on trying when we fail. Our brains don’t store failure so there’s no need to be scared of failure.  As trainers and managers, this information is crucial to motivating others and understanding the importance of rewarding success – which doesn't take more than a quick pat on the back or an appreciative email.

Serving the South Island and beyond

If you look at their HBDI® profiles, you might assume that Claire Harvey (who has extreme preferences in the yellow and red quadrants) and Kathy Jamieson (who prefers left-brained thinking) are a total mismatch. Not so – the pair are good friends and successful business partners.

Together, Claire and Kathy make up Jamieson Harvey and Associates – consultants in people performance and development – based in the South Island.

The duo has been firm advocates of HBDI® since the early 90s when they worked in Human Resources at BNZ. After a number of years working in organisational development, performance management and training delivery within BNZ, each independently decided to leave the bank to pursue a consulting career. They formed Jamieson Harvey in 2002 and have gone from strength to strength ever since.

Whole Brain® Technology is a large part of their business with the pair using it to build high performance teams, deepen individual’s understanding of their thinking preferences, coach staff, enable businesses to change their approach and allow for easier group decision-making.

Kathy says:  “HBDI® has the ability to solve ALL business issues. It’s a framework in which to solve existing identified problems, but the real beauty of the instrument is that it can then be applied to other areas of the business.”

As well as regularly facilitating Herrmann workshops such as StartThinking and ThinkAbout Communication, Kathy and Claire integrate Whole Brain® Thinking into clients’ existing business processes such as leadership programmes and sales models.

“HBDI® is so easy to grasp. People get it quickly and can modify behaviour accordingly,” says Claire. “And it develops a common language that endures over time.”

One of the greatest benefits they observe in clients that adopt Whole Brain® Thinking, is that it creates tolerance for difference and an appreciation for diversity, leading to better leadership practices and better business results.

Based in Nelson and Christchurch, Kathy and Claire work independently or as a team with clients across the country. As a duo they offer a Whole Brain® perspective and say that clients often appreciate seeing how two people with opposing thinking preferences work so brilliantly together – a perfect example of Whole Brain® Thinking in operation.

In her spare time, Nelson-based Kathy sings in a Barbershop quartet (a very precise musical art form which she describes as ‘left-brained music’) and explores the South Island on her motorbike.

Claire lives on a lifestyle block just outside of Christchurch where she can blissfully ignore clocks (she hates being constrained by time!) and relax with friends, family as well as the odd cow or horse.

HINZ fully supports Claire and Kathy to promote and deliver the Whole Brain® Advantage to our southern clients. To contact them please get in touch with the HINZ office.

What we like this month

We’ve hunted out some cool websites that might appeal to each thinking quadrant. If you’re whole brained then you probably won’t be able to decide which to try first!

If your preferred thinking is blue then take a look at www.wolframalpha.com. All you need to do is enter your question or calculation into the website and it will spit out all kinds of statistics, numbers and facts. For example, if you enter your birth date it will tell you when the sun rose and set on your day of birth, what phase the moon was in, exactly how many days ago you were born and so on and so on.

For those of you who prefer green quadrant thinking, you’ll love what www.docs.google.com can do for you. It allows you to create documents such as spreadsheets and then edit and access them from anywhere, store them online and publish your work to share with others. Best of all, it all happens in real time so multiple people can view and make changes to documents at the same time.

A real feel-good website, www.1000awesomethings.com/the-top-1000/ is bound to appeal to red quadrant thinkers. It’s a list of life’s simple pleasures with one more being added every day. Here are some examples:
#992 - Being the first table to get called up for the dinner buffet at a wedding.
#877 - Getting in a line before it gets really long.
#765 - Thinking it’s Thursday when it’s Friday.

Yellow thinkers should check out www.arounder.com – an amazing website with 360° imagery of cities and towns around the world. Why not meander through the streets of Berlin or check out the views from George Clooney’s house in Lake Como!

Our big green has had a big RED moment and it was curtains for us

We fell in love with Natalie and she was in love with some guy from Hamilton. Last Thursday was her last day with us and we are all sad. Of course we wish her all the best. Curse you cupid! Natalie has scored a great Communications role and we know she will be successful. We wish her every success.

All correspondence with Natalie to be directed to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it until her replacement is found.

AND ACTION!

Twenty of our Certified Practitioners joined us at our Takapuna office for an invigorating and fun learning session run by our Belgium maestro Cyriel Kortleven from ‘NEW SHOES TODAY’. In this 4 hour session Practitioners received 10-15 items to include in their catalogue of facilitator interventions, designed to put course participants at ease, to raise levels of engagement and/or trust and stimulate thinking. Exercises such as: Biggest common element, The birth map, The line-up, 1-2-3, Whosh-Ho-Zap-Grovieciousis –Freak out, Yes but!, What r u doing.

The exercises that build trust and promote creativity gained the most interest and questions. The enthusiasm of die hard skeptics was all the evidence we needed for such a successful session. Cyriel provided an avalanche of knowledge on how to best apply the art of improvisation to business groups. Have a look at a copy of ‘Idea Killers’ which most of us encounter in our jobs everyday.

Download it here.

Online praise for HBDI® - Read what our fans have to say

As Herrmann Certified Practitioners, we’re all great believers in HBDI® and what it can achieve. And we’re not the only ones!

Below are some excerpts from an online forum (a training website www.trainingzone.co.uk) where a user asked about people’s experiences with HBDI®. These unsolicited testimonials are inspiring examples of HBDI®’s infinite value.   

Fan #1

“I started using HBDI in 1988 when I worked for a financial advisory firm and watched the advisor in the next office turn his career and life around by using the tool. He was in the bottom 20% in production until the HBDI turned the light on for him and showed him that he was disposed to do the business differently. He changed his approach literally over a weekend and was in the top 10% in a year.

“Since then I've used the HBDI to help hundreds of salespeople on four continents.  Occasionally I'll use DISC or Myers Briggs - but the HBDI is easier to grasp, is great for team building and does a better job helping people think about how to communicate more effectively. “

Fan #2

“I have not only undertaken academic research on improving learning effectiveness using the HBDI,  I have also used it for personal and professional development and have seen it, quite literally,  transform attitudes, working relationships and communication within and across teams.

“It is more complex, more subtle and more illuminating than Myers Briggs, yet is easily understood by all. My company, Stillmuchtooffer Ltd., offers expertise in a range of instruments but I do not think there is a better tool than the HBDI either for management analysis and development or for individual, team and company growth.”

Fan #3

“I have been using it since 1996, have brought it into many organisations, taking both individuals and groups at all levels of the organisation through it for personal or team development. I like it because it doesn't carry the stigma of "personality" for my clients, most of whom have been through other instruments and found them to be too complex and, in the end, useful for them.  

“I use it to help people understand the power of being ‘whole-brained’, and how to do just that. It is physiologically possible to train your brain to become more whole-brained, so it gives people optimism about their ability to grow. 

“I consider it an incredibly robust instrument, it's enjoyable for people and is easy to understand. Feedback workshops are fun, interactive and leave participants with practical next steps. I've used it:

• with teams for self-awareness and to build team effectiveness
• for inclusion initiatives to help people recognise, value and seek out the perspectives of others
• for increased communication effectiveness
• within Change Management around small and large scale initiatives.”

Please send your stories to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . so we can share them and provide inspiration for other’s thinking.

Join our Facebook fan base today.

When world’s collide: How to deal with the differing demands of your personal and professional lives.

Register for the next Whole Brain Webinar - March 23rd @ 12.00pm AEDST

Presented by Michael Morgan and Susie Leonard Weller, author of the best selling book Why don't you understand? Improve family communication with the 4 Thinking Styles.

This webinar will explore:

• What are the challenges to balancing our personal and professional lives?  
• How can each quadrant contribute to a higher quality of life?
• How does a logical rational thinker at work show empathy and understanding at home?
• How does the creative conceptual thinker cope with the discipline needed to get the family to school?
• How can you reduce the stress and be more flexible?

Upcoming Events

Herrmann Whole Brain Certification

For the full list of Herrmann Certification dates please visit the Events Calendar on our website.