Team-Building Success: It's in tHe Cards
Deborah Reed Scarfino, Carol Roever · Business Communication Quarterly · 2008
Preferred modes of knowing are crucial factors to take into account in management education or any teaching situation. —Ned Herrmann, 1995, p. 44 SUCCESSFUL TEAM OUTCOMES frequently—if not always— rely upon proven techniques for managing diverse styles and strengths. One such technique is Ned Herrmann’s “whole brain model, ” widely used in industry (see Figure 1; Leonard & Straus, 1997; Visser & Ratcliffe, 2008). We have successfully used an adaptation of this model to form teams in the classroom. Herrmann, an American physicist and scientist, studied the brain and the connection between the brain and behavior. He concluded that the brain has four distinct quadrants or “preferred modes of knowing” (Herrmann, 1995, p. 63). He reached this conclusion after integrating his own scientific and intuitive observations with the left brain–right brain theory of Roger Sperry and with the triune brain theory of Paul MacLean. Although we are all unique composites of differing preferences and avoidances, Herrmann proved that everyone has at least one primary preference for one of the quadrants, although 90 % of us are multidom-inant. Each quadrant is associated with particular thinking styles and behaviors. For example, people with a primary preference in Quadrant doi:10.1177/1080569908330375