The Pew Research Center reported that 90% of US adults believe that communication skills are the most important for children to get ahead in the world today. Meanwhile, 57.9% of employers believe that communication is the most sought- after soft skill among job hunters.
Even without these statistics, communication skill is evidently vital in business and life. Yet, many people and even some business leaders struggle with communication.
Why People Struggle With Communication?
Proficient communicators think fast, analyze details quickly, and are able to think of many things at the same time. They are able to combine creativity with their logical thinking and multitasking abilities making their speeches sensible and effective in describing vivid pictures up to every ounce of detail. This is efficiently combined left brain and right brain output.
Lack of training in a certain part of their brain is the most common reason why some people struggle with communicating. People who are creative find it hard to grasp the logical half of the communication process while those who are logical are able to dig into the facts but lack the ability to weave an engaging story.
Developers spend their days thinking of patterns, algorithms, refactoring and optimization. They are very creative and show the abilities on the drawing board. Rarely tapping into your logical or creative side puts your brain on a sort of “standby” mode, where your other side’s ability is still existent but highly challenging to trigger and does not work as fast and as efficient as something that is utilized every day.
Using the Bredogenerator
From the Russian term “bred” meaning nonsense and “generator”, Bredogenerator means coming up with nonsense. It is an art that is performed by speaking uninterruptedly about any topic based on one’s experience, personal perspectives or points of view, or anything that happens around them.
Around 14 years ago, my interest in NLP and psychology led to meeting a number of people who wanted to improve their communication skills. Some of them struggled with speaking and other social quirks. I have worked with them on the different aspects of the activities and patterns of their brain that could be used accordingly.
How Bredogenerator Improves Your Communication Skills
There are various ways that bredogenerator can help improve your skills in communication. Here are some of them:
1. Equal Training of Logical and Creative Parts of the Brain
Bredogenerator training encourages the use of your logical and creative brain parts. It entices you to consider details on things and occurrences and weave an engaging story around them. Your brain is a muscle and when both sides are exercised regularly, its performance also improves over time and this can easily be seen in your communication skills.
There are different bredogenerator exercises that promote the equal training of both brain parts. Exercises like “Solve Problems” require both logical and creative parts of the brain. This is performed in a group where one is appointed a leader and the others as followers.
The leader will provide details of a very difficult situation in life, while the other servants will offer alternative solutions. Each solution must be provided with details and steps and how such solution will eventually solve the difficult situation. It sounds easy, but here is the trick:
- The first solution must involve an unreal object or creature from another galaxy.
- The second solution must involve an act that is impossible to perform or one that is highly inappropriate.
- The third solution must make use of the first condition but every action must be described by non-existent adjectives but still makes sense as they sound.
The part that provides the solution to the problem through a step by step process strengthens your logical side of the brain. It trains you to think things in a detailed process.
On the other hand, the inclusions of things like creatures, unreal objects, non-existent adjectives and suggesting impossible actions stimulate your mind’s creativity and power to come up with things that are not readily given.
2. Stimulates Your Imagination
A strong and powerful imagination is very helpful especially when it comes to public speaking. It helps in making speeches more colorful and highly engaging. Doing bredogeneration trains your brain to come up with scenarios and stories.
One common bredogenerator exercise is called “Bring an Item to Life”. To do this, choose any item around you – a hat, a pen, or a glass – then, describe it as if it is alive. Switch your skin with the glass and start describing your environment. It may sound tough since glass is simply a glass on the table. But your challenge is speaking on behalf of that glass for 5 minutes, without taking a pause for a second or more.
3. Recollects Thoughts and Ideas from the Past
In describing things and even in bringing things to life, you exercise your ability to recall thoughts and ideas from your past. In a bredogenerator exercise called “Take it from There” where a group of people continues one another’s story, a person can use his past experience to create and weave stories together.
This exercise is similar to “Bring Me to Life”, but every participant speaks for one minute; then, the next person continues the story and it circulates 2-4 times. The task is to take a small puzzle piece and develop it into a novel or a short film scenario.
When you get used to this, you can add challenges to it – switching emotional states or locations (as in a sitcom), playing dialogues, and creating a sense of action – a story that runs through time.
4. Helps Better Analyze Your Surroundings
Exercises that animate objects require careful observation and analysis of your surroundings. Keeping an eye to related things in the environment is needed to make your story convincing and realistic.
Another exercise is the reverse “nemesis” version of a person, place, or thing. An example is speaking about a gun for a couple of minutes while portraying it as an equivalent of a bottle of water.
People in 3rd world countries are lining up for guns due to the limited access to water while a shower cabin is equipped with three automated weapons right above your shampoo. Water, on the other hand, maybe lava and ships have not been invented for obvious reasons.
Those virtual realities are a good exercise for your “out of the box” thinking, develop your creativity and pump up your associative thinking accordingly.
The question “Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?” is a famous puzzle by Lewis Carroll, to which he did not provide any question and have prompted many to speculate and try to provide the answer. This was then developed as a bredogenerator. The purpose of the exercise is to develop analogies and try to find similarities between two completely different things.
This is played by 3 people. The first one suggests a living thing (raven) and the second one suggests a non-living thing (writing desk), the third person will connect both through descriptions like “A raven is like a writing desk because they are both black and they have parts that are foldable like drawers and wings”. After each answer, the players will change roles.
5. Understands Your Thinking Skills and Develops Generalization Skills
Bredogenerator as an exercise helps you see things in a different perspective, make generalization, find connectivity, and create analogies in your head. This will be then communicated to the people around you in an effective way.
Exercise like Pyramid Linguistics helps develop these skills. The exercise starts with an identification of a thing around you, like a glass. However, for this exercise, it will just be a cup, nothing more. Yet, the glass can also be determined in the higher class — dishes. This is the Class 1.
It can also be associated with other things, this is Class 2– glass that represents as a cup is related to tea, coffee, one liter, porcelain, aluminum and different subsets of glasses. The object which is the glass can be repeated for different glass subsets.
By creating analogies and finding connections between ordinary objects and their different types and subclasses, your thinking becomes wider. Your brain is trained to find connections between things no matter how trivial these connections may be. Through this, you will be able to expand your thoughts when speaking and will allow for a more fluid flow of conversation during a public speech.
6. Develops Communication Skill on Any Topic
Some bredogenerator exercises also help you come up with a conversation starter from every point on each topic. The exercise “Flow of Consciousness” is the best way to demonstrate and develop this skill.
This exercise can be done by you alone, in front of a mirror. You just need to think of anything then start talking after 3 seconds of just about anything that comes to your mind. Do this for 10 minutes and after that, you will notice how natural and easy discussing something turns out to be.
Why Is Bredogenerator Effective?
A bredogenerator exercise is effective in improving your thinking and speaking skills because:
- a bredogenerator exericse stimulates your brain
- It is a communication training kit you can use alone or with other people
- the exercise can be very fun
- It has no practical limits
In addition to these, it shifts emotions, history, adjusts common perspectives in different ways, modifying a point of view in the opposite direction, etc.
These skills are highly applicable in practical scenarios, including:
- Business idea generation
- Product applications and development
- Public speaking
- Mentoring and training People
- Quick thinking and strategizing during sales meetings or negotiations
Several studies have concluded that during multitasking, the brain struggles to switch contexts, restart and focus on other things in the short span of time. On the other hand, people tend to do this frequently like when talking to the phone and then writing a number, on the other, changing conversations with a colleague while writing something, or working while listening to music.
Bredogenerator trains your whole brain and extends the perspective of both its logical and creative parts by quickly switching contexts, thinking outside of the box, and coming up with multiple ideas, while limiting any form of social prejudice.
Do It Often
The secret to a successful bredogenerator exercise is when you do it more than once. Like any other exercises, its effects show when it is done regularly. Your brain and communication skills will not improve massively overnight as it needs consistent training and exercise. Always find time to do bredogenerator when you are with friends or even when you are alone.
It is also best to find someone or a group of friends who also want to improve their communication skills to regularly play this with. This will help you set a regular training schedule and speed up your progress over time.
I have created a guide on how you can market yourself as a public speaker. Let me know what you think!