by Doug Stevenson

Created on: February 15, 2007   Last Updated: April 13, 2007

"Creativity is the ability to see beyond the obvious, shift perspectives, and explore ideas in new ways." Joan C. King, Ph.D, author of Cellular Wisdom

The worst speaking experience I ever had was in front of 450 witnesses. What made it memorable, for all the wrong reasons, was that I was out of control. It took me forty minutes to cover my first 20 minutes of material. I was all over the place all spontaneous right-brain creativity with no left-brain organization and discipline to keep it in check. It was a paid booking, too. Ouch!

At that time, I didn't know anything about right-brain/left-brain integration. All I knew was that I blew it, and I assumed that everyone else knew it, too. I didn't understand why I blew it any more than I understood why, on another day that same month, I was completely in control and nailed the same keynote. All it took was one disaster to make me vow never to let it happen again.

During the last ten years, I've made it my mission to learn more about what it takes to be brilliant in front of an audience. I've developed my Story Theater Method for strategic storytelling; I've analyzed the dynamic interaction between a speaker and her audience; and I've discovered that emotion is the fast lane to the brain. Along the way, I've also discovered that the path to brilliance has its foundation in the most complex technology ever invented the human brain. The study of the brain and how it affects productivity and learning is called brain science.

First of all, it's not enough to know that your right brain is the creative lobe and your left brain is the organizational lobe. What's important to understand is the dynamic interaction between the two. When your left and right brain are in balance working together as a team you can access what I describe to my students as your genius brain. Did you know that you have a genius brain? It's true.

Consider this: when you were a child, you came up with outrageous questions, made startling statements and got the adults around you to laugh. Think about any child between two and four years of age and you'll see what I mean. Because young children function primarily from their creative right brain, they often make seemingly non-linear associations.

Once we got to school however, they started training us to use our left, linear brain. They helped us learn to focus. They taught us how to organize our thoughts and to think logically. The problem was, most educational systems dismissed right-brain creativity

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