Brain Circuit Types and How They Are Mapped

Creative Brain Type Map(4).pngBCT-quadrants

Brain Circuit Types is a tool to deepen your understanding and perspectives of your greatest strengths and the strengths of those around you by identifying neurocognitive loops.

Awareness of brain types can give language to how people work with and interact with others. And why you have a pet peeve about your co-worker’s meeting agenda or your how your friend “plans” outings.

The goal is not to be all things to all people. It is to acknowledge and embrace who you are, and in doing so, honor and embrace who other people are and see them for their gifts.

The most effective teams have representation from all brain types and lean on the strengths of each. The benefit of knowing your own brain type is to understand why you thrive under certain circumstances and with certain types of work and to attempt to recreate those situations more often. The benefit of knowing others brain types is to assist in how to best utilize, communicate, and work with them, to your own and their benefit. This makes awareness valuable outside of workplace as well, with your family and friends.

 

The Brain Types

Brain Circuit Types fall into quadrants with the axes of: 

Y Axis: Intuitive - Analytical: 

How you make decisions. Do you naturally approach decisions making with your gut feeling (intuitive) using subconscious data or look for historical data and conscious explanation (analytical)? 

X Axis: Deliberate - Spontaneous: 

Personality spectrum. Are you sequential regardless of context (deliberate) or is there no plan / you thrown the plan out at a moment’s notice (spontaneous)? 

 

Seed Planter

Intuitive - Deliberate  

Strengths: Can focus on and steer towards future impact. Great visionaries.  

Liabilities: Lack of attention to details can frustrate others, especially Master Carpenters. 

Seed Planters are focused on impact and the future, one to three years out. Highly in-tune with the zeitgeist and the near future of the world, their gifts are cultivating growth in individuals and organizations. They may lack attention to details that some may see as lacking actionability and lead to waxing poetic. Seed Planters focus on cultivating the harvest that will benefit others in years to come.

 

Time Traveler

Intuitive - Spontaneous 

Strengths: Can connect what is happening right now, to what it means hundreds of years from now. Highly innovative.  

Liabilities: Can been seen as unfocused, especially to a Minefield Navigator. 

Time Travelers are innovative and far future thinking, connecting the micro to the macro in ways the rest of us would not see. They love to try new things, be inspired, and inspire others towards new visions. They are famous for the 11th hour idea that can leave the rest of us reeling from their unpredictable nature. Time Travelers approach every conversation as a brainstorm. They are highly innovative, status-quo disrupters driven by vision and mission who want the freedom to create and change the world.

 

Master Carpenter

Analytical - Spontaneous 

Strengths: Productive and detail oriented. Highly efficient. 

Liabilities: Take on too much and burn out. Can been seen as stuck in the weeds, especially to Seed Planters.

Master Carpenters love their lists. They are the actualizers, making things happen with precision and speed. They want to get things done, move to action, and are quick thinkers who are often pulled into day-to-day operations to deal with arising challenges. MC's are so driven by completing a task they will even make a box to check off after the task is complete. They struggle to say no and because of this, others will often delegate to them. MCs will "take breaks" by working on other projects. Their motto is "if you want something done right, do it yourself".

 

Minefield Navigator

Analytical - Deliberate

Strengths: Can see the pitfalls and issues ahead. Great at building systems.  

Liabilities: Can be seen as negative and shutting ideas down ideas, especially by Time Travelers. 

A Minefield Navigator can see the problems and issues that can arise. They point these out to be helpful (who would want to step on a landmine?) but can be perceived as negative by other brain types although they don't intend to be. They are skilled at avoiding failures and creating efficiency. Because of their accuracy at spotting landmines they can also be reluctant to try someone else's idea. They love to create systems and infrastructures to move forward a strategy. In fact MN’s create systems for everything, whether they have identified it as such. They manage risks, keep conversations on track, and move forward processes. 

 

Mapped Location Meaning

There is no “better” or more desirable place to map. Like a baseball team, some players are specialist and are highly efficient at just one or two things, such as hitting home runs. A useful player to the team but needs the support of others to make up for their liabilities. Then there are players that are generalists. They can play multiple positions and hit for average. Their flexibility can be used in multiple ways making them desirable, but a team of only utility players (generalists) would not fare well because of the lack of specialist to really accel at certain aspects.

Anyone can (by internal motivation or external forces) exhibit the characteristics of any brain type however, the way you most organically and naturally act and think is your Brain Circuit Type and your strength. While everyone at times needs to operate with the characteristics of all brain types (Minefield Navigators can be innovative, Seed Planters can work through details, Time Travelers can build a system, and Master Carpenters can plant seeds of future impact), focusing on an individual’s or a group’s Brain Type means operating with your strengths, increasing productivity and people’s relationship to their work.

The further you are from the center of the graph, the more of the characteristics of that Brain Type you are likely to embody more often. The closer to the center, the more you more you will act on characteristics from all brain types, however, we still find that even near the axes, mapping into any quadrants means you predominantly share the characteristics of that brain type.

BCT-lcoation-meaning
 

Schedule a Brain Circuit Types Workshop

We offer a 90 minute (can also be condensed to 60 minutes if necessary) workshop for Brain Circuit Types for any group. It can be done for just your team, or your entire firm, school, or organization. We will map everyone’s Brain Circuit Type prior to the workshop and then walk through the definitions, implications, and uses. You will also receive a breakdown of the brain types in your group. In addition to presenting the information, we will use breakout groups to discuss and reflect on this new perspective of ourselves and others.

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