Category: Corporate

Sensory Intelligence® Consulting was founded by Dr Annemarie Lombard in 2003. She has a PhD in Occupational Therapy and practised with children with learning difficulties for 15 years. She works with a group of esteemed occupational therapists and facilitators to deliver Sensory Intelligence® as a training and development tool in South Africa and abroad.

We had a chat with Annemarie about the Sensory Intelligence® journey and how it came into existence. The answers that ensued, speak of her passion, energy and vision for empowering parents, teachers, and corporates to make a difference to the lives and relationships of the general and the global market.

We hope you enjoy reading part one of two in getting to know the brains behind the business.

What makes Sensory Intelligence® different to EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and IQ (Intelligence Quotient), and why is it so important, especially in the context of the South African education and business landscape?

We are all stuck disconnected and disengaged. This is not just a South African issue but a global one. Life has become super-fast and technology is overtaking humanity. There is too much pressure, too many distractions and families find it really hard to get time to just be and connect!

The intelligences have a hierarchical structure in the brain – or rather the ones that I refer to:

• IQ is in the higher, top/executive level of the brain. It is all about our thinking, scheming, strategising and performing. IQ is always measured against performance and output and never good enough. Rightfully this part of the brain gets accessed for thinking, reasoning, learning and performing.
• The middle part of the brain is the limbic area and the seat to emotional intelligence (EQ). Our collective social interactions and how our emotions that contribute to our daily living, mostly works in this part of the brain. EQ is also measured and the goal is always to improve your EQ score because it will help you to manage your emotions and relationships better.
• Sensory Intelligence® refers to the lower, primitive brain, the brainstem and reptilian brain. This part of the brain is involvement in gut, habits, preferences, comfort levels and acts intuitively.

EQ and Sensory Intelligence® is primarily based around the lower part of the brain and scientists seem to agree that these lower parts account for 80% of brain activity and energy while only 20% gets allocated to the top IQ brain. Another important neuroscience fact is that information enters the brain at the bottom only. There is no entry to directly get to the IQ/executive brain.

So, information enters the brain (and information is 90% sensory – we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, move) and these messages stream into the brain at full force through the primitive, sensory brain FIRST! This part of the brain is thus the first filter and regulation portal. The brain decides here already what needs to go where, when and how fast. So by controlling sensory input we can control the way the brain processes and behaves to an extent already. Then information travels to the limbic/middle brain for EQ and lastly it travels up to the IQ executive brain. Sensory and emotion (primitive and midbrain) have many reciprocal connections and influence each other extensively. Therefore the saying “sensation and emotion are forever married”.

As an example, remember the last time you said something or did something to realise a split second later that you shouldn’t have? That is the influence and power of your primitive brain – it responds without thinking (it does not have thinking capacity – thinking lies in the executive/cortical brain). But it plays an enormous role in our daily functions of attention, emotion and behaviour. These three are the core functions we address in Sensory Intelligence® – attention, emotion and behaviour and how our sensory thresholds and assess impacts on these three major functions for learning, working and living.

April marks Autism Awareness month. Why is Sensory Intelligence® such an important concept to grasp for parents of children on the spectrum?

Ask any autism spectrum adult or adolescent and they will confirm that the sensory elements of autism are by far their biggest hurdle. Autistic people are typically sensory sensitive with either low or fluctuating thresholds. In other words, they are hugely affected (and mostly negatively) by their environments. Everything is just too loud, too bright, too tight or too fast for them. They experience sensory overload and they really battle to cope with this. Their withdrawal patterns and poor social skills are not necessarily caused by sensory overload, but augmented by their sensory issues.

They need consistency, routine and structure. Unpredictable and sensory overloaded environments (like shops and shopping malls) are very difficult for them to cope with. And remember they will typically throw tantrums, get aggressive and/or withdraw in such environments. Parents need to be aware of this – without overprotecting them and shielding them away from such environments. Exposure (but gently, calculated and when they feel good) is great as it teaches them to adapt to and manage these environments. Senses are thus a vital key to autism – it is the window to their souls and interactions. Understand it, use it wisely and learn to look at people and environments from a sensory point of view.

The 3 key factors majorly affected by autism are: 1) social skills 2) repetitive behaviours; and 3) language. Both 1 and 2 are majorly impacted by sensory issues and the way they process info from the environment.

What did you dream of becoming when you were a little girl?

A dentist! Thank heavens that did not come true. I would have been a very bad one – too much detail and precision and too repetitive. I need adventure and variation and definitely people.

What does your ultimate dream breakaway entail and how does it fit in with indulging your own sensory matrix?

Travelling to exotic places – starting off with Italy (I’d love to do a culinary trip there). I turn 50 next year and might be aiming for that as a present. And of course travelling to different places is so perfectly aligned with my sensory matrix. I have high thresholds and I am a sensory seeker – I need variation, lots of stimuli, change, people, etc.

I can drag hubby with (he of course has low thresholds) but he will need to plan and prepare for it way in advance. His choice would have been somewhere quiet, like the beach or an island with not much going on. I guess this time we can go with my choice since it is my big 50!

We had a chat with Annemarie about the Sensory Intelligence® journey and how it came into existence. In part one, we looked at the differences between Sensory Intelligence®, EQ and IQ; how Sensory Intelligence® relates to Autism; and a peek   into Annemarie’s own sensory assess.

Part two takes a look at the journey to here and how the Sensory Intelligence® brand has grown and evolved since its inception in 2003.

You founded Sensory Intelligence® in 2003. Tell us a bit about the journey leading up to the birth of this brainchild?

I worked in clinical practice for 15 years, spent time overseas and when I got back in 2000 I had itchy feet and just could not really get my groove back with clinical work.

Having done a huge amount of continuing education, I loved sensory integration, the theory and the application, and really felt that I was an expert in my field. I however felt the application to children only limited the box for me, I needed a different challenge. I worked with world-renowned therapists in the US and once back home, I was asked to train other therapists. When I stepped into the training role I had a light bulb moment.

I started training parents – that led to corporate teams, my research and the book (and the rest is history). In the beginning it was very hard and I had to pioneer the way. People had no clue what I was talking about. Today the “sensory world” is exploding. I spent years behind my computer thinking and writing with the concepts and applications evolving as time passed. I knew from day one it had to be big, it had to be applicable across industries and it had to be easy, simple and user friendly. I feel as excited and passionate today about it as I was at its inception. Maybe wiser and more tired, but still loving the journey. I climbed out of the box, challenged old paradigms and created something that that simplifies and truly adds value to people’s lives.

Did you realise from the onset that there was a gap in the market for Sensory Intelligence® and that it would therefore be a unique offering?

No, I did not. I shifted because I had to. I was stuck and needed a different challenge. It was really hard though and I literally spent years and years creating awareness about it. I particularly worked hard at the unique offering and I am extremely brand protective and specific. I hate mediocrity, jargon and people talking rubbish. It needs to be easy, simple and practical – taking it back to basics. People too often want highly complex solutions when it is often the simple, easy and straightforward stuff that makes the biggest impact with the least amount of effort.

• Our unique brand proposition is also that we do not see sensory processing as a “problem” which is typical what occupational therapists do.
• We see it as part of daily function and how people respond as a result of their assess and thresholds.
• There is no right or wrong – it is about understanding your sensory drivers and triggers.
• It is a universal process that does not distinguish between age, gender, race, culture, etc.
• It is like temperament – part of your genetic coding and your intuitive responses.
• But we are different yet again to therapists conducting temperament and character work.

Once you know your assess you:
1. Understand your habits and behaviours so much better; and
2. you can make adaptations to reduce overload or arrange your environment to fit your needs. It will make life easier, more stress-free and give you more time and energy.

E.g.:  If you have a low auditory threshold, change the ringtone on your cell phone to be softer/gentler or just work on vibrate.

The Sensory Intelligence® offering has grown significantly since 2003. Tell us a bit more about this and subsequent industries the offering is aimed at?

Senses in Education
For me, the obvious start was in education, empowering parents and teachers as I worked with children in clinical practice. Parents and teachers constantly shared their “aha moments” and insights and often could immediately understand why certain environments did not work for them. A lot of referencing was done to open plan office designs and why it is too noisy, too smelly, some people talked too loud or too much, etc. Expanding insights into the workplace became so obvious and natural. I then got a break to work with a small corporate team who really could relate to the information, assessment and results.

Senses in Business
The first group allowed me to do some easy, simple strategic implementation with one of their managers and her performance shot through the roof as a direct result. I then also started to work with corporate teams.  We have been focusing on how teams can use their senses to understand their diversity, strengths and weaknesses and how they fit together.  It allows for such unique, different and non-threatening methods to understand different behaviours in teams and is particularly useful where teams share space (such as open plan offices) or have to work closely on the same projects.  If team dynamics are good things get done, if not it is usually a disaster.

Senses on Call
The contact centre industry I stumbled on by accident.  I needed to prove that your assess will determine your success and depends on the type of work environment that you work in daily.  I was looking for the noisiest, craziest, smelliest, most stressed and target driven workplace to prove this.  Contact centres were the resulting conclusion.

The first day when I walked into a contact centre and saw it looking, sounding and functioning like a bee hive, I knew I had my work cut out for me.  So my PhD was done in contact centres and I used a correlation study to compare sensory assess with absenteeism, attrition and performance.  Obviously I managed to prove my hypothesis.  While contact centres work really well for a certain group of people (28%) and are energised by it, – 34% of people will die a slow death – they hate it, can’t function, get stressed, anxious and eventually drop out.

My commitment lies herein – to change the industry one person, one day at a time. I sometimes question my involvement in this world but know that making a dent in this industry is part of my calling.  I will keep on trying.

You completed your PhD in Occupational Therapy while building a relatively new, but very niche business and seeing to your family. What did you learn about yourself during this time?

My PhD was the most difficult thing I ever did. Doing the research was fun and interesting and as correlations and results unfolded I was happy and elated at times. Unpacking the puzzle proved that my thinking was right. But the difficult part came when I had to write the thesis. My laptop was stolen after three months of writing (and my hard drive with the backups) and I actually gave up. I just could not face the process and actually experienced a mental block. I then went for three hypnotherapy sessions, which was immensely helpful. I got up at 4am every morning six days a week and wrote for nine months. On a good day I was writing for 12 hours. On a bad day (when I had to work and generate income for the business) I was writing 2 to 3 hours (and this did not happen that often). I had the most amazing supervisor and mentor, Dr Ruth Watson who passed away in the interim, she helped me to stay on track and keep going.

I said no to everything and my husband (bless his heart – he is an amazing man) would take the boys (at that stage 6 and 11) on outings and socials. I did do the mommy things (lunch boxes, breakfasts, lunch and dinner – I love cooking) and the hugs and cuddles, but apart from that very little. My life was totally unbalanced and I was doing my thesis 90% of the time. But we survived and when I handed it in during February 2012, I was over the moon with elation! But weirdly – I hit a major low afterwards and felt I knew nothing and could do nothing.

When complaining to my supervisors they were very blasé about it and said: “It is common and called post-doc brain fog – it takes six to nine months to recover”. I felt disorientated and clueless – but thankfully it did subside after six months. In hindsight – although the most difficult thing – it really did elevate my business and gave me a renewed level of credibility. It also taught me a huge lesson on a personal level – there is nothing in life that I can’t achieve, so amen to that! It also confirmed my hard-working and resilient nature.
And there you have it – a tiny glimpse into the brilliant brain of the passionate and energetic Dr Annemarie Lombard. A woman that has made it her life’s work to get people to rethink the way they live, learn and work in order to cut through the sensory clutter – thereby increasing productivity and understanding the impact of Sensory Intelligence® in the South African business and educational spheres, and even in our personal lives.