Cheat sheets transform facts into action, unlocking growth through active learning.
Too often, we rely on lectures to share information—passively transferring facts from the facilitator to the audience. But this approach falls short of real impact. Why? Because listening isn’t learning, and recalling facts doesn’t equal solving problems. Instead, facilitators can inspire growth and action by shifting from simply talking to actively engaging participants in applying knowledge.
Cheat Sheets: Tools for Discovery and Action
Cheat sheets are more than summaries of information; they’re catalysts for action. They turn passive listening into active participation by helping learners organize and apply knowledge in practical, creative ways. Instead of just hearing new facts, participants use cheat sheets to spark curiosity, uncover solutions, and address challenges that matter in their daily lives.
Think of them as tools for unlocking potential. With succinct and targeted information, cheat sheets help participants move beyond rote memorization and toward meaningful growth. Facilitators and learners alike can use these tools to connect ideas, harness unique strengths, and make learning a lived, shared experience.
Why Traditional Lectures Fall Short
Lectures often reinforce outdated notions about intelligence and learning. They focus on what participants know, rather than how they can think or what they can do with that knowledge.
This Fixed Mindset Approach has Several Limitations:
• It rewards test-taking and recall over creativity and problem-solving.
• It sidelines participants whose strengths lie outside traditional measures of intelligence.
• It disconnects knowledge from real-world applications.
In a world that demands adaptability, collaboration, and innovation, these limitations are more than missed opportunities—they’re barriers to progress.
The Power of Active Engagement
When facilitators pair cheat sheets with a growth mindset approach, they empower participants to see themselves as problem-solvers and creators. Instead of asking, “What do you know?” facilitators can ask, “How are you smart?” This simple yet profound shift helps unlock new perspectives and encourages learners to explore their potential.
Growth Mindset Practices Encourage Participants to:
• Approach challenges with curiosity and creativity.
• Collaborate to find solutions that benefit everyone.
• Adapt knowledge to dynamic, real-world contexts.
From Listening to Learning with Cheat Sheets and Leading with Curiosity
Facilitators can re-imagine their role by shifting from knowledge dispensers to catalysts for growth. With tools like cheat sheets, they help participants discover connections, activate their strengths, and create solutions that extend far beyond the retreat or workshop.
The goal isn’t just to share facts but to inspire action. By applying knowledge in ways that improve our shared situations, we transform learning into an experience that’s dynamic, inclusive, and deeply meaningful.
How to Get Started
For some facilitators it’s easier to grow in small increments. For instance, if we already have a talk prepared for our session, have listeners create their own cheat sheets of facts as they listen. Or we may start a session by participants pair-sharing research facts they will use to solve a real life problem in ways that optimize possibilities. The idea here will be to actively look beyond problems and to apply possibilities for change and growth.
Rather than water-tight answers that rote learning sometimes demand, we start with curiosity that may begin by asking the two-footed question, “If we were to access and value talents from every person here, to resolve our issue, what would we do first?” Then do that practice and reflect together on its validity for growth.
Another Way to Launch the Cheat Sheet Approach
To apply facts in our efforts to sustain a growth mindset, we will start small to make the transition from listening to learning and leading, easier. How so?
Make copies or digitize our talk or lecture and distribute this fact related content to be used as cheat sheets for actively resolving key issues that relate to the session topic and to real world issues. How so?
Let’s say participants pair-share to use the cheat sheet facts to address a question such as:
“How might using a multiple intelligence approach help all of us to grow our IQ and expand our creativity during any collaboration?
Take the Example of Creating a Cheat Sheet to Implement Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences:
We may add key facts for each intelligence to show several possible uses in solving a problem or creating a sustainable product.
1. Linguistic Intelligence – Communicating ideas effectively.
2. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence – Solving problems analytically.
3. Spatial Intelligence – Visualizing possibilities.
4. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence – Using movement to express and solve.
5. Musical Intelligence – Recognizing patterns in sound and rhythm.
6. Interpersonal Intelligence – Working well with others.
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence – Reflecting deeply on our own thinking.
8. Naturalist Intelligence – Understanding and working with the environment.
Using our cheat sheet, we can explore the two-footed question: “How are we smart?” Instead of treating intelligence as a single measure, participants recognize that they—and others—have multiple strengths. It’s key to know we grow these personal and collective capabilities by using them more. Applying this understanding to a problem opens the door to diverse, creative solutions.
Cheat Sheets in Action: From Problems to Possibilities
Let’s consider a real-world problem: reducing food waste in a community. A lecture might present statistics and predefined solutions, but a growth mindset facilitator would use a cheat sheet to activate and apply diverse intelligences to problem solve or produce top-shelf products:
• Linguistic Intelligence: Draft a community campaign using persuasive language.
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: Analyze data to identify where waste occurs most.
• Interpersonal Intelligence: Organize group discussions to gather ideas from community members.
• Naturalist Intelligence: Study local ecosystems to design composting systems.
This brain-friendly approach invites collaboration and taps into participants’ unique strengths, fostering ownership and innovation. Instead of merely recalling facts about food waste, individuals engage in solving the problem using their collective intelligences.
Why this Matters: From Fixed to Growth Mindset
Cheat sheets embody a growth mindset by emphasizing adaptability, creativity, and problem-solving. They help learners see intelligence as dynamic and diverse, rather than fixed or singular. In contrast, lectures perpetuate a fixed mindset by rewarding only those who fit into narrow academic molds.
Sample Cheat Sheets to Help Apply Facts, Solve Problems and Create Products
By integrating tools like cheat sheets with the two-footed question, “How are you smart?”, we encourage learners to:
1. Recognize their unique strengths.
2. See challenges as opportunities to grow.
Collaborate with others who differ to create meaningful, real-world solutions.
As we shift from telling facts in lectures and begin to transform lectures into cheat sheets it’s more than a change in method. It’s a transformation of mindset. When we activate multiple intelligences and frame intelligence as a dynamic, inclusive concept, we move beyond the limitations of rote memory or fixed mindset. Instead, we cultivate problem-solvers who are not only knowledgeable but also resourceful, collaborative, and capable of tackling real-world problems.
So, the next time we face a challenge, let’s ask ourselves, “How am I smart?” Then, create a cheat sheet of possibilities we will actualize and watch as we shift into doing solutions that unfold in magnificent outcomes.
Have we paused to consider lately how MI helps us to resolve problems and how multiple intelligences helps us develop our unique literacies?
1 Mathematical or logical literacy would enable us to trace the logical chains of reasoning to discern where problems rooted. (Example …?)
2. Verbal linguistic literacy would include reading and discussing current and past trends, as well as writing a plan for sustainable growth, and perhaps even proposing it to other leaders.
3. Musical or rhythmic literacy would possibly have us composing musical solutions or studying those who have expanded their world through music.
4. Visual spatial literacy would create or use images, graphs, or visual portrayals to understand and explain problems and their creative and sustainable possibilities.
5. Bodily-kinesthetic literacy would engage us in movement, building and handling materials in ways that deepen understanding about past and future economic challenges and opportunities.
6. Interpersonal or social literacy would help us to discern and respond well to moods, temperaments, motivation, and desires of different people as they relate to problems and possibilities.
7. Intrapersonal or introspective literacy taps into our self-knowledge, integrity, personal preferences and discrimination for good or bad choices that impact us and those around us.
8. Naturalistic literacy gives us mental tools to draw on patterns and designs in nature as a way to see real world problems and propose nature-related solutions for sustainable growth.
A new look at the brainpower within multiple intelligences is helping us to improve learning – by facilitating more brainpower than can be found in lectures or speeches. We illustrate here how all participants find space and support smart skills to speak up and feel heard!
We may be wondering: “What criteria is required before a skill accurately becomes an intelligence?” If so, we could start with related facts that foster applications, so that we use more intelligences to shape a more effective “lived-experiences”.
Simply stated we’ll craft cheat sheets to actively and collaboratively work more intelligences into our problem-solving practices that get us sustainable growth minded results.
The Bottom Line
The shift from lectures to cheat sheets is more than a change in method—it’s a transformation of mindset. When we activate multiple intelligences and frame intelligence as a dynamic, inclusive concept, we move beyond the limitations of rote memory. Instead, we cultivate learners who are not only knowledgeable but also resourceful, collaborative, and capable of tackling real-world problems.
So, the next time we face a challenge, let’s ask, “How am I smart?” Then, create a cheat sheet of facts that foster possibilities and watch as the solutions unfold.
