Matthew Lieberman & Case Study at NeuroPower Symposium Sydney

Summary - this post talks about ideas and research shared by social cognitive neuroscience Prof. Matthew Lieberman (UCLA) at the recent NeuroPower Symposium in Sydney. It explores some personal and organizational appliations of neuroscience findings, including what I call "The Battle inside your Brain". Finally as a practical example you'll find the case study I presented at the Symposium, describing how tmconsultancy helped develop a high performance internal communications team at Lloyds TSB bank (includes a link to the full text of the case study).


Matt Lieberman and I first met a year ago here in Sydney and it was great to see him in Australia again last week at the NeuroPower Symposium.

This time I was happy to have more time to discuss with him the possible organizational applications of his brain research...although it should be said that owing to a combined jetlag spanning much of the globe (he newly-arrived from LAX, me from LHR) two popular secondary themes were the relative merits of RedBull vs. Coke and how many cups of coffee one needed during the day before contemplating a few glasses of good Aussie red wine.


Session highlights

Matt and his wife Naomi Eisenberger (who did not attend the Symposium) are co-directors of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at UCLA. Their pioneering research into applied neuroscience and psychology includes topics such as self-control, self-awareness, emotional regulation, automaticity, social rejection and persuasion.

At day one of the Symposium Matt offered the crowd of 50 people a whirlwind tour of the anatomy and physiology of the brain, including the troubling fact that the exact same part of the brain is often called different things. As we waded through the different nomenclature a plaintive cry went up: "Why can't they just call the parts top/bottom, front/back??"

From there Matt explored the history and relative advantages of different types of brain imaging (TMS, EEG, PET, fMRI) and the different ways we process experiences to form different kinds of memories (explicit/implicit, procedural/working).

Some myths fell by the wayside during this several presentations, including:

• Left brain/Right brain - there aren't nearly as many differences as people may think and most processes combine the two hemispheres in a number of ways
• Male/Female brain - there are virtually no physiological differences between the two, which means that (undeniable) sex differences arise due to other factors
• Mirror neurons don't necessarily work the way that some people think they do
• To speak of "Mind-Body" or "Mind-Brain" connections as if they were two separate things is nonsensical; they are different levels of description for talking about the same thing

Personal and Organizational Applications: the Battle inside your Brain

For me the key takeaway came on day two, as 70 of us learned the brain science behind emotional regulation and the implications for individuals and teams. Matt outlined in great detail the research he's been doing that describes what I call the Battle inside your Brain.

For brevity's sake, and because you'll be reading more about this in future posts, the key point you need to know is this: the self-control centre of the brain is the RVLPFC, or right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the bit of your brain just inside your right temple. This bit plays a key role in emotional self-regulation, particularly offsetting the emotional intensity associated with limbic pain caused by distress - whether insult, social pain or physical pain.

One of the most effective ways to engage in this emotional regulation is by putting emotions into words. Doing so (somewhat counterintuitively) actually lessens their intensity and makes them more manageable. The thorny bit: it's really hard to do this for ourselves, hence the popularity and effectiveness of various kinds of talk therapy, narrative processes and, I would argue, effective coaching dialogue.

Why does emotional regulation matter? As it happens, there's a lot of truth in the saying, "Control your emotions, or they'll control you!" In this instance, however, "control" is not about denying emotions, pushing them underground or immediately and vehemently expressing them (to the potential distress of those around you).

Rather, it's about striking the right balance.

You've probably heard that anxiety is actually a necessary part of life. Too little and you won't bother to get out of bed in the morning; too much and you simply cannot function effectively - you shut down, freak out or run away.

Neuroscience helps explain this as follows: when we respond to perceived threats, the adrenal system kicks in and heightens brain activity in both the limbic system (emotional: fast, reactive, habitual) and prefrontal cortex or cortical system (cognitive: reasoning, reflective, considerate).

For a time, this heightened activity in both systems will produce the increased mental sharpness that we've all experienced when confronted with a crisis. At a certain point, however, excessive stimulation keeps the limbic system wired while the prefrontal cortex becomes less responsive, literally tightening up and making us less adaptive, worse at creating memories, distracted, detached and prone to tunnel vision. In other words, we are left in raw survival mode and about as sophisticated as a five year-old.

In sum, the Battle inside your Brain is the one in which the cortical system (aided in large part by the RVLPFC) governs and controls the limbic system in order to channel the energy that emotions produce toward getting useful things done.

This is highly encouraging news! Armed with the hard science behind the "soft skills" that help people to manage their own emotional responses (as well as that of others) we can more effectively practice the self-awareness and self-control techniques that ensure maximum productive input with minimum emotional reactivity.


Case Study: tmconsultancy works with Lloyds TSB Bank

As a practical example of the above theory, I also presented a case study at the Symposium, entitled "Developing a thoroughbred team at the Black Horse - Internal Comms at Lloyds TSB Bank"

(Session blurb): Todd will present a consulting and coaching case study on how he applied the NeuroPower framework to help put the new Head of Internal Communications and her team at Lloyds TSB Bank on the road to success. Working with the newly-reorganized team from its inception established a resilient team culture of increased personal accountability and better interpersonal effectiveness. The result: consistently high team productivity and zero team turnover despite a period of dramatic change within the bank and the financial services industry. The case study details the methods and outcomes of tmconsultancy's 18-month engagement with this team at a big-5 UK retail bank in a consulting project delivered through effective face-to-face training and facilitation, combined with a distance coaching program.

You can download the full Lloyds TSB case study here. (As a "live update" to the study, I'm happy to report that at present discussions continue with members of the RBIC team who have sought further consulting support from tmconsultancy for similar projects in the post-merger organization, Lloyds Group.)
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Story conference in Melbourne, 8-9 October

Celebrating Story: Approaching Change One Story at a Time

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin

Have you a passion or curiosity around story? Are you a coach, facilitator, change consultant, qualitative researcher, narrative therapist, OD professional, manager or leader? Are you interested in celebrating and sharing ways that you have worked with story? Are you interested in learning more on how others have used story and narrative in their work? Are you seeking inspiration and new ways forward?

My friends at Babelfish Group have organized a two-day conference this 8-9 October in Melbourne to explore the use of story and narrative approaches to change across the areas of business, government and community.

I will be there to run an interactive session on the brain-based aspects of story, narrative and meaning-making (particularly the neuroscientific reasons why it's so challenging to shift people's narrative in organizations and why change programs often fall apart or fail to take hold as a result). Hope to see you there!

To find out more about presentations and other details, check out the conference brochure or contact conference organizer Andrew Rixon directly at +61 400 352 809.

And - tell him Todd sent you!




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SFC Day Two, plus: "Lord of the Skies"

It's struck me over the two days I spent at the Singapore Facilitators Conference (SFC) 2008 that the theme neuroscience everywhere continues.

Several of the sessions talked about tapping into people's different functional styles in order to facilitate the energy of divergent worldviews and perspectives in (sometimes quite large) group settings - helping to achieve strength from diversity and a rich tapestry of thought and opinion rather then a shouting match of adversarial position-defending. Two of the process tools - Open Space Technology (OST) and the World Cafe - are designed in particular to foster the cross-pollination of ideas across large numbers of people in a moderately structured format.

A few sessions spoke specifically about brain function and how the rich interplay of nurture/nature shapes how our minds make meaning and sense of the world around us. The focus was largely on getting people into a functional, rational space (their NeuroRational Type as I would term it) so they can access the best in themselves and be more open to the opinions of others. Interestingly, I gained further insight into human emotional, limbic responses from quite another quarter on my trip home.


Social Behaviour under Stress

On my way back to Sydney I was unexpectedly part of what I thought was an interesting experiment in social behaviour under stress.

My 7.5 hour flight from Singapore was on board the Qantas "flying art" aircraft Wunala Dreaming, a beautifully decorated 747 with Aboriginal depictions of Australia's best-known icon, the kangaroo.

The flight was tracking for early arrival in Sydney, but due to bad weather was diverted to land in Canberra. There for a variety of reasons we proceeded to spend a further 7 hours sitting on the plane parked next to a disused RAAF hangar, finally being evacuated to hotels at 3AM.

To say the process was chaotic would be to engage in mild understatement, but that's not what I found most interesting. First, some context: there were people on the plane who had come from various places in Europe, which meant flying via London-Singapore and had already been in planes and airports for upwards of 30+ hours before finding themselves locked in a 747 in Canberra.

Nerves were on edge.


Lord of the Skies

What ensued was a small-scale version of Lord of the Flies...in an airplane setting. By this I mean that an already long journey, made longer and more stressful by this diversion, provoked a variety of responses from people.

Stripped of comforting social and cultural conventions and further stressed by fatigue and environmental factors, people's behaviour began to revert to quite an emotional (limbic), even primitive state of being.

While our lives were cleary not in jeopardy - quite the opposite - our brains could not tell that was the case. For tired people in a harrowing situation, the limbic reaction was one of life-or-death. The focus was on survival and people's behaviours began increasingly to reflect their Core Belief Types.

As I've written previously, there are nine Core Belief Types, or basic survival strategies. They consist of three different groups; each group includes the three modes: fight-flight-freeze. So that as the night wore on to become early morning and different versions of a solution were mooted, only to be found impractial, I watched with fascination as people in the plane (including yours truly!) freely shifted gears between the three modes of fight-flight-freeze or, to put it another way, their forward-reverse-neutral gears.


Spiralling down, climbing back up again

Within each of our Core Belief triads, each of us has a default mode. On the plane, some people's initial response was flight (reverse gear) not in that they tried to break out of the plane, but they simply put in their headphones, nodded off or passively watched the situation unfold. Others were in freeze (neutral gear) or compliant mode: although they may have been increasingly annoyed by the mounting inconvenience, they did not act - choosing instead to have a whinge about it to their neighbours or sigh heavily in frustration. Still others were in fight mode quite early on, taking action by using their mobiles to inform local journalists about the situation, speaking directly the the chef de cabine, even demanding answers from the beleaguered cabin crew members.

So what kept us from savaging the crew and one another like the ill-fated boys on Golding's island? A couple of things.

We were given semi-regular updates on the progress that had been made thus far, which lessened the sense of helplessness that we felt in a situation whose solution lay quite outside our control. This, in turn, helped people to better manage the things that were in their control and develop a useful explanatory style based less on emotionally-reactive views and more on a rational (cognitive) view of the situation.

As often in these situations, I observed a sense of community form within the plane. There is nothing like a shared crisis to get strangers talking to one another. People shared stories of the destinations they had hoped to reach, the obligations or opportunities that await them when they finally arrived and generally expressed themselves. A sense of "making the best of a bad situation" arose which I think people found quite hopeful and suggested that there was a way through, it remain just to get it identified and carried out.

After a nosedive (or two) into survival-based and reactive Core Belief (or NeuroLimbic) types of the so-called "lizard brain," I credit the majority of people on that flight with climbing back up into their more powerful rational brain and accessing the particular gifts and talents of their NeuroRational profiles to foster a sense of community and personal connection that saw us all through. It also beats being emotionally jangled and miserable for 7 hours - with negative long-term effects on your health in the that entails.

And so it was that this Dreamtime journey on the Flying Kangaroo had many lessons for us all...

TM

Global outbreaks of Framework Fatigue and Model Mania

In my recent travels across Australia, the UK, Canada and Asia, I've been talking to businesspeople and consultants about what tools and consulting approaches help them to achieve practical and sustained results - in their lives and in their businesses. In these conversations I have noticed two trends: framework fatigue and model mania.

Framework Fatigue

There are many, many models, personality profiling tools, psychometric assessments, systems and frameworks in the marketplace today. You've doubtless heard of them, possibly used them, possibly been subjected to them. To name just a handful:

• MBTI - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• JTI - Jung Type Indicator
  
• KTS - Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• FIRO - Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation
  
• DISC - four quadrant behavioural model
  
• NLP - Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• EI - Emotional Intelligence
  
• AI - Appreciative Inquiry
• SF - the Solutions Focus
• CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• BT - Brief Therapy
• NVC - Non-Violent Communication
• VIA Signature Strengths Survey
  
• MBS - Management by Strengths
• Strengthsfinder by Marcus Buckingham (Gallup)
• SDI - Strengths Deployment Inventory
  
• HBDI - Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator
• Systems thinking (e.g. Senge's Learning Organization)
  
• ICP - InterCultural Competence Profiler
• ILA - InterCultural Leadership Assessment
• Belbin Team (Roles) Inventory, a.k.a. Self-perception Inventory
• LSI/OCI - Life Styles Inventory/Organizational Culture Index (Human Synergistics)
  
• LGAT - Large Group Awareness Training (Landmark Forum, Goldzone)
  
• (...and the list goes on...)
  

Are you starting to get a case of information overload? Well that's what framework fatigue feels like. So that you can find your way out of this maze, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll give my view.

I have used some of the frameworks listed above in my own consulting practice to good effect with clients, notably Solutions Focus, Strengthsfinder, NVC, some systems thinking and some of the ones based on Jungian psychology. Of the others I can say that most are sound, useful and provide some insight to certain areas of human behaviour and performance. Then there are the bad apples; a few have decidedly poor reputations.

Model Mania

You may have had the experience where, despite their better natures and good intentions, enthusiastic people skilled in a given framework, system or method will claim for it explanatory powers far beyond what the thing was ever built to do.

This is model mania: the belief that the entire world can be understood through a particular lens, often to the exclusion of most (if not all) others.

In the famous turn of phrase offered by the American financier and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I've always been partial to a 'toolkit' approach, and in my consulting engagements always look to 'make it fresh' for each new client, using the tools appropriate to the context and issues present each time.

For those of you faced with so many available options and with so many of those options claiming to be all things to all people, how do you know which one does what, let alone which one works? I offer the following checklists, the first one what to beware of, and the second what to look for.

Checklist: what to watch out for

If you observe the following, it's time to ask some hard questions. If the framework, model or system:

• Actively fosters long-term dependence on the consultant or service providers
• Features a lot of hard-sell and constant expectations of signing up for more 'advanced classes'
• Uses processes that are done 'to' you rather than 'with' you
• Keeps materials, tools and mechanics of the actual processes a tightly-guarded secret from you
  
• Categorically condemns certain forms of human behaviour while others are lauded in an unqualified manner (i.e. stop all 'red' and 'green' behaviours in favour of doing only 'blue' ones)
• Encourages you to recruit others (family, friends, colleagues) in an ever-widening, Borg-like assimilation process
• Makes far-reaching explanatory claims across all aspects of human behaviour, as seen through a single keyhole view
  

Checklist: what to look for

To get the best long-term value and real results from your time and money invested, you should reasonably expect the following from an explanatory framework focused on human behaviour:

• Transparent - the tools are put in your hands for you to use for yourself with guided tuition
• Holistic - it has language that works 'from the boardroom to the boilerroom' and all the moving parts work well together
• Integrated - the framework features both internal consistency and an ability to coexist harmoniously with other explanatory models in your existing 'toolkit'
• Humanistic - its tenets line up with what the great traditions and civilizations of the past have had to say about human behaviour, personality and group interaction
• Scientific - uses the latest neuroscientific insights on brain function in a practical applicable way
• Empowering - offers insights to identify blind spots and reactive behaviours, in order to break repetitive patterns of unhelpful behaviour and help you achieve what you want for yourself
• Positive - is based on the belief you are not 'broken' and focuses on helping people achieve all they are capable of being by accessing their particular gifts and talents
• Developmental - describes the process toward personal integration and realization of one's full potential
• Interactive - more than a model for self-awareness, it gives you the tools to better interact with others and relate to them emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally
• Versatile - has application to the fields of self development, effective communication, management skills, fostering better leadership, transformational change in organizations, interpersonal relations, negotiation, sales skills, persuasion and influencing, difficult conversations...
• Practical - results-focused and applicable from the very first day of training

Having used and studied most of the frameworks on the long list at the top of this post, I can say that I have yet to see one that ticks all the boxes of the list immediately as well as the NeuroPower framework.

What is most positive about it is that I have not needed to 'unlearn' any of my previous training. The NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) is an integrated toolkit of useful and practical tools based on neuroscience and brain function. There is plenty of room for other tools and methods that you are already using and that work - because if they work, they must by definition line up in significant ways with brain function.

In this way NeuroPower happily coexists along with other methods and systems...though it's possible that once you have experienced its holistic nature and powerful explanatory insights into human behaviour, it may become your preferred toolkit for any number of applications!

As always, to find out more you can email me to talk about how I am using NeuroPower in my work with clients around the world.
TM

Hong Kong - millions of people, 9 core belief types

(Photo credit: Base64, retouched by CarolSpears)

I've spent the latter half of last week in Hong Kong learning more about the nine personality styles, which I've previously referred to within the NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) as Core Belief Types or NeuroLimbic Types; "core belief" because these styles act as the filter through which each individual views the world and him- or herself, and "neurolimbic" because these reactions tend to be immediate, knee-jerk, and located in the limbic or emotionally reactive centres of the brain (which you'll recognize as the place where our fight-flight-freeze response originates, which I've also referred to as the "mental gearbox" of forward-reverse-neutral).

When you speak to people in the language they understand, you get results

I'm always impressed when I can go out and immediately make practical application of new learning, and that was what I was able to do this week with what I learned in the workshop.

The situation: I'd been trying to have a successful conversation with a friend for some weeks now and she had proven unresponsive to my overtures.

Applying this knowledge, I noticed that I was speaking to her from MY perspective rather than hers - so in a sense I was speaking my language rather than speaking in her language. Once I was able to write something that made sense to her in her own terms I received an immediate reply and satisfactory resolution of an ongoing concern of mine.

This seems quite a commonsense thing - if you try speaking Hindi to a bunch of Germans, chances are we won't get very far. Sometimes our solution, like that of some monolingual tourists travelling abroad, is to SPEAK EVEN MORE LOUDLY AND SLOWLY in the hopes that these "foreigners" will understand.

Well just as no one is a foreigner in their own country, likewise each person's personality style makes perfect sense from their point of view. So I suppose I've learned a little more about the nine languages that people use to make sense of themselves and the world around them, as well as a bit of proficiency speaking the other eight that aren't my "first language".

What was particularly impressive to me is that around 75% of the participants in the workshop were from Hong Kong and another 15% or so were from countries across southeast Asia, yet the core belief types held true across all cultures. Since these types stem from the limbic brain centre of all humans, this makes sense at a scientific level, but my sceptical side was gratified to see that this is a system with such broad-based applicability - not just among the millions living in Hong Kong and the billion-plus in China, but all over the world...

More to come!
TM

Needs-based communication can save your life

This past weekend I attended a workshop on “needs-based communication” (a.k.a. NVC) which encourages people to get clear on the difference between needs, thoughts and feelings and learn how to formulate strategies to get needs met, typically through clear requests of oneself and/or of others.

What I noticed in particular was the importance of accurately distinguishing between feelings and thoughts. In everyday English usage people frequently say things like “I feel you’re being disrespectful” or “I feel this is unfair” or “I feel that you’re not listening to me.” Strictly speaking, these are judgements and evaluative thoughts, not actual feelings (which tend to fall into the broad categories of mad, sad, glad or afraid) and you ought to be saying “I think you’re being disrespectful, this is unfair, you’re not listening to me.”

So is all this just wordplay? What possible difference could it make?

Well…learning these communication skills might just save your life.

Brain function and stress chemicals

Brain research has shown that there are dedicated areas of the brain that serve different functions. The limbic system, for example, figures highly in emotional reactions and their associated feelings. Stressful emotions trigger the body to pump out cortisol and epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline) in a fight-or-flight reaction. In small doses, these hormones and neurotransmitters saved your ancestors’ lives by helping them to avoid danger and/or defeat enemies. They’re part of the reason they survived and that you are here today.

Now the kind of energy needed to outrun a tiger or defeat a club-wielding aggressor is not really required anymore in most of our daily lives. Yet when ongoing stress and anxiety or anger reactions in our lives cause our bodies to be continually flooded with these chemicals the result can be damage to internal organs and wearing out the body’s tissues.

What all this means in simplest terms is that when you use sloppy language to mislabel your feelings and then wallow in anger and negativity, your brain releases chemicals that wear your out body and that can even lead to chronic illnesses like cancer.

An effective way to moderate the limbic function that governs fears, anxieties and anger (that is, the knee-jerk, emotional part of the brain) is to engage the frontal and prefrontal lobes of the brain – the higher “rational brain” functions that are more developed in humans than in any other animal and that enable second-order thinking.

Using your NeuroLimbic/NeuroRational Types

In NeuroPower terms (the framework developed by author and strategist Peter Burow), each individual’s behaviour will be influenced by interplay of your NeuroLimbic Type (NLT) and your NeuroRational Type (NRT). Your NLT is indicative of how your particular brain’s limbic system engages the emotional fight-or-flight-or-freeze reactions to external stimuli, while your NRT is the type of rational response you are capable of choosing when you are able to engage your higher intelligence centres and tap into your particular gift and noble qualities.

Needs-based communication theory tells us that no one is able to give empathy to others when their own emotional needs for empathy remain unmet. This makes sense: when a person is highly emotional and reactive it’s impossible for them to engage the higher thought processes required to imagine what another person may be experiencing, which is the hallmark of empathy.

The ultimate goal, then, is to use your NeuroRational Type to govern your NeuroLimbic Type, and to do so as often and as swiftly as possible. Put another way, you want to be in control of your emotions rather than your emotions being in control of you.

When you are able to engage the higher rational brain to creatively solve problems, create meaning, choose different ways of reacting to stimuli, and empathize with others, there’s a payoff: dopamine. This powerful neurotransmitter and hormone rewards positive behaviour, enhances motivation and can counteract the effects of harmful stress hormones.

There’s good news here: you’re not “broken.” You have everything you need to be happy and to get your needs met. The trick is to identify what those needs are and tap into your NeuroRational Type’s gift to develop a strategy that gets your needs met. So if it’s that simple, why don’t more people do it?

Stay on the surface, or enter the depths…?

Cheers to Sonny Navaratnam for the following useful metaphor: people are like the ocean.

On the surface of the water it may be sunny and calm, windy and blustery, or stormy with huge waves. Conditions can change in an instant and unleash tremendous energy and destructive force. This is the realm of emotions: volatile, unpredictable, intense.

At a deeper level there are movements and currents but these are more enduring and less changeable and momentary than what is at the surface. At base, all people have the same basic needs and when we plumb the depths of ourselves we can identify what it is we need. To do so, however, we need to go beyond the emotional turmoil at the surface. And it can often be a journey into the unknown, a place where >cue pirate’s voice< “Thar be monsters…!!”

Many people avoid grappling with these depths for fear of what they might find; because the surface is stormy and difficult they may assume that’s all that life has to offer and rather than seeking to understand the source and nature of their needs they try to avoid and outrun every storm that’s blown up at the surface. As a result their lives are tossed around like ships on the open sea. Only when people do the work of self-awareness to accurately identify their feelings and underlying needs will they be better placed to get those needs met, as captain of their own ship.

Observation - Feeling - Need - Request

The needs-based communication approach is simple, yet challenging to do effectively.

1) Observation: this involves making an objective statement about a behaviour or event, one that is separate from the associated emotions, feelings, evaluations or judgements.

2) Feeling: identifying the feeling that was evoked. Again, as a rule of thumb, feelings tend to fall into the category of mad, sad, glad or afraid.

3) Need: feelings are simply expressions of unmet needs; in this step, identify that unmet need.

4) Request: make a request that gives the opportunity to get that need met.

An example might look like this:

O: “When I heard you say, That presentation was really pretty average.

F: “I felt irritated and anxious…

N: “because I need to be competent and respected by my peers…

R: “so would you be willing to provide feedback about both what you liked and what you thought I could do differently next time?”

While it has offered a fairly rudimentary overview of the needs-based communication method, my hope is that this post has highlighted the value of effective communication by putting it in the context of brain function.

When you are emotionally reactive and operating only from your NeuroLimbic Type your body is flooded with stress hormones that prevent you from getting your own needs met, let alone being of help to others.

On the other hand, when you access your NeuroRational Type to accurately identify your feelings and needs, make clear requests and connect empathically with others, your body is bathed in positive and motivating chemicals that might not only save your life, but will improve the quality of relationships you have in that life.

So take the plunge…there are some truly beautiful things beneath the waves if only you have the courage to integrate them into your worldview.

(Hat-tip to Sakyakumara as sounding board for this article.)
TM

Mintzberg’s Five (plus one) Minds of a Manager

The business website BNET recently offered a useful summary of the classic HBS article, The Five Minds of a Manager co-authored by Henry Mintzberg (management theorist and professor at my alma mater, McGill University).

The article outlines five mindsets for managers to cultivate in order to cope with the often conflicting demands of their jobs.

I noticed that these five mindsets line up with five of the six intelligence centres (ICs) of the brain as described in the NeuroPower framework (developed by author and strategist Peter Burow). To explore the parallels, I’ve therefore added to Mintzberg’s five the “clarity” mindset, which corresponds to the sixth IC and in a sense completes the set.

Six mindsets, six intelligence centres – how do they match up? Read my full article comparing the two theories.

Just to give away the ending: I think The Five Minds of a Manager theory aligns quite well with what NeuroPower has to say about brain function, which is why when we read Mintzberg’s article it is easy to say, “Yes, that all makes good sense to me, I want to start doing more of those things.”

In fact the great advantage to the NeuroPower framework is that it makes no claim to “replace” other frameworks and theories. Rather, it lays out a powerful explanatory method describing how our brains work in certain predictable ways. And because everyone's brain functions in remarkably similar ways, any other framework or theory that produces positive change and possesses real explanatory power will do so in the exact degree to which they line up with what we now know about brain function.

NeuroPower therefore provides an overarching brain research-based framework into which so many other models can be readily integrated without people needing to “un-learn” what they have previously learned. Quite simply, if it works, it is because it aligns with how our minds are working.

What is more, NeuroPower is a profoundly practical framework that can help turn the best theories from Harvard and elsewhere into real results based on a common language and explanatory system that everyone can understand – from the boiler room to the boardroom.

TM

The ability to choose how to use your two minds

With a hat-tip to Sarah Williams, who's one of the terrific people at Unique People in Cairns, here's a thoughtful piece that delves deeply into brain lateralization and our two quite distinct minds, suggesting that we make the choice of when we want to be in each.


[Transcript and full details are available here.]

Wouldn't it be great to be able to switch back and forth at will? Well that is one of the goals of the work I do: to promote integration of character and personality, to ultimately discover our individual gifts and achieve human nobility.

Somehow after you listen to Jill's story, such words don't seem so overblown, nor the goal so farfetched.

Some thoughts to take you into the weekend. Be well.
TM