15,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Discover how scientific knowledge of the brain can make you a better leader Based upon the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience and advances in brain-based education, Leadership Brain For Dummies gives you the edge to influence, lead, and transform any team or organization. Drawing concrete connections between the growing scientific knowledge of the brain and leadership, this book gives you the skills to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, adopt a style of leadership that suits your characteristics, determine the learning styles of individual employees, and conduct training sessions that can physically change brains. * The author is an international educational neuroscience consultant and an adjunct professor, teaching brain-compatible strategies and memory courses. She is a member of the American Academy of Neurology, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the Learning and Brain Society * Leadership Brain For Dummies provides practical, hands-on guidance for applying the information to make you a better leader The Leadership Brain For Dummies positions current and aspiring leaders to be at the very top of their leadership game.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 565
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
Ähnliche
The Leadership Brain For Dummies®
Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
Foolish Assumptions
What You’re Not to Read
How This Book Is Organized
Part I: Leadership Is All in Your Head
Part II: Tapping Into the Brain of a Leader
Part III: Working with the Brains You Have
Part IV: Training and Developing Brains
Part V: The Part of Tens
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Leadership Is All in Your Head
Chapter 1: Connecting Brain Science to Leadership Principles
Defining Leadership
Knowing and amending your leadership style
Providing feedback
Developing high emotional intelligence
Ensuring a safe working environment
Communicating effectively
Making decisions with heart and head
Leadership on the Brain
Balancing novelty and predictability
Grasping the chemical element
Sculpting brains — yours and theirs
Different strokes for different brains
Using Brain Science to Build Your Team
Understanding male and female brains
Bridging the generation gap
Goal setting and goal getting
Training with the Brain in Mind
Supporting trainees’ bodies and brains
Making training stick
Chapter 2: The Science behind the Brain
Organization: The Business of Business and the Business of the Brain
Starting at the bottom
Moving forward to make connections
Left, right, left (hemispheres)
Separating the Mind from the Brain
Does the brain matter?
The mind is what the brain does
Discovering the Chemicals and Structures that Power Your Brain
Neurons old and new
Neuroplasticity
Better living through brain chemistry
From rocky roads to superhighways
Use it or lose it
Three Brains in One: How Your Brain Combines its Tasks
The survival brain
The emotional brain
The thinking brain
Thinking through three levels
Thinking about thinking
Two Brain Hemispheres, Two Ways of Working
Leading with your right: Novel challenges
Leading with your left: Familiar challenges
How the hemispheres join forces
Chapter 3: Discovering the Elements of Learning and Memory
The Brain Learns through Patterning
Patterns and schema
Making connections
The Brain Needs Predictability
Making it into the gene pool
Inquiring brains need to know
The Brain Seeks Meaning
Linking meaning and memory
Sense and senselessness
The Brain Responds to Novelty
The Brain Needs Repetition
Learning to remember
Rehearsing to retain information
The Brain Learns through Feedback
Giving timely feedback
Making feedback motivational
Offering informational feedback
The Brain is Social
Social gain or brain pain
Social success or stress?
Chapter 4: Leaders Are Made, Not Born
Considering a Leadership Gene
Nature versus nurture
Born to lead
Leading opportunities
Our nature is to nurture
Outlining Leadership Attributes
Taking the actions that make the leader
Keeping expectations high
Expecting (and embodying) integrity
Developing emotional intelligence
Comparing effective and ineffective leadership
Encouraging Success through Leadership
Imagine employees’ possibilities
Provide useful feedback
Mentor and coach
Sharing Your Vision
Chapter 5: Linking Leadership and the Brain
Glimpsing the Ideal Leader’s Brain
Getting your RAS in gear
Leading with your limbic system
Promoting your frontal lobes: The brain’s CEO
Examining the Leader from Hell
Prefrontal cortex in overdrive
Prefrontal cortex stalls
Faulty emotional thermostat
Basal ganglia bottoms out
Meeting the Brain’s Needs
Predictability
Challenge
Feedback
Creating a Brain-to-Brain Link
Part II: Tapping Into the Brain of a Leader
Chapter 6: Becoming the Leader You Want to Be
Running Down Classic Leadership Styles
Authoritarian
Democratic
Delegative
Assessing Your Leadership Style
Adapting Your Leadership Style
Changing styles
Noting further leadership techniques and responsibilities
Chapter 7: Harnessing Multiple Intelligences
Grasping General Intelligence
Testing intelligence
The stuff you learn: Crystal intelligence
Thinking outside the box: Fluid intelligence
Discovering Multiple Intelligences
The Temporal Intelligences
Verbal/linguistic intelligence
Mathematical/logical intelligence
Musical/rhythmic intelligence
The Spatial Intelligences
Visual/spatial intelligence
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence
Naturalist intelligence
The Personal and Social Intelligences
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Philosophical/moral/ethical intelligence
How Are You Smart? Self-Assessment
Chapter 8: Assessing and Applying Your Emotional Intelligence
Grasping the Role of Emotions
Reacting to your environment
Social survival
Becoming Self-Aware
Noting your feelings
Using your emotions productively
Motivating Yourself to Move Toward Goals
Cultivating hope
Moving from pessimism to optimism
Recognizing Emotions in Others
Tuning in — with a little help from the mirror neurons
Empathy and influence
Modeling the Emotion You Want to See
Dealing with Out-of-Control Emotions
When your emotional cool is hijacked
Watch out for the (emotional) flood
Chapter 9: Thinking Your Way to the Top: Decision-Making
One Head, One Heart, Better Decisions
Making choices: Got guts?
Dopamine is no dope
The Frontal Lobe: CEO of Your Brain
Giving yourself time to decide
Deciding in the blink of an eye
Working Memory: Bigger Is Better
Making up your brain
Living in the past
Deciding for the future
Part III: Working with the Brains You Have
Chapter 10: Enabling Your Current Employees to Excel
No Two Brains Are Alike: Working with Differences
If employees grow, so does your business
Using differences to your advantage
Discovering How Stress Makes a Mess
Utilizing stress at the top
Combating negative stress at the bottom
Neutralizing Toxic People
Recognizing toxicity in the workplace
Describing the ripple effect
Detoxing brains
Moving Them from Good to Great
Developing people
Retrain and retain or fire and rehire?
Chapter 11: Hiring the Best Brain for the Job
Picking Brains: Approaches to Hiring
Look for those who love the work
Look for workers that you love
Looking for leaders
Building a Brain Trust
Valuing the values
Scanning brains
Going deeper in a second interview
Bringing employees into the mix
Mirroring the behaviors you want
Ready, Aim, Hire!
Chapter 12: Optimizing Working Conditions
Stimulating the Brain’s Visual System
Utilizing color
Shedding some bright light on the subject
Getting Comfortable on the Job
If the chair fits . . .
When you’re hot, you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re probably cold
Putting a Song in Their Hearts — Or At Least in Their Cubes
Choosing music: If it ain’t baroque, fix it
Setting the tone with music
The Rest of the Story: Naps
Working Well, Even in Cubby Holes
Putting Humor to Work
Chapter 13: Understanding Male and Female Brains at Work
Biology Basics: Size Doesn’t Matter, but a Lot of Other Stuff Does
Why gray matter matters
Considering emotional differences
Reacting to stress
Differences in memory
Going with the flow
Understanding risky behavior
Hearing, Listening, and Talking: Communication Differences
Men really are hard of hearing
Listening cues: Understanding his and hers
He says; she says more
Making Meetings Work for Males and Females
Competing in the Workplace
Direct competition
Cooperative competition
Checking Out Working Relationships in Action
Chapter 14: Making Teams Work
Building an Executive Team
Discovering How Teams Develop
Infancy
Adolescence
Maturity
Wisdom
Leading a Team from Without and Within
Matching your leadership style to your team’s stage
Finding (or fostering) the glue people
Training team leaders
Leading introductory team meetings
Running routine team meetings
Setting Goals
SMART goals
SAFE goals
Keeping Score
Chapter 15: Overcoming the Digital Divide
Generations Apart: Touching on Generational Identities
Traditionalists
Baby Boomers
Generation X
Generation Y: The ’Net Generation
Understanding the Digital Brain
Considering technology’s effect on brains
Debunking the multitasking myth
Addressing Digital Differences
The digital native
The digital immigrant
The digital dinosaur
Communicating Brain to Brain and Face to Face
Working together digitally: Plugging in
Working face to face
Attracting the best of both worlds
Part IV: Training and Developing Brains
Chapter 16: No Train, No Gain: Understanding the Value of Training
Avoiding the Knowledge Curse: You Don’t Have All the Answers
Recognizing employees’ capabilities
Giving employees skills to perform
Training Employees for Self-Sufficiency
Gaining through office training
Offering tech training
Finding Alignment among Employees and You
Saving your assets: Recognizing a call for training
Creating change without pain
Expecting the best
Keeping a Positive Focus When Bringing Change
Chapter 17: Ensuring that Employees Are Fit to Be Trained
Providing Food for Thought
Eating for the brain
Maintaining the training
Discovering the Importance of Catching Zs
Less Stress, Less Guess
Maintaining a low-threat atmosphere
Keeping employees challenged
Working (and Talking) in Teams
Chapter 18: Holding Sticky Training Sessions
Determining Where You Are and Where You Want to Go
Showing Employees What’s in It for Them (And Other Motivational Ideas)
Managing Sticky Trainings
Choosing the content
Selecting the trainer
Choosing the setting, creating the atmosphere
Organizing and Presenting Information
Brains like chunks
Brains don’t attend to boring things
The brain likes breaks
The brain likes company
Moving from Concrete to Abstract Information
Creating Memories That Stick
Move It or Lose It: How Movement Enhances Learning
Going through the motions: Procedural memory
Stressing the importance of exercise
Getting the Story through Pictures
Engage! Engage! Engage!
Feedback: Memory’s Significant Other
Chapter 19: Changing Minds: Training by Redesigning Brains
Designing Brains: Training New Employees
Creating new brain places
Coaching the new brains
Redesigning Brains: Helping Employees Train for Change
Breaking habits, changing networks
Reinforcing changes
Dealing with Minds That Are Difficult to Change
Looking for solutions
Crossing digital and generational divides
Chapter 20: Conducting Meetings That Matter
Why You Should Toss the Old Meeting Model
Meeting with the Brain in Mind
Bringing continuity with ritual
Sharing control
Soliciting feedback
Using scorecards to focus on goals
Getting Your Message Across
Offering facts
Adding emotion
Creating connections with symbols
Keeping the Conversations Going
Updating employees with a memo or newsletter
Sending your message electronically
Supporting Employees through Personal Meetings
Sharing your vision; living your vision
Showing the whole picture
Building better relationships
Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 21: Debunking Ten Brain Myths
You Use Only 10 Percent of Your Brain
You Are Either Left-Brained or Right-Brained
Drinking Alcohol Kills Brain Cells
Adults Don’t Grow New Brain Cells
There Is No Difference Between Male and Female Brains
IQ Is Fixed
Subliminal Messages Work
Brain Damage Is Always Permanent
The Brain Gets New Wrinkles When You Learn Something
Your Memory Worsens As You Age
Chapter 22: Ten Tips for Brain-Based Leadership
Hire Leaders
Maximize Digital Wisdom
Bring People with You
Lead by Example
Handle Conflict
Resist the Urge to Micromanage
Value Emotional Intelligence
Give the Credit; Take the Cash
Provide Feedback
When You Can’t Decide, Run for It!
Chapter 23: Ten Ways to Build a Better Brain
Eat Nutritiously
Move It or Lose It
Rest
Relax
Keep Your Memory in Shape
Pick Up a Book
Be Upbeat
Make a Few Changes
Name That Tune
Teach Someone Else
The Leadership Brain For Dummies®
by Marilee Sprenger
The Leadership Brain For Dummies
Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier!, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The contents of this work are intended to further general scientific research, understanding, and discussion only and are not intended and should not be relied upon as recommending or promoting a specific method, diagnosis, or treatment by physicians for any particular patient. The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. In view of ongoing research, equipment modifications, changes in governmental regulations, and the constant flow of information relating to the use of medicines, equipment, and devices, the reader is urged to review and evaluate the information provided in the package insert or instructions for each medicine, equipment, or device for, among other things, any changes in the instructions or indication of usage and for added warnings and precautions. Readers should consult with a specialist where appropriate. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. No warranty may be created or extended by any promotional statements for this work. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any damages arising herefrom.
For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009941924
ISBN: 978-0-470-54262-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
Marilee Sprenger is an international presenter and trainer. She is an adjunct professor at Aurora University and a member of the American Academy of Neurology, the Learning and the Brain Society, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
Marilee has applied brain research in classrooms, staffrooms, and boardrooms. She has been both an educator and a business leader and believes that understanding the brain is helpful on a personal and professional level.
Marilee has authored six books on the brain and has published numerous articles online and in journals.
Dedication
I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Lee Broms, who was the first to model true leadership to me. I miss you, Dad.
Author’s Acknowledgments
When I first started doing trainings and presentations in this area 17 years ago, there were many skeptics. But the wealth of knowledge about the brain keeps growing, and more people are interested as they want to live longer and more productive lives.
I want to thank the many neuroscientists who work to help us understand the brain, and the translators who help all of us understand the research and its applications.
I want to thank the people at Wiley for making this project a reality. First, I wish to thank Mike Baker for believing in this idea and getting it off the ground. Traci Cumbay had the monumental job of being my project and copy editor. You are blessed with patience and kindness, Traci. My technical editor, Dr. Robert Sylwester, has always been a wonderful friend and mentor. Thanks, Bob, for your kind assistance. I want to thank the publicity and marketing people who will help make this book a success.
I also want to thank my dear friend, Mary Jane Sterling, author of many For Dummies books. She saw my work fitting in the For Dummies format. Now we can be Dummies together!
I wouldn’t be doing any of this if my mother, Mollie Broms, hadn’t been the businesswoman that she was. She raised a family, ran a business, and volunteered her precious time. She has been an inspiration. I want to thank my husband, Scott, a man who lives to make me and his customers happy. A wonderful leader, Scott read every word and offered his wisdom. I also want to thank my children for their patience as I shortened vacations and gave up opportunities to be with my grandchildren in order to meet my deadlines. To my son, Josh, his wife, Amy, my daughter, Marnie, and her husband, Thabu, I look forward to watching your families grow as well as your business careers. I will make up any time I missed being with you, Jack and Emmie.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development
Project Editor: Traci Cumbay
Acquisitions Editor: Mike Baker
Copy Editor: Traci Cumbay
Assistant Editor: Erin Calligan Mooney
Editorial Program Coordinator: Joe Niesen
Technical Editor: Robert Sylwester
Senior Editorial Manager: Jennifer Ehrlich
Editorial Supervisor and Reprint Editor: Carmen Krikorian
Editorial Assistants: David Lutton, Jennette ElNaggar
Art Coordinator: Alicia B. South
Cover Photos: © Image Source
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Composition Services
Project Coordinator: Sheree Montgomery
Layout and Graphics: Ashley Chamberlain, Samantha K. Cherolis, Joyce Haughey, Melissa K. Jester
Proofreaders: Rebecca Denoncour, Evelyn C. Gibson
Indexer: Joan K. Griffitts
Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies
Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Introduction
Becoming a leader can take a lifetime, or just as long as it takes you to read this book. The Leadership Brain For Dummies is designed to equip you with everything you need to become the leader you want to be.
Although you can find many books on leadership and many books on the brain, no book has connected the subjects like this one. Neuroscience offers you an opportunity to maximize your brain and the brains of those you depend on to shape your future.
In this book you get the how and the why. You find out how to be a great leader, great listener, great decision-maker, and great at handling yourself and others. But that information is only part of the picture. Understanding why you should do these things by using specific strategies that are compatible with how the brain works is the rest of the story. Knowing why makes you more likely to use these strategies again and again.
Although business fads come and go, the brain is here to stay. Apply the best from neuroscience to your organization to create a climate and a culture in which everyone is happy — you, your employees, and your customers or clients.
About This Book
Leadership is an art and a science. This book shows you where the two meet and complement each other. It’s meant to engage your brain without taxing it. I want you to think about who you work for and who you work with to consider what you may do to make your experience and theirs a better one. With that purpose in mind, I have put together lists, stories, and tips to help you lead your own brain as well as the brains of others. The book you hold in your hands is not typical, and it’s certainly not a textbook. You can jump around however you like, not worrying that you’ve missed critical information from an earlier chapter. I define new terms wherever they show up or direct you to their definitions so that you’re never at a loss for information. If an example or explanation from a previous chapter may support your understanding of a topic, I let you know how to find it.
This book is designed to be personalized by you — read it as questions arise or leadership challenges present themselves to you. Turn to any topic that interests you at any time that you want to find out about it. I’ve worked hard to make sure that you are always be at home within these pages.
Conventions Used in This Book
I use the following conventions throughout the text to make things consistent and easy to understand:
All Web addresses appear in monofont.
New terms appear in italic and are closely followed by an easy-to-understand definition.
Bold highlights the action parts of numbered steps and key words in bullet lists.
When this book was printed, some Web addresses may have needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, no extra characters like hyphens indicate the break. So, when using one of these Web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in this book, as though the line break doesn’t exist.
The brain is a funny thing, and leadership should be fun. For these reasons, I have added humor where I think it is appropriate. Leaders should add humor to their leadership style because the brain responds to humor and it actually allows the brain to use some of its higher levels in order to “get the joke.”
Foolish Assumptions
The brain makes many assumptions. Mine is no different. I assume that you have picked up this book for one of two reasons: like me, you’re enthralled with research on the brain and want to know how it relates to everything, or you’re intently looking for new information about leadership — a fresh approach that motivates and inspires you. Either way, I assume that you will find information and strategies that you can apply right away.
I also assume that you would like to know what’s going on inside the heads of other people in your life — at work and at home. Finally, you’re a little worried about your own brain, and you want to know what to do to keep your business brain in business!
What You’re Not to Read
The beauty of The Leadership Brain For Dummies is that you don’t have to read the whole book to come away with quite a bit of easily applicable information. You can skip the shaded boxes of text called sidebars, which contain stories or examples that relate to information in the chapter. Sidebars help you connect more with some of the ideas in the chapter, but they don’t contain new ideas and so are skippable.
How This Book Is Organized
The Leadership Brain For Dummies is organized into five parts. The following sections give you a description of each part.
Part I: Leadership Is All in Your Head
Part I links leadership and the brain by giving you an overall feel for the connections between the way the brain runs and the way your organization runs. It covers some brain basics, such as how the brain makes connections and changes, how it’s structured, and what it needs to learn and be productive. The fact that leaders are made and not born is a tribute to the brain’s ability to learn and change.
This part also describes a great leader who uses knowledge about the brain to share a vision and mission, and to motivate others. And it describes a not-so-good leader. Although negativity is not the point here, the brain needs examples to avoid as much as those to emulate, and so I give you both.
Part II: Tapping Into the Brain of a Leader
Part II shows you how to develop leadership traits. Discovering your intelligence strengths through self-knowledge and a written assessment helps you determine the style of leadership that feels right and put employees into the right positions. You find out about emotional intelligence and becoming an emotionally intelligent leader. As you assess yourself in relationship to your self-awareness, social awareness, and handling relationships, you see the importance of empathizing with your employees and all of your organization’s stakeholders.
Additionally, you find out how the brain makes decisions in this part of the book. Can you think your way to the top? Good decision-making skills combine both cognitive and emotional intelligences.
Part III: Working with the Brains You Have
Rather than shaking up an organization by firing employees, a leader is better off first taking a close look at the current staff. Retraining often is a better option than rehiring, and this part of the books shows you how to find and foster the skills employees have to offer.
Understanding some major differences between the sexes and among different generations helps you get employees into the positions where they’re most likely to thrive and offer them the most optimal working conditions to ensure that they do.
This part of the book also deals with the importance of teams, filling you in on how they develop and how they grow. Creating goals that appeal to the whole brain makes a difference in how your teams approach those goals and whether they reach them.
Part IV: Training and Developing Brains
In this part, I examine the importance of training and the consequences of not training, and I give you brain-compatible training techniques to increase learning and memory.
I explain what the brain needs to be ready to learn and ready to work, and I show you how to make your training dollars count by ensuring that the information sticks in employees’ brains.
Finally, I show you how to conduct meetings that make a difference. Communicating with a diverse workforce means differentiating some of your meeting and communication strategies.
Part V: The Part of Tens
This section is part of the rich format of every For Dummies book. In it you find chapters devoted to quick bits of advice on the brain and leadership. First, I dispel some of the more common myths about the brain. I then offer you ten tips on leading with the brain in mind. Finally, I show you ten ways to develop your brain for leadership and living a better life.
Icons Used in This Book
Every For Dummies book uses icons — those little pictures in the margins that catch your eye as you peruse the book. Here’s what they are and what they mean:
This icon flags bits of information that deserves a second look, making it easier for you to return to again and again.
Although you’re likely to find the detailed technical information you find next to this icon interesting, you don’t need it to understand the main points of the book.
Whenever I give you information that will save you time or money or make your job easier, I flag it with this icon.
Stop and read information that appears next to this daunting icon to avoid leadership pitfalls and mistakes.
Where to Go from Here
Pick a chapter, any chapter. Each one is its own little book. You won’t need to go back to fill in missing pieces from earlier chapters. Looking for information about how to make a team function smoothly? Go straight to Chapter 14. Want new ways to make your meetings more interesting and effective? Chapter 20 has what you need. And if you’re an overachiever or just insatiably curious, by all means turn the page and keep going until you get to the back cover.
The best leaders never stop wondering, reading, and seeking answers. You are obviously one of them! I’m grateful for the opportunity to help you on your quest.
Part I
Leadership Is All in Your Head
In this part . . .
Here, I show you some basics of the brain, including how the brain’s structure and function is similar to the structure and function of your business. Your brain has a CEO that makes decisions, plans for the future, and celebrates success. I tell you about what the brain needs to be at its best, as well as methods for making sure you’re leading your best.
Chapter 1
Connecting Brain Science to Leadership Principles
In This Chapter
Looking into leadership
Connecting neuroscience and leadership
Building teams with the brain in mind
Training effectively for any brain
In this book you find out how your brain works and how to work it to improve your decision-making, training, and hiring so that you create a workplace where people are happy and productive.
In order to survive and thrive through humans’ long history, the brain had to be social. Humans needed people around them to help them conquer whatever dangers they might face. Today’s world looks a lot different from that of even a century ago, but you still need people to help you prosper. Being social means establishing relationships. Relationships often require leadership.
The leadership brain learns how to be self-aware and self-confident. This brain knows how to persuade and convince others that her idea is the best. At the same time, the leader takes others’ feelings and ideas into consideration.
The good news from neuroscience is that you can learn how to be a leader. This book shows you how.
The Leadership Brain For Dummies helps you become the leader you want to be.
Defining Leadership
Leadership is the ability to bring like-minded people together to get remarkable things done. Because humans are a social species and natural hierarchies develop, the concept of leadership emerged. Someone has to be in charge, share a vision, and lead others toward the goals.
Leadership depends on relationship-building. A leader can lead only through her ability to build relationships between and among employees, customers, investors, and any other stakeholders.
Knowing and amending your leadership style
Different approaches to leadership give you the opportunity to be the leader you want to be when you want to be it. You can find your leadership style by reading Chapter 6. The style you naturally use or the one you cultivate may change according to circumstances, which is as it should be. When you need to take charge because you’re dealing with new employees who need more guidance, you might adopt the authoritarian style. But perhaps in your heart you really favor group decision-making; you can then use that style in other situations, when it’s a better fit.
As a leader, you are many different things to different people. You have a lot of hats to wear, but there’s only one brain under those hats, and you get to know it better in Chapter 5, which shows you how leadership and the brain interact.
Providing feedback
As you find out in Chapter 4, feedback is food for thought. Feed the brains of your employees by providing the necessary information to keep them on task and keep your vision in sight. Without feedback, people lose self-confidence and motivation.
Feedback begins with the senior leadership team, but it goes much beyond that. Rather than relying on a trickle-down effect, leaders must provide feedback to each and every person in the organization. You find suggestions in Chapter 20 to communicate with employees throughout your organization.
Developing high emotional intelligence
Your ability to have good relationships with others gets you farther in business and in your personal life than your IQ. It’s not how smart you are that counts, but rather how you are smart.
Leaders use their emotional intelligence to handle relationships. When leaders are aware of what they feel and how their feelings affect the work environment, they can choose to handle those emotions in such a way that they use their intuition but don’t become overwhelmed by emotion. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to understand and work with what another person is feeling. For instance, the possibility of lay-offs looms in your organization. How are your people feeling? Stress levels must be high. As their leader, you have to let employees know how much you value their contributions, exactly how things stand, and what your decision-making process relies on.
Real power is the ability to control your own brain. You need to understand how the brain works, how powerful your emotions are, and how you can use your self-awareness to prevent reflexive actions.
Chapter 8 highlights the importance of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social management.
Ensuring a safe working environment
One of the basic responsibilities of a leader is providing a safe and appealing work environment. Employees face stressors in their lives every day; relieving them of the stress that an unsafe environment may cause is imperative to having happy, productive employees.
Safety in the workplace includes both physical safety and emotional well-being. After you have the safety factor covered, making the work environment fun as well as inspirational invites cooperation. Caring enough to provide an attractive, safe working environment and put the needs of your staff ahead of your own needs is a key leadership quality.
Chapter 12 tells you how to create a safe and appealing work environment.
Communicating effectively
Effective communication is a hallmark of a great leader. You need to share your vision with passion and commitment. Creating a picture for all to see requires you to make your message simple enough for all to grasp and complex enough to make it interesting. When you paint your picture and employees or customers see it, their brains connect this vision to their own previously stored networks of information to reinforce your words.
But communication doesn’t happen in just one direction. Listening to the needs, desires, and dreams of your employees is essential. And you listen and make connections between their statements and your dream.
Chapter 4 emphasizes good communication skills.
Making decisions with heart and head
Decision-making is based on prior experiences. Your brain asks, “What worked in the past?” or “In what similar situations was a decision made that was good? Or bad?”
Your emotions are very much involved in the decision-making process. The neurotransmitter dopamine is very active in your reward system. The dopamine neurons remember whether an experience or a decision made you feel good. Those chemical memories help you make every decision. If you made a bad decision, your amygdala, the raw emotional center in the brain that I discuss in Chapters 2 and 8, reacts immediately to the situation.
Good leaders make decisions based on what their emotions tell them as well as on the facts. The right hemisphere of your brain explores the challenges and possibilities in a novel situation in which you must make a decision. But your logical left hemisphere recalls routines and previously established processes that have worked in the past. Decision-making is a whole-brain activity. Good decision-making always takes into account both cognitive skills and emotional intelligence.
Chapter 9 discusses the art and science of decision-making.
Leadership on the Brain
Emerging science connects the brain to leadership: Promising leaders can access different levels of the brain in a conscious way in order to share their vision and achieve their goals. Understanding how the brain functions enables you not only to work within the bounds of your own brain but also understand and work with, rather than against, the brains of others. Leading in a brain-compatible manner helps you accomplish your goals much faster.
Balancing novelty and predictability
Both predictability and novelty make the brain happy. Knowing what is going to happen next lowers stress in the brain, but too much predictability leads to boredom. In Chapter 3, I show you how creating an environment that contains enough predictability makes it easier for the brain to concentrate on such areas as creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Because the brain remembers patterns and seeks patterns to make sense of its world, familiarity breeds security. If your teams are in an environment in which it is okay, actually encouraged, to ask “dumb” questions or make mistakes, then their brains can run wild with ideas. Some research suggests that solving problems in a more creative way may lead to better solutions, and so an atmosphere in which the brain can relax and wander may lead to more innovations.
Grasping the chemical element
If you want to understand human nature, you need to know something about neurotransmitters, the chemicals in your brain. For instance, serotonin has long been known as a neurotransmitter related to emotion. If your serotonin levels are low, you’re more likely to become angry or aggressive. What’s more, you’re less likely to be able to control your reactions.
Because serotonin is produced by the food you eat, eating right — and especially eating breakfast — helps you control emotional responses.
Your chemical levels can also be affected by social behavior, culture, and genetics. In Chapter 2, I share information about the functions of some of the chemicals in your brain, as well as ways to make the most of them.
Sculpting brains — yours and theirs
That three-pound lump of tissue in your skull is flexible and vulnerable. This is good news and one of the most promising research findings in neuroscience. This flexibility enables the brain to recover from some traumas and break old habits. It also means you can change your brain.
Chapter 4 shows you how to train your brain and explains that the brains of your current and future employees are indeed very trainable. You have to appreciate the fact that you can teach an old dog new tricks!
In Chapter 19, you discover the differences between training new employees and those who have been with you for awhile. Both brains respond to training, but they do so in different ways. Finding out how to address those differences goes a long way toward making training stick.
Do you want the leader’s brain?
People often confuse the roles of leader and manager. After you understand the brain, you will see that there are cognitive skill differences between the two. If you look at the function of the left hemisphere as described in Chapter 2, you see that one of its responsibilities is to handle routine procedures that have been previously established. This is the role of the manager. The manager manages what has previously been set up.
The leader, on the other hand, delegates the established processes to managers. New challenges, new problems, and unidentified situations are handled by the right hemisphere of the brain. The leader and the leadership team deal with these novel situations and create procedures to handle them.
A manager can be a leader, of course, and a leader may also be a manager. But in talking about the brain, the leadership role is much like the right hemisphere’s role, and the manager’s role is akin to the left hemisphere’s role. To run efficiently both the productive brain and the productive organization utilize both roles.
If you develop a leadership brain, you learn to recognize situations using your sensory systems and your emotions. Then you use your brain’s CEO, the prefrontal cortex, along with your gut feelings to respond. If the situation is novel, your right hemisphere, and the right hemispheres of your leadership team, use their creative, holistic, spatial approach to create the response. In familiar situations, your left hemisphere relies on previously established processes.
You can develop yourself into the kind of leader you want to be.
Different strokes for different brains
Move over IQ, new intelligences are in town, and their number keeps growing. In Chapter 7, I share information about nine different ways of being smart. If you have a brain, you have some of each of these kinds of intelligence:
Verbal/linguistic
Mathematical/logical
Musical/rhythmic
Visual/spatial
Bodily kinesthetic
Naturalist
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Philosophical/moral/ethical
I find that leaders and employees alike enjoy finding out more about themselves. And so Chapter 7 not only offers you a definition and examples of these intelligences, it provides an assessment for you. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and helping your followers learn theirs is part of good leadership. This information may help you understand why you like something and why you’re uncomfortable with some people, tasks, and environments.
Using Brain Science to Build Your Team
Information on the brain suggests ways you can change the brains of those you train. The person others consider the best may not be the best choice for your particular situation. Knowledge and skills are important, but employees also need to know how to build and maintain those relationships that keep your company thriving.
When you need to add to your team, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch recommends that you look at the best employees you have and find people just like them.
As a leader, you are called on to make hiring decisions that affect the entire organization. Whether you promote current employees or hire new ones, understanding how the brain functions helps you make those decisions.
Understanding male and female brains
Definite variations exist in male and female brains. The brain is highly influenced by its experiences; therefore, some of the characteristics you see in males or females may be from environmental influences or in combination with the brain differences.
Chapter 13 helps you address the common differences between male and female brains. For example, knowing that females tend to prefer eye contact while males may not can affect the way you share your vision and the values of your company.
Women can read maps and men do ask for directions. But there are some differences that may affect how they perform at work — not how well they perform, but rather how they do things differently.
Bridging the generation gap
Several generations often are at work in one organization. Becoming familiar with the work ethic, needs, and expectations of each of these generations can make the climate of your workplace less stressful for all.
As a leader involved in business in this technological world, you must catch up and keep up with the challenges of working with several generations. Your organization can be part of a global economy and become more successful with the assistance of the younger generations and the loyalty and values of the older generations. Find out in Chapter 15 how to take advantage of the characteristics of all employees.
Goal setting and goal getting
Whether rewards are tangible (like bonuses) or intangible (good feelings of accomplishment), goals help the brain focus. Part of the leader’s job is to keep people centered on the mission of the organization. As your teams go through developmental stages from infancy to wisdom, their goals keep them on track. Chapter 14 shows you how to create goals that intrigue the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere of the brain.
Celebrate each accomplishment! Every step along the way to reaching a goal is cause for celebration. As a leader, you must shift your focus from your success to the successes of your employees.
Training with the Brain in Mind
One of the goals of most organizations is to have a staff of highly trained employees. Brain science has effectively shown that the way information is presented, rehearsed, and reviewed influences the effectiveness of that training. For instance, using emotion in training helps trainees store information more effectively.
CEOs cringe at the thought of having employees away from the job for one to three weeks for training. They soon realize, however, that good training is worth it. The results of training include
Brains that see the big picture.
Brains that have changed to use a new process or product.
Brains that can see and share your vision.
Brains that can work together as training creates relationships.
Brains that can see beyond their own jobs.
In Chapter 16, I talk about mental maps — pictures of how people see the world and how things should work. Training provides the opportunity to change the mental maps of your employees so that they more closely match your own vision.
Supporting trainees’ bodies and brains
As a former educator I can tell you that I would have loved nothing more than to have a classroom full of students who were ready to learn. Their parents thought they were ready, and most of the students thought they were ready. But they weren’t ready because their bodies and their brains weren’t fit enough to learn. It takes proper nutrition, the right amount of sleep, and regular exercise to truly make the brain ready for learning or training.
In Chapter 17, I share information about how proper nutrition affects the brains of your trainees as well as your employees and yourself. The amount of sleep your people get each night has an impact on what and how much they remember from the previous day’s training. And exercise is key to getting blood and oxygen to the brain for optimal work.
You can take steps to make your trainings more productive. Lowering your trainees’ stress levels through proper nutrition, rest, and exercise is a beginning. Get the most out of your training dollars by ensuring that your people are fit to be trained.
Making training stick
The most memorable and productive trainings are those that engage your brain. This engagement can be through emotional connections, humor, fun, or through personal connections to your life.
If you can answer the following question for each of your employees and trainees, you can head them in the right direction: What’s in it for me? Both the CEOs of major corporations and every classroom teacher knows that if employees and students can see a connection to their lives, they will buy in to the learning.
Motivation comes from a desire or a need. See to it that your vision and your training goals fit into one of these two categories.
In Chapter 18, I share with you ways to make trainings stick. The emotional component, the memory systems involved, and the climate of the training make a big difference in how much information employees retain.
Training must also involve the support of both leaders and managers. Employees and new hires need to feel that they’re part of something bigger — that their contributions are appreciated and make a difference.
Chapter 2
The Science behind the Brain
In This Chapter
Checking out the brain’s organization
Considering mind versus brain
Discovering brain structure and function
Understanding the three brains within your brain
Grasping right- and left-hemisphere functions
In the past 20 years, scientists have been able to look at the brain through specialized imaging technology. Looking at the brain in action is a far cry from the old way: looking at brains during autopsy, finding lesions, comparing the area of the lesion to the behavior of the patient, and making a diagnosis. The 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, and the 21st century promises to be the Century of the Brain. Walk into any book store or up to a magazine stand during any month and you find cover articles about the brain. Curiosity about the brain peaked with the horror stories about Alzheimer’s disease, and the baby boomers want to know how to keep their brains young and in good shape.
Interest in the brain goes beyond worrying about memory. The wonderful applications of brain research have reached classrooms and boardrooms around the world. New words and new worlds are being adopted to help us use brain science, psychology, and cognitive science at home, in school, and in our global economy.
Brain functions and leadership functions are similar. Brains and leaders both need to know where they are, where they may go, whether they are going in the right direction, how to get there, and how to remember the experiences to apply them in the future.
Humans have brains to help them plan and move. Understanding the brain means understanding yourself, your loved ones, and the people with whom you work. As scientists continue to study the brain (and they have a very long way to go), you’ll get more information to apply to your life. But caution is key — this complex organ continually surprises researchers. The famous quote by Lyal Watson, the South African biologist who wrote Supernature, says, “If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.”
In this chapter you find out about the structures of the brain, their functions, and the ways they work together.
Organization: The Business of Business and the Business of the Brain
As a leader, you have to take care of what goes on within your business and what goes on outside your business — that is, your employees and their work on the inside and your customer service, sales, and satisfaction on the outside. Your brain also has internal control centers as well as external controls. Just as you organize and coordinate what is happening inside and outside in order to make the best decisions and act on necessary problems and situations, your brain coordinates internal messages about what’s going on within your body as it monitors external information in order to respond in an appropriate way. Both leaders and brains must be experts at executing appropriate actions and reactions.
Starting at the bottom
Some neuroscientists talk about the brain’s organization from the top down, while others like to start at the bottom. The bottom of the brain consists of the brain stem and the cerebellum, along with a few smaller structures. The pons and the medulla run your body, keeping you breathing and your heart beating. For the most part, the bottom of the brain runs on an involuntary system. Like the inner workings of most companies, these processes are expected and go unnoticed unless something goes wrong.
Executive functions take place in the top layer of the brain, the cortex. There decisions are made, planning is completed and executed, and challenges are addressed. Like the orchestra leader, the top of your brain keeps all of the pieces playing together to create a masterpiece. Similarly, leaders, senior leadership teams, and employees work together to address the needs and desires of the organization.
Moving forward to make connections
The four lobes of the brain are arranged so that the sensory lobes are located in the back of the brain. As you look at the words on this page, the occipital lobe in the back of your brain takes in that information. Then those words are brought forward in the brain to the frontal lobes, where the information is defined and you determine the meaning of those words. Perhaps they are a call to action or you make a connection between those words and information you have previously stored in memory. The temporal lobes hold onto the new information and link it with the old.
Left, right, left (hemispheres)
According to Elkhonon Goldberg, clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine, as new information enters the brain through the sensory lobes in the back and then is brought forward for thoughtful reflection, your brain decides which hemisphere is going to first process it. Familiarity and novelty come in to play now. If the information is novel, it is processed by the right hemisphere, which is organized to deal with novel challenges in order to come up with a creative response. When the information is familiar — a challenge that the brain has responded to before and now has an established routine in which to deal with — the left hemisphere first processes it.
At some point, both hemispheres are involved in responding to incoming stimuli. Just as in the reading example above, information starts in one hemisphere and then is moved to the other. Both hemispheres contribute to cognitive processing. In your organization, you have departments or teams for established routines, but when novel challenges arise, you probably have specialized teams or the senior leadership team to deal with the challenge first.
Separating the Mind from the Brain
Some people compare the brain to a computer. Although this is not a very accurate analogy, the correlations are helpful when talking about the mind and the brain. If the brain is the hardware, then the mind is the software.
Does the brain matter?
The brain is often described as your gray matter. Gray matter refers to the top layer of the brain. This layer isn’t actually gray but brownish-pink while it’s alive, but its name comes from preserved brains. Brains that have been preserved and sliced for research purposes look as though the tissue around the outside of the brain is gray, and the inner lining appears white.
Separating gray matter and white matter helps with some understanding of brain function. The gray matter consists of the neuron cell bodies in the brain, and the white matter is made up of the cells’ nerve fibers that are coated with a white fatty substance called myelin. Myelin assists in the transmission of information in the brain.
The mind is what the brain does
Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, theorizes that the mind may be the “personalization” of the brain. According to many researchers, the brain’s functions, such as feeling, thoughts, problem-solving, and communicating create the mind. But the mind also constructs the brain. The feelings, thoughts, experiences, and memories that build that personal mind also change the structure and the function of the brain.
As you read this book, your brain is changing. Brain cells are organizing themselves to take in this information, consider the importance, and then decide whether to dispose of or keep the learning.
In this book, I refer to the organ of learning as the brain as many neuroscientists have chosen to do. Some call it the mind/brain, but I consider brain more active than mind. In making this decision, I created networks that automatically cause me to refer to the mind/brain as the brain without giving any thought to the decision. If I focus on changing that pattern in my brain, I would consciously have to try for several weeks before I fully adopted the change, but I would be able to change my brain . . . or change my mind, if I wanted to!
Discovering the Chemicals and Structures that Power Your Brain
You ask your team leader what new sales techniques were taught at the regional meeting. You have caught him a little off guard in the elevator without his notes. Watching closely, you see his brain working. His right hemisphere processes this novel challenge. He imagines himself back at the meeting. He pictures the room and the trainer. In his mind, he sees the trainer demonstrating the strategy. The left hemisphere takes over as he remembers the process. “Oh, yes!” he thinks to himself. He looks at you and begins to share what he learned. His brain was making connections. He found the information by tracing his steps and thinking about locations and events. The connections had been made at the meeting, and so by visualizing the meeting room, he found triggers to reconnect to those networks he had set up in his brain.
The upcoming sections explain how your brain makes connections and processes information.
Neurons old and new
Brain structures are made up of cells that continually interconnect with other brain cells — even at night while you sleep. The brain learns by making connections among brain cells. The brain cells attributed with learning are called neurons. You are born with about 100 billion neurons, and most of them stay with you throughout your life.
The brain also includes cells called glia, or glial cells. Glia actually means glue, and in some instances holding things together is what they do. Glia are sometimes called housekeepers or nurturing cells. Not long ago, glia were believed to have nothing to do with actual learning, but recent research supports that indeed glia may perform some important functions for making connections and retrieving memories. Your brain has about ten times more glial cells than neurons.
Twenty years ago the widely held thought was that the brain produces no new neurons. Studies suggest that under certain conditions, the brain does produce more of these cells. Throughout our lives we lose neurons for a variety of reasons, and so replacing some of them seems to make sense. The process of creating new neurons is called neurogenesis. If you’re interested in stimulating this process in your brain, try learning something new, exercising, and avoiding stress.
Your brain works by communicating among neurons. Each neuron has three main parts: dendrites, the cell body, and an axon. (See Figure 2-1.) Communication happens like this:
1. The axon in the sending neuron releases a chemical messenger to convey information.
2. The sending neuron moves the chemical messenger through its dendrites, and the amount of electricity within the cell body changes.
3. Electricity travels down the axon.
Most axons are coated with a substance called myelin. Glial cells within myelin aid in transmission of messages.
4. The electrical impulse forces chemicals called neurotransmitters out of the vesicle and through the end of the axon into a space called a synapse.
5. Neurotransmitters swim in the synapse until they find a dendrite of another neuron to attach themselves to.
6. The process begins again.
Figure 2-1: Messages travel through neurons via neurotransmitters.
As you use your brain for learning, socializing, and generally taking in information from different sources, your neurons change. Dendrites grow as you learn. When you are born some neurons have few or no dendrites. As your brain begins taking in information, dendrites grow. Your axons change, as well. As neurons are used, axon terminals begin to grow to send out more messages.
The visual system is one of the better understood systems in the brain. When a baby begins to see, the visual part of her brain stores the patterns she sees. Neurons connect to form a pattern like her mother’s face. The baby begins with a fuzzy outline, and as her vision continues to develop fine points such as eyebrows and nostrils are added until her brain stores the complete picture.
New brain, new tricks?
At a presentation on the brain, a neuroscientist was explaining that the brain is the only organ that doesn’t replace all its cells. Our bodies replace other cells every few days or months. You get brand new skin, but your new skin looks like the old skin because of your genetic blueprint. Your brain, however, does not replace cells at that rate. What would happen, the neuroscientist asked, if your brain did?
A reply came from the back of the room, “Well, I guess you could hide your own Easter eggs!”
Neuroplasticity
Your thoughts can change your brain. That’s a pretty impressive statement, and worthy of explanation. Your thoughts and your actions can change the structure and function of your brain. Going back to the computer analogy, the brain is not as hard-wired as was once thought. The process of changing the brain is called neuroplasticity. Scientists shorten that by saying the brain is plastic. In response to the environment, neurons change their activity and reorganize pathways. Neuroplasticity occurs throughout the normal development of the brain and for adaptive purposes when the brain tries to repair after an injury.
The brain’s plasticity enables you to learn and remember. Perhaps you decide to learn how to play bridge. You have played other card games before, and so your brain contains networks (neurons that have connected to each other) for basic card information: 52 cards in a deck, four different suits, two red, two black, and the numbering system for each. As you learn to play the new game, your brain connects the rules to your previously stored card networks. Learning the new game is therefore much easier for you than for someone who has never played cards before and has no card networks. As you continue to learn bridge, your card networks grow and your brain changes.
Better living through brain chemistry
Chemicals that the brain produces are called neurotransmitters. These are the messengers that go between the sending neuron and the receiving neuron. Neurons exchange neurotransmitters to communicate with each other. They do their job at the synapse by either causing a neuron to fire or preventing the firing. (Firing is the word given to the action of a neuron when it is activated to send a message to another neuron.) Some of the neurotransmitters are excitatory
