Rewire Leader Brainwaves Toward Success

Neurosciences — the new frontier in leadership

Leadership is evolving to a new frontier.

As leaders continuously face new challenges and opportunities, they often search through the latest scientific research to understand new knowledge and build new skills to continuously gain advantage for themselves and their enterprises.

Research proves that by rewiring thinking patterns and controlling human response to different social or business circumstance, leaders can relearn how to be more effective in driving personal and enterprise success. Here’s why.

Introducing the science of brain-based leadership

The most important new leadership information available to leader innovation is the emerging field of brain-based leadership. Two important areas are of interest to leadership growth; first, leaders look for opportunities to significantly improve personal performance; and secondly, these leaders strive to improve social relationships and customer experiences.

Neuroplasticity — the potential to shape the brain structure and its function

Neuro-scientific research validates what leaders always knew; that experience actually changes the brain and that there is no limit to brain development. Neuroplasticity is a concept that means that the brain structure and function change all the time. External events impact on the human brain, but human beings also are able to induce self-directed changes.

The human brain is a network of approximately one hundred billion neurons. Different experiences create different neural connections which bring about different emotions. Depending on which neurons get stimulated, certain connections become stronger and more efficient while others may become weaker.

Someone who trains to be an engineer will create stronger neural connections for “engineer” thinking, which, in turn, generates “neuropaths” in engineering. The price that is paid, however, is that other connections become weaker if attention is not paid to these. For example, such a person might neglect to focus on empathy and, therefore, reduce their ability to be aware of others’ emotions.

Any talent or skill can be trained or created. Whatever an individual is doing at any time, they are physically modifying their brain to become better at it.

Important leadership qualities, such as visioning and strategic thinking all work the same way. These are neural connections that can be strengthened.

(Note, the article was first written by MaRi Eagar and published on the Presidents of Enterprising Organizations website as part of their insights and ideas series for members.)

In our previous article “Rewiring Leader Brainwaves to Drive Success”  we introduced neurosciences as a new frontier in leadership. In this follow up article, we provide a practical application of brain-based leadership.

We need new ways of thinking to create a new future

“The best way to predict the future is to create it”— Peter Drucker

There is a global consensus amongst leaders and experts that we need new ways of thinking to go beyond the very approaches that got us where we are today.

There are simple questions on leaders’ minds: “We know that to enable us to innovate we need to change the way we think. But how do we actually change our thinking?  Why is it that, even when we go on special creativity and innovation programs, or learn new knowledge, we still stick to our fixed thinking?  Why is it that, despite our best intentions, we continue to find ourselves falling back to the very approaches that we are trying to change?

Why achieving breakthrough thinking is difficult

Changing our minds is not easy.  Even the great Steve Jobs had some fixed ideas that resulted in failures.

Canadian neuroscientist Donald   Hebb , the father of neuropsychology, famously explained the dilemma with what is now known as the Hebbian theory:

“Neurons (cells) that fire together wire together.”   In layman’s terms this means that when brain cells are simultaneously activated, it results in increases in the synaptic strength between those cells. This creates a strong connection between these cells which eventually become neuro-pathways.  As a consequence, this results in loss of connection between other cells.

This ability to create neuropaths is important as it helps us make sense of the more than 4 billion bits of information that we have to filter every second so that we only pay attention to what is important to us.

The downside of this however, is that, over time, this becomes what we would call a “mindset”, resulting in unconsciously ignoring information that does not fit into our neuropaths or in other words, our paradigms.

How do you overcome this “fixed thinking” dilemma so that you can achieve new thinking?

It is actually very easy to develop new neuropaths. The brain is “plastic”. That means when you start paying attention to new ideas and things, you will eventually develop new neuro-pathways, and therefore new ways of thinking.

A simple example will describe how this works.

Most of us have gone through the process of buying a car. Say you are thinking of buying a red all-wheel drive car that is big enough for your family.  Have you noticed that you suddenly start spotting lot more red all-wheel drive cars wherever you travel?

The reason for this is very simple.  It is not as if there was a sudden and dramatic increase in sales for red all-wheel vehicles.  They have always been there, but because you are now starting to think about it and do research about it, you see more of them.  In other words, you are now paying more attention and also with more quality of attention due to the new focus and information you are gathering.  In this way you started creating a new neuropath.

Similarly, you need to start seeing new possibilities by shifting your attention away from what you currently preoccupied with towards new unknown ideas and objects. This does not require too much time or effort.

Three simple actions to achieve breakthrough thinking

Connect with university intern programs and students

Many leaders appoint interns as part of their talent strategies. Instead of letting these highly qualified students languish making photocopies and doing administrative work somewhere under the guidance of a supervisor or manager, make an effort to pull them as closely as possible to yourself and your executives. Give them a strategic assignment to innovate and improve your business.

Then listen to their ideas and allow them to experiment with prototyping. Let them create this as a case study and work portfolio to reference for their future careers.

Not only will you gain access to leading information and new insights about different markets and opportunities, but you will make them enthusiastic and loyal champions of your enterprise.

Connect with different communities outside your normal networks

The best source of new information and ideas come from people who think completely differently to you.  By connecting with these communities you will be exposed to new paradigms and thinking while you make new friends and business partners.

An example is Social innovation   , one of the fastest growing fields in Canada. Here new business models and economic value are developed by a community of passionate inventors and innovators who are unafraid to challenge the status quo.

Stop reading mainstream literature on business and leadership

Give your mind a rest from the business and leadership literature. Start reading up on complexity science, fuzzy logic, neurosciences, or even philosophy or anthropology.  Have conversations with experts in these fields and attend lectures. Attend creativity classes.

Then implement the new activity for at least six months

If you continue the intention activities for a period of about six months, you will start building a new paradigm for yourself - naturally. And from this new emerging paradigm, your thinking will change, and so will the solutions you develop.

(Note, this article was originally published by Presidents of Enterprising Organizations as part of an insight series authored by MaRi Eagar.)