Leadership thinking has historically been focused on past events: data, trends, models, algorithms. "Spreadsheets and balance sheets are the foundations of this religion." But, "the causes of leadership failure are usually the issues no-one planned for, because no-one foresaw them." No-one, including the opinion polls, foresaw Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, because no-one imagined it was possible!
Key Takeaway
Leadership thinking has historically been focused on past events: data, trends, models, algorithms. But, "the causes of leadership failure are usually the issues no-one planned for, because no-one foresaw them." "The complex and multi-dimensional problems posed by the 21st century demand creativity and imagination." This requires us to embrace the strengths of the right brain which "acts as a devil's advocate, always on the lookout for things that might be different from our expectations."
"There is an in imbalance in leadership thinking. It is too steeped in Western Reductionist thinking: the tendency to apply narrow logic, data, key performance indicators and quantitative thinking." "The hallmark of Western Reductionist thinking is that the quantitative is revered while the qualitative is belittled because it can't be measured." Although reductionist thinking has spurred business growth and scientific progress in the past, it's no longer enough.
"The complex and multi-dimensional problems posed by the 21st century demand creativity and imagination." "Reductionist thinking can miss the insights that come from the more inclusive, so-called right-brain thinking which focuses on the irrational - belief, faith or trust. Right brain thinking encompasses more long-term strategic values such as community, spirit and purpose. It encompasses looking forward and using imagination rather than facts." It's not that one way of thinking is better than the other, it's that "using only one part of the brain or one type of thinking leads to less than optimal results."
We need both hemispheres for reason and imagination
In his groundbreaking book, The Master and His Emissary, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explores the importance of both parts, or hemispheres, of the brain. He argues that we need both hemispheres for reason and imagination. "The right hemisphere gives sustained, broad, open, vigilant, alertness kind of attention whereas the left hemisphere gives narrow, sharply focused attention to detail." "Our left hemisphere creates a simplified view of reality," one that "depends on denotative language and abstraction [that] yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless." "The knowledge mediated by the left hemisphere is within a closed system." "The right hemisphere acts as a devil's advocate, always on the lookout for things that might be different from our expectations, it sees things in context, it understands implicit meaning, metaphor, body language, the emotional expression of the face."
He argues further that "In our modern world, we've developed something that looks an awful lot like a left hemisphere world. We prioritize the virtual over the real, the technical becomes important, bureaucracy flourishes and the need for control leads to paranoia in society that we need to govern and control everything. We get reflected back into more of we know about what we know about what we know."
Our two hemispheres offer us two versions of the world
We need to manipulate the world using the left hemisphere, but for a broad understanding of the world, we need knowledge that comes from the right hemisphere, knowledge that is "never fully graspable, never fully known." He suggests that, western civilization "started with a wonderful balancing of the hemispheres, but it drifted to the left hemisphere's point of view. The machine model of the brain was supposed to answer everything, but it doesn't: Even rationality is grounded in a leap of intuition. There's no way you can prove that rationality is a good way to look at the world; we intuit that it is very helpful."
Einstein's thinking presaged this view of the brain: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is a faithful servant. We've created a society that honours the servant but has forgotten the gift." It's clear that, in our uncertain world, working with facts can only get us so far. We also need to honour the irrational, the creative, the imagination, and knowledge that's unknowable and ungraspable.
Here's a short, animated (and entertaining) video by Iain McGilchrist describing the real differences between the left and right hemispheres, and why we need both.
References:
Lewis, C., & Malmgren, P. (2019). The leadership lab: Understanding leadership in the 21st century. London, Kogan Page.
McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. London: Yale University Press.
Photo by Fahrul Azmi on Unsplash
Fully agree, we need the balance between both hemisphere. Many times I find myself with the problem that many of the leaders who have climbed positions in their organisations, have done it because they are good engineers and try to manage people like machines, and for many, it is very difficult to think holistically.
Yes we do, Lino. We need to take a step back and reduce our singular focus on performance and producing.