leadership in the 21st century: brains 3.0

How leaders think has a direct impact on the results they get. With the constant change that occurs naturally in our working environment - both internally and externally - we need to adapt quickly and effectively. Even though we know that on an intellectual level, there’s “something” that gets in our way. What is it and how do we deal with it? Ann Herrmann-Nehdi explains it’s all in our heads.

by ANN HERRMANN-NEHDI

Leadership in the 21st Century: Brains 3.0

RealizingLeadership.com

Leadership in the 21st Century: Brains 3.0 by Ann Herrmann-Nehdi

The fundamental meaning of leadership has not changed in all of recorded history… We have tweaked the meaning of leadership a little bit, thus moving from dictatorial to more participative styles, but the essence has remained basically unchanged for centuries.

~ Mitch McCrimmon

There’s no shortage of ideas and literature on the subject of leadership. From books to blogs to the advice of the gurus, it’s hard to avoid the glut of theories and philosophies about what it takes to be an effective leader. But taken altogether, a clear pattern emerges: This extensive catalogue of literature has evolved slowly over the last century, often presenting a lagging view backward rather than a much-needed leading view forward articulating the skills leaders will need in the future and how we will get there.

Consider how recent economic volatility, technological transformation and other external factors are reverberating through the business environment:

• New technologies are accelerating information transfer around the globe anytime, anywhere, without boundaries, breaking down barriers and democratizing the power of information.

• Western countries continue to shift toward knowledge work and service industries and away from more traditional manufacturing.

• Rapid growth in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is redefining the “second world” as a strong contender in the global economic marketplace.

• The velocity of change across industries and countries is creating an unprecedented need for strategic thinking and tolerance for ambiguity at all levels of management and leadership.

• Increasingly complex and changing demographics are requiring new levels of global dexterity, agility and sophistication in leaders.

The fact is, the world around us is evolving faster and faster. The volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) nature of today’s business environment means speed - specifically, the need to move rapidly, shift attention and think in short increments - has become more critical than ever. And through all of this unpredictability and chaos, leaders still have to manage the day-to-day while they keep their eye on the future and think strategically. No wonder then that leadership agility, the ability for leaders to “handle any curve ball thrown their way,” is receiving so much attention today.

RealizingLeadership.com

Issue 2622

Leadership in the 21st Century: Brains 3.0 by Ann Herrmann-NehdiRealizingLeadership.com

There has also been a shift in power - from administration to management to leadership to network (see image) - which has occurred alongside an expanding definition of what it means to be a leader. No longer “one who’s in charge or in command of others,” being a leader today encompasses a much broader framework extending far beyond previous limits of only the most senior of leaders. As a result, it’s not just those at the “top” who have to be able to deal with these challenges.

The Evolution of Power The new environment is placing a burden on leaders at all levels to be more agile, adaptive and innovative than ever before. Now more than ever, success requires new kinds of thinking that will allow leaders to:

• deconstruct complexities to take advantage of the right resources for the situation

• take control of their mental processes and embrace ambiguity

• shift their perspective to look at problems, tasks and people in a new light

But most of us underestimate just how difficult it really is to think in new ways.

When leaders approach a new situation with their habitual thinking, they severely limit their ability to generate new ideas or solutions. If our thought patterns continue

to be processed by our brains using the same neural pathways as in the past, our ability to be agile leaders and lead in different ways will not evolve to meet the new demands of the situation. Leading in new ways requires new connections and processes in the brain, breaking our existing patterns.

Our “mental maps” play a significant role in how we behave, respond and adapt. As David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz describe in their article, Neuroscience of Leadership, changing our thinking and our way of being is difficult to do because it literally requires us to change our brains.

So while most agree the world around us is requiring a different and changing approach to leadership, one that emphasizes leadership agility, that change will present challenges.

How Mindsets Get in the Way of Change Most of us have tried to change not only our own mindsets but other minds as well. My guess is more often than not, we’ve failed. Here’s a closer look at why that is:

1. Mindsets are part of our “cognitive unconscious.” Mindsets are part of our “cognitive unconscious,” where we’ve already formed mental maps that become our point of reference as we look at the world. Most of

the time we’re not aware of these mental maps or the impact they have.

Our mental maps are literally built from our experiences in life. As we process information, most often unconsciously, we are looking for patterns and scanning the mental maps we have already formed neuronally based on our experience. Sometimes our maps are helpful and sometimes they are not.

Think about when you travel to a new place and try to make change in a currency you’re not used to, or you encounter differences in dress, road signs, habits, customs, food, etc. I was recently reminded when I shifted to a new phone with a new operating system. Since most of my interaction happens without consciously thinking about it, I was clicking when I was supposed to swipe. My “mental operating system” - and its associated habits, reflexes and assumptions - had to change with the new phone operating system.

This is a great example of how our existing mental maps are often of little help and even create confusion because we’re challenged by some subtle differences in a system we think we already know. In fact, our experience and knowledge actually stops us from looking around for other options and ideas that might help us solve those challenges.


Issue 2624

Most change requires that leaders consciously become aware of and then challenge their mental maps and form new connections in the brain. This takes energy and motivation. When leaders understand how their mental maps are working and how they have created their mindsets, they are better prepared to adapt and respond to the change that is constantly occurring around them.

2. Mindsets are firmly engrained in the brain. Mindsets are reinforced by the structure and very nature of the brain itself. The brain is where we go to process any new information and it is the single body organ that is the central “computer” for all our mental processing. Each and every brain is as unique and different as a thumbprint. We literally build that print throughout the course of our lives, creating and fine-tuning our own unique style and building our mindset.

Our maps lead the brain to fill in gaps we might initially see and then quickly move on, but often with incomplete information. This is helpful when the map matches the situation; it’s very efficient that we don’t have to sit and think about how to start the car every day. However, it also means we’re constantly filling in the blanks unconsciously based on prior experience. For example, look at the diagram below, and read what you see:

What did you say? Ice cream is good?

Groups around the globe who have completed this exercise are 100 percent sure that’s what it says. However, when you reveal the entire phrase you see: JGF GPFAM JS CQQD. (Don’t believe me? Write those letters on a piece of paper and cover up the lower portion of them, and you’ll see how it works.)


All of our experiences pre-program what we see and how we think or feel about a given topic or model. Years ago, a participant in a program stood up during a segment and declared: “Excuse me, I do not DO metaphors.” It was clear this person was shutting down his own mental process because of a previous experience.

Think of the times that has happened to you, your team or your organization. When we engage others in a change process we are asking them to challenge their previous mental maps and make new neural connections in their brains. This is no easy task!

The challenge leaders face is how to become more conscious of how we develop, practice and maintain our brains - because change is part of the design. As Dr. Michael Merzenich, an expert on the brain’s ability to change (known as plasticity), has pointed out: “The brain was constructed to change.”

3. Isolated facts have little effect on mindsets. When 90 percent of heart patients don’t take action after their doctor instructs them about changing their lifestyle in order to prolong their life, then you know something is wrong.


Issue 2626

What is it about our brains that resists change so tenaciously? Why do we fight even what we know to be in our vital interests? It’s simple: Our thinking relies on our mental maps and mindsets, not facts.

Neuroscience tells us that our mindsets, the long-term concepts that structure the way we think, are instantiated in the synapses of the brain. Dr. Merzenich found in his research that habits actually showed up on MRI scans. In studying flute players, he found their brains had developed larger representational areas that control the fingers, tongue and lips. He could see that flute playing had physically changed the brain.

That’s why someone telling you a few facts isn’t going to change your mindset. If the facts don’t fit with your mindset and the mental maps that form them and are wired into your synapses, they get rejected.

Leaders are just like flute players. They have developed thinking habits or mindsets that have changed their brains. The cumulative weight of knowledge and experience and the mental maps that have formed make it very hard to change their approach to leadership.

This also helps us understand why it is that even though companies continue to spend the lion’s share of their training investments on leadership development, most believe their organizations still lack the level of leadership agility necessary to lead them successfully into the future. A recent Forbes article estimated that only 10 percent of today’s leaders have the level of agility necessary to face today’s challenges.

As McKinsey & Co. pointed out, underestimating mindsets is one of the key reasons leadership development programs fail. Mindset is particularly critical because it affects how leaders frame the world, how they look at things.

A leader’s mindset is their mental default, providing the brain the easiest path to follow in a noisy and distracting world. It takes energy to override your mindset. You have to redefine what is most important, as well as how and in what direction to shift your thinking. Think of the last time you needed to change your approach. Were you successful? What did it take?

Most leaders today struggle to keep up with yesterday’s definition of what it meant to lead, let alone shifting their thinking


Issue 26 27

to what is required today - agility. But no leader, at any level, has the luxury of being single-minded any more. As agility becomes the defining competency for successful leadership going forward, all leaders have to be able to consciously engage all of their mental resources - to be results-oriented and performance driven and engagement focused and strategically directed.

Building Leadership Agility: A Whole Brain® Approach How do you build leadership agility? An obvious place to start is by understanding the leader’s default mindset and its impact by looking at thinking preferences across the Whole Brain® Thinking Model. The metaphoric model has been highly validated over the last 30-plus years with the more than two million leaders and managers worldwide who have completed the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®).

Developed from research conducted by my father, Ned Herrmann, while he was head of Management Education at GE (Crotonville), the model is divided into four separate quadrants of thinking, each one different and equal in importance - and all of which are available to every leader. Whole Brain® Thinking, which is the ability to access and tap into each of our specialized modes throughout the


brain system, is a requirement of agile leadership, irrespective of the preferred mindset of the leader.

In the Whole Brain® Model, a more logical, analytic, quantitative and bottom-line approach to leadership appears in the Upper Left A quadrant. The more planned, organized, detailed and sequential leadership style is processed in the Lower Left B quadrant. Synthesizing, integrating, holistic and intuitive approaches reside in the leader’s Upper Right D quadrant. Finally, a leader’s interpersonal, emotional, kinesthetic and feeling modes are associated with the Lower Right C quadrant.

The Whole Brain® Model

Whole Brain® and the four-color, four-quadrant graphic is a trademark of Herrmann Global.

Issue 2628

If you think of each of these quadrants as four different leaders, imagine how each might approach the leadership process. Or better yet, imagine one leader embracing all four of these approaches.

In fact, the role of CEO, a classic leadership position, is a great example of one that requires Whole Brain® Thinking by design because it necessitates working with and leading a wide range of functions, from finance to strategy to people issues to execution. Our research on the thinking preference data of CEOs across the globe has demonstrated that CEOs have a high percentage of the rare (less than 3 percent of all profiles) Whole Brain® profile - one that has preferences equally distributed across all four quadrants.

The demand for more agile, Whole Brain® Thinking is no longer limited to the CEO ranks of leadership. Our world now requires the agile, adaptive and integrative thinking that spans all four quadrants across the leadership ranks of the organization. In a business environment where change comes fast and VUCA is the reality, we no longer have the luxury to relegate ourselves to “limited brain bandwidth.”

We know that by actively engaging all of the brain’s capacities from both hemispheres and all four quadrants, we have a larger “playing field” from which to draw our thinking - there is more cross-fertilization between neural synapses, providing the opportunity for new connections to form.


Issue 26 29

It’s time to redefine leadership for a continually changing world. The effective leader of the future will be a “thought leader,” a highly skilled thinker who is able to situationally access the different thinking preferences across the Whole Brain® Model as required for any given challenge, irrespective of the person’s natural preferences. Recent informal analysis of

current leadership programs in global Fortune 200 companies shows that we are woefully behind in the development of such leaders.

So what does a “thought leader” look like? The model below shows a Whole Brain® Map of the critical leadership elements for 21st century leaders:


Issue 2630

Here’s a personal development checklist for stretching your thinking to build the leadership agility necessary to lead yourself and others:

• Get Real: Discover your natural thinking preferences so you can begin to recognize your mindset and own the thinking changes you need to make.

• Pick your Battles: Diagnose how and when to change your thinking in order to break out of your greatest mindset traps. Think back to the feedback you have received across your career: What mindsets have others noted? When and how did those get in your way?

• Pay Attention: Become excruciatingly conscious of your thinking so you can recognize when you need to apply “thinking agility” - the ability to consciously shift your thinking when the situation requires it - to become more deliberate about how you use your mental resources.

• Leverage Others’ Thinking: As you lead your team and emerging leaders, learn to leverage what they bring to the table that complements your mindset. As you ask them to develop and grow, focus most on those areas that will have the greatest impact as they stretch their thinking to take on new challenges - and recognize the energy, effort and motivation that will require of them.


• Be Diverse by Design: Intentionally bring in others who provide the thinking diversity and perspectives necessary to tackle complex problems and come up with more innovative solutions, even if they make you uncomfortable.

• Begin at the End: Build your strategic mindset, even in the midst of so much ambiguity, by focusing your thinking on the end goal and promoting a culture of experimentation.

• Be Whole: To get the best results and greatest agility, apply a Whole Brain® approach to your role job, including how you set goals, manage change, engage people and create your vision of the future. RL

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi is CEO of Herrmann International, the company that pioneered the Whole Brain® Thinking approach and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) assessment. She works

with leaders, teams and consultants around the world to help them develop the thinking diversity, leadership agility and innovative mindsets to grow strong organizations. Follow Ann on Twitter @AnnHerrmann.

Issue 26 31

leadership in the 21st century: brains 3.0

Business