THE NEUROSCIENCE of LEADERSHIP
Our concepts and methods are grounded in extensive research on the mind and the brain.
High Ground and Low Ground
Leaders tend to follow two different patterns of activity in the mind and brain:
The Low Ground: Transactional leadership. Make deals, solve immediate problems and please people. Involves subjective valuation (thinking about what you and others want).
The High Ground: Strategic Leadership. Challenge thinking, manage disruption, create breakthroughs, and fulfill longterm plans and goals. Involves executive function and mentalizing (thinking about what people are thinking and what they might do next).
Successful leaders are proficient in both Low and High Ground thinking. They move as needed between them. Business school teaches transactional leadership. Strategic leadership must be learned on the job.
In our courses and consultations, we help leaders and their teams develop and apply the skills of the High Ground leader.
Deceptive messages
Our brains produce a constant flow of signals, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. They seem like reality, but they are often misleading and destructive. As people in an organization communicate and work together, their thoughts combine and become the deceptive messages of the culture: “The way we do things around here.”
One key job of a strategic leader is to identify deceptive messages and relabel them for what they are: simply messages. Long-lasting change – for the individual and the organization – starts when you reframe new narratives and focus attention on them.
Self-Directed
Neuroplasticity
The repeated focus of attention, over time, leads to physical changes in the brain. That’s the phenomenon called neuroplasticity.
It’s like strengthening a trail by walking on it. "Neurons that fire together wire together,” and over time your brain changes to match your focus.
What if you could harness neuroplasticity, deliberately strengthening your capacity as a strategic leader? What if you could lead and inspire others to do the same, on behalf of your shared long-term goals?
The Wise Advocate
This mental construct is an aspect of your attentive mind. Leaders and philosophers have been aware of it, and have written about it, throughout human history. You experience it as an inner presence that you can access whenever you are receptive. It is not just interested in what is good for you, but what is good from you. It is the voice within you that helps you make decisions on behalf of the best interests of all the systems you care about: your career, family, community, workplace, organization, and more…
Focusing your mind this way day after day is one of the most important things that an accomplished leader does.