Mindset Over Style: The Neuroscience of Effective Leadership
NeuroTips #5 | August 2023
We appreciate your positive feedback on our straightforward ‘So what’ & ‘How too’ structure in NeuroTips # 4. Let’s keep the decluttering approach going!
Did you know academic papers on over 150 leadership styles have recently been compiled?
Yet most leaders don’t get any leadership development to suit their role until they have been on the job for at least 6 months.
This would suggest that unless they are uniquely talented, have amazing role models, played on a sports team or are just plain lucky, they will have had to handle big challenges without any game plan. Leading their brain's plasticity to form new neuronal behaviour and emotion pathways, which, if not corrected, can become bad habits.
"SO WHAT?”
With so many aspects of life-changing rapidly, including discussions about AI, important questions arise:
Who is guiding and providing a steady hand in leadership?
Where is the vision for navigating the future coming from?
Are people going to stick around or find somewhere else they’d rather be?
And here’s the ‘HOW TOO’:
For now, let’s forget “styles” and instead consider mindsets as the variables for humancentric leadership.
What are mindsets?
Mindsets are essentially “mental frameworks through which individuals perceive, interpret, and make sense of the world around them. They encompass beliefs, values, attitudes, biases, memes, personal learning, experience and even the opinions of your ingroup (more reason for leadership authenticity coaching).
The importance of mindsets lies in the fact that the narrative we run in our head directs our brain's attention and shapes outcomes. How you feel and think determines your behaviour influencing those around you and the culture of your business.
The link in this recent HBR article on ‘The Leap to Leadership’ mirrors 3 key brain-based takeaways that I emphasise with clients, to explore the concept of leadership:
1. The importance of self-awareness for emotional regulation to enable shaping your professional brand and purpose around the 4 ‘c’s’: Confidence, Clarity, Consistency and Celebration.
2. Why the diversity and collaboration of different brains can prevent pitfalls, group thinking and limited ideation and promote continuous learning.
3. Good brain health enables focus, prevents avoidance mindsets, and empowers leaders to listen, make sound judgments, provide assurance, and foster a psychosocial safe environment.
Read more: https://hbr.org/2023/07/the-leap-to-leader
