Neuroscience and the
Three Brains of Leadership
By Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka
Abstract
Recent Neuroscience findings have
uncovered that we have complex and functional neural networks - or ‘brains’- in our heart and gut, giving
scientific credence to the growing body of leadership literature showing how
the world’s best companies are guided by leaders who can tap into the
intelligence of their head, heart and guts. Combining these Neuroscience findings
with behavioral modeling research conducted by the authors, a number of key
insights have been found about the roles of the heart and gut brains for adaptive
and generative leadership.
In the increasingly complex and
volatile social and business environments that organizations operate in, leaders
who are unable to tap into and harness the full intuitive and innate
intelligence of their multiple brains (head, heart and gut brains aligned
together) are at a distinct disadvantage. A new field of leadership development
is emerging, known as mBIT (multiple brain integration techniques) and it provides
organizational leaders with practical methods for aligning and integrating their
head, heart and gut brains for increased levels of emergent wisdom in their
decision-making, and for developing an expanded core identity as an authentic
leader.
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The Three Brains of
Leadership – harnessing
the wisdom of the head, heart and gut brains for generative and adaptive
leadership
The complex issues and adaptive
challenges facing organizations today require a far more generative response
than simply devising innovative strategies and new business models. New
strategies developed and executed from conditioned ways of being and thinking
predictably end up back in status quo. What is required is a new form of
leadership. Not a new approach to leadership, but a new form. This new form is not about a particular leadership style or ‘type’ of leadership. It’s about the
leader themselves and their ability to emerge new levels of consciousness and
wisdom in their decision-making.
Despite the abundant variety of
leadership models available today, persistent issues still remain common to
many organizations such as:
- Staff engagement
- Execution on strategy
- Attracting and retaining talent
- Cultivating a performance culture
- Maintaining market and community relevance
- Brand relevance and having a compelling and
authentic brand story
- Delivering quality customer experience
The typical organizational
response to these and other frequent issues is to call for a ‘step change’ in the forms of ‘innovation’ (in strategy product or
service) or ‘transformation’
(business, culture or process). Otherwise the response is a call for an
increase in leadership itself and a subsequent pursuit of new leadership models
that hopefully happen to catch the interest of the organization’s senior
managers.
While all of these responses and
approaches are useful to a point, any real whole-system change that is both
sustainable and wise requires leaders who are authentically connected deeply within
themselves, to their staff, and to the communities they touch. In other words, this
requires wise leaders who are integrated across their head, heart and gut
brains; leaders who are neurologically integrated. By aligning their conscious
and unconscious intuitive abilities, they are able to harness the innate wisdom
of their head, heart and gut intelligences for powerful and generative decision-making.
Truly generative and adaptive
leadership today requires whole new levels of self-awareness and self-facilitation
for integrating head-based intellect with heart-based values and gut-based
instincts. No longer can a true leader rely solely on the competencies dominated
by their head alone. As the now well-validated field of Emotional Intelligence
has shown, mental cognition and thinking processes alone are not sufficient for
total success. And growing lists of leadership experts are weighing in saying
that even IQ and EQ together don’t provide the full solution.
For example, in their popular
leadership book, ‘Head, Heart & Guts– How the World’s Best Companies Develop Complete Leaders’, leadership
mavens David Dotlich, Peter Cairo and Stephen Rhinesmith make the case that
leaders who operate only from the head are what they consider ‘incomplete leaders’. To truly thrive and
lead successfully in today’s complex social and business environments, ‘whole leaders’ must learn to tap into
the innate intelligence of their head, heart and guts.
Backing this up, in a recent TEDx presentation, Marty Linsky, co-author of several books on adaptive leadership
along with Ronald Heifetz, explicitly states that “technical leadership is from the head, and adaptive leadership is from
heart and gut”.
These sources make fascinating
and intuitively obvious claims, but what exactly does all this mean?
Neuroscience and the Cardiac and Enteric ‘Brains’
Over the last decade or so, the
field of Neuroscience has uncovered some intriguing findings that give support
to the ideas that true leaders use all of the intelligence available to them and
go well beyond that of just their head brain.
Starting with his pioneering research
on neuro-cardiology, Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the concept of a
functional brain in the heart. His work revealed that the heart has a complex
intrinsic neural network sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a ‘brain’ in its own right. The heart’s
neural network meets all the criteria specified for a brain including several
types of neurons, motor neurons, sensory neurons, interneurons,
neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells. Its complex and elaborate neural
circuitry allows the heart brain to function independently of the head brain
and it can learn, remember, feel and sense.
Following on, in 1998,
Neurobiologist and M.D. Dr. Michael Gershon published his pivotal book, ‘The Second Brain’, in which he described
the culmination of over a decade of research and discovery that the gut also contains
a complex and fully functional neural network or ‘brain’. The gut brain, also known as the enteric brain, contains
over 500 million neurons and sends and receives nerve signals throughout the
chest and torso and innervates organs as diverse as the pancreas, lungs,
diaphragm and liver. The gut brain is a vast chemical and neuro-hormonal
warehouse and utilizes every class of neurotransmitter found in the head brain.
Research has shown that the gut brain can learn, store memories and perform
complex independent processing.
The significance of these
findings to leadership development is profound.
Modeling the Competencies and Functions of the Heart and Gut Brains
Over the last 3 years, informed
by these Neuroscience findings, we have performed behavioral modeling research
on how the heart and gut brains function in the practical areas of
decision-making, action-taking, intuition, relationships, health and wellbeing,
and personal fulfillment. Along with this action-research, further analysis of
evidence from a wide body of divergent sources has shown that the heart and gut
brains are involved in representing and processing very specific forms of
intelligence and intuitive functions.
These findings support commonly
held notions such as trusting one’s ‘gut instinct’
and being ‘true to your heart’, and they also back up the assertions
that whole leaders need to use not only their heads, but also the innate
intelligence and wisdom of both their heart and gut. [We have documented both
the Neuroscience findings and our subsequent modeling research in our recently
published book, ‘mBraining’.]
Our findings indicate that there
are three core Prime Functions for each of the three neural networks, or ‘brains’:
HEART
BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS
- Emoting
–
emotional processing (e.g. anger, grief, hatred, joy, happiness etc.)
- Values
–
processing what’s important to you and your priorities (and its relationship to
the emotional strength of your aspirations, dreams, desires, etc.)
- Relational
affect – your felt connection with others (e.g. feelings of
love/hate/indifference, compassion/uncaring, like/dislike, etc.)
GUT
BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS
- Core
identity – a deep and visceral sense of core self, and determining at the
deepest levels what is ‘self’ versus
‘not-self’
- Self-preservation
–
protection of self, safety, boundaries, hungers and aversions
- Mobilization
–
motility, impulse for action, gutsy courage and the will to act
HEAD
BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS
- Cognitive
perception – cognition, perception, pattern recognition, etc.
- Thinking
–
reasoning, abstraction, analysis, synthesis, meta-cognition etc.
- Making
meaning – semantic processing, languaging, narrative, metaphor, etc.
Clearly, each of the brains has a
fundamentally different form of intelligence and has different goals operating
under different criteria. In other words, the head, heart and gut have
different ways of processing the world with different concerns and domains of
competence.
The importance of this to you as
a leader is two-fold. First, it's crucial whenever making personal or group
decisions that all three intelligences are accessed and incorporated into the
decision-making process. Without the head intelligence, the decision will not
have been properly thought through and analyzed. Without the heart
intelligence, there will not be sufficient values-driven emotional energy to care
enough to act on or prioritize the decision against competing pressures.
Without the gut intelligence there will not be sufficient attention to managing
risks nor enough willpower to mobilize and execute the decision once challenges
arise.
The second implication is to ensure you avoid
using one brain to do the function of another.
Each brain has its own domain of competence and by definition is not the
most competent in the other Prime Functions. This mistake can be typically seen
in organizations where the head brain is used to define the corporate values
that people’s heart brains don’t really care about, or the head brain is used
to design action plans that people’s gut brains don’t really engage with. Numerous other examples abound in daily
corporate life.
This is why we maintain that to
cope with the complexity of modern day business, truly adaptive leaders need to
use more than just the skills engendered in their head brains. Leaders must learn
specifically how to tap into, communicate with and align their multiple brains
– their head, heart and gut intelligences -- and gain the synergy and wisdom that
arises from ‘multiple brain leadership’.
And equally important, to also learn how to influence and align the multiple-brains
of those they are leading.
The Highest Expressions of Leadership
One of the many powerful models emerging
from our research work suggests that each of our brains has what is known as a
‘Highest Expression’. This is an
emergent competency that expresses what it means to be truly and deeply human.
It represents the highest, most optimized and adaptive class of intelligence or
competency of each brain. The Highest Expressions of each brain are:
- Head brain – Creativity
- Heart brain – Compassion
- Enteric brain – Courage
[Note: while there may
not be a single, definitive Highest Expression for each brain that is true for
everyone in all contexts, we have found in our action research that the above
generative set serves as a powerful foundation for consistently emerging higher
orders of wisdom and ways of being.]
These Highest Expressions are
accessed and activated when the leader is in an optimum state of neurological
balance, or what is defined as ‘autonomic
coherence’ where they are neither too stressed nor too relaxed, but are in
a ‘flow state’. It makes sense that
unless a leader is in a neurological flow state, their perceptions of any
particular issue or situation along with their subsequent decision-making must
be impaired by contrast.
For instance, if the leader’s
autonomic nervous system is functioning in an overly sympathetic (e.g.
stressed) state, their perceptions and decision-making will typically default
to their reactive conditioning. Conversely, if their autonomic nervous system is
functioning in an overly parasympathetic (e.g. apathetic or ‘freeze response’) state, they will
exhibit an inability or lack of desire to act, or at best make timid decisions.
When in an optimum state of
autonomic balance, however, we have found that leaders are able to bring a
higher order of consciousness to their decision-making. Additionally, they also
make decisions and take actions that arise from a more authentic expression of
their deepest and highest sense of self.
Creativity
As a Highest Expression, what we
mean by this is not just lateral thinking or thinking outside the box. Instead,
we mean the creative and collaborative process by which a leader is able to
conceive of new possibilities and new futures that emerge as an authentic
expression of who they are and what’s important to them. It’s also about the collaborative
process of manifesting these new possibilities into reality. The process of
creativity requires more than just mere imagination. If nothing manifests in
the physical world, then nothing can be deemed to have been created.
The head brain’s Highest
Expression of Creativity is also about the leader being able to continually
generate entirely new lines of thinking and new perspectives that can transform
their world and the world of their organizations. The import of this sense of
creativity is obvious to the practical applications of adaptive and generative
leadership.
Compassion
While this is not a word that is
commonly used in business parlance, it is indeed commonly used by almost all
wisdom traditions whenever describing the higher qualities of human
consciousness and of the very nature of being human. Within the context of adaptive
and generative leadership, it’s essential to remain cognizant of the obvious fact
that leaders are humans, and that the people they lead are also humans. Subsequently,
compassion does in fact play a significant role for authentic leaders who lead
not because they have positional power, but instead lead because they feel a
connection with the people and the communities they serve.
True leaders are emotionally
connected to their staff, their customers and the communities in which their
organization impacts. In other words, they care. And being values-driven, they
care enough that if the current human condition is not satisfactory then their
sense of compassion for those affected causes them to step up as leaders and
take action to improve that situation. Compassion encompasses a conscious
intention for helping people experience and benefit from a better way of doing
things and a better way of being. The heart brain’s Highest Expression of Compassion
is an active expression of true leadership that connects with, values, relates
to and responds to human needs and the human condition.
Courage
By definition, leaders lead. They
take us to new places and new futures that are different and better than our
current set of conditions. They create, invoke and stimulate change to the
status quo, and this takes courage. A leader who does not have courage is no
leader. Without courage, someone with the opportunity to lead will quickly back
down and capitulate at the first sign or resistance or challenge. Without
courage, a true leader is not able to act upon their visions, dreams and goals.
They are not able to live a deeply authentic life due to fear of things
unknown, uncertain, or unfamiliar. Without courage, change from the status quo
would either be impossible or occur only by accident or luck.
In contrast, with courage a
leader’s gut brain is able to express their deepest sense of self by empowering
them to act in ways that are true to what’s important to them and who they
really are as leaders. With courage, the leaders gut brain is able to empower
them to act from their deepest sense of identity in spite of any fear-based
conditioned reactions.
Organizational Evidence
There is a growing body of
evidence in the Organizational Leadership literature, along with backup from
the Neuroscience of Leadership research, that competencies such as Compassion,
Creativity and Courage are vital for organizational success. For example, a recent study by Christina Boedker from the Australian School of Business of
more than 5600 people across 77 organizations, found that the single greatest
influence on profitability and productivity was the ability of a leader to be
compassionate. As Boedker observed, “It’s
about valuing people and being receptive and responsive”, and finding ways
“to create the right support mechanisms
to allow people to be as good as they can be.”
It’s important to note that
compassion is not about pity, sympathy or niceness. It’s about deeply
supporting and nurturing people to be the best they can be; to guide and coach
them to bring the most calmness, creativity and courage to solving their issues
and to flourishing within their organizational environment. As Geoff Aigner,
director of Social Leadership Australia maintains in his thought-provoking
book, ‘Leadership Beyond Good Intentions:What It Takes To Really Make a Difference’, good management is ultimately
an act of compassion, and requires leaders to take responsibility for the
growth and development of others.
But as Aigner also points out,
and this is backed up by the work of Dotlich, Cairo and Rhinesmith, along with
many others, “taking responsibility for
organizational systems and the people in them can be overwhelming, tiring or
frightening.” And this is where Courage as a highest expression kicks in.
Through engendering courage in themselves, as well as in the people they are
leading, adaptive and generative leaders can push through the barriers to
organizational change. Organizations require creativity and innovation to adapt
to rapidly changing environments, and the change engendered by this often leads
to cognitive dissonance and push back by the people impacted by the new
paradigms the leader is emerging.
A focus on compassionate
leadership and sponsorship within the organization allows people to feel
valued, validated and supported, making them more amenable to supporting the
creative evolution of the organization. Aligning this with courage, enables
people to cope with the fears and uncertainties and to make the most of
emerging opportunities that together with their leader the organization is
creating.
The Generative Power of Sequence
Another key finding from our
behavioral modeling research is the importance of sequence whenever aligning
and harnessing the wisdom of your three brains. The order in which each of your
brains is accessed makes a significant difference to how they work together and
the wisdom that does or doesn’t emerge. This makes sense when you consider the
fact that each are separate neural networks with different Prime Functions. It
therefore makes a difference if the head is influencing the heart or the heart
is influencing the head, or if the gut is leading the head or if the head is
directing the gut (along with any of the numerous combinations between the
three brains). In other words, it makes a difference if your thoughts are
influencing your feelings or if your feelings are influencing your thoughts, or
if your gut reactions shape your perceptions and thinking versus your thought
processes triggering your gut reactions.
Of the multiple combinations that
are possible between the three brains, we have found there is a particular
sequence that is more ‘neurologically
friendly’ than others and seems to be the most generative in its results.
Not surprisingly, we have also found that particular sequence to be the natural
order in which many widely admired role models of leadership intuitively do,
ranging from socio-political leaders like Nelson Mandela to commercial
entrepreneurs like Richard Branson.
This organic sequence is what we
call the ‘Foundational Sequence’ and
as a general rule (other than for specifically contextualized situations) can
be used for the purposes of leadership development, diagnosis, and praxis. It
can be used for developmental purposes in leadership trainings and coaching, it
can be used to diagnose the quality of consciousness in play by any particular
leader at any point in time, and it can be used by leaders as a real-time
personal strategy to utilize and embody.
The Foundational Sequence starts
with the heart intelligence. From a leadership perspective, engaging the Prime
Functions of your heart brain ensures you start with a felt connection to the
people you lead and the communities you serve. This felt connection arises from
a values-based connection within yourself and generates strong emotional energy
and a desire to respond to human issues in meaningful ways.
The Foundational Sequence then
moves from the heart to the head brain. The connected and values-based
emotional states from the heart influence and shape the head brain’s thoughts,
perceptions and interpretations. This influence of the heart on the head is
essential for authentic leadership. The perspective of a compassionate heart
provides the emotional fuel and desire to make things better for others, for
yourself, for your organization and for the world. This directionalizes the
creative perspective of the head brain to synthesize all available information
into a larger pattern for a new way of seeing and understanding the situation
or issue. In a manner of speaking, this is the ‘heart’ of a true visioning process that is meaningful and
inspiring.
The Foundational Sequence continues
as these new insights and understandings from the head are emotionally
reinforced and supported by the heart brain by giving them high value and
salience. The combined signals of the heart and head neural networks then connect
with the gut brain which then assimilates them into the leader’s identity and
mobilizes them into action. As these actions are values-driven, the leader’s
identity is greatly expanded and evolved through this action-taking.
The Foundational Sequence
finishes back at the heart brain to ensure the underlying values and human
connection remains the anchor point across time as the leader takes ongoing
action in the world.
In short, the Foundational
Sequence that we have found produces the most generative change is: 1) start
with the heart, 2) move to the head, 3) move back to the heart, 4) move down to
the gut, 5) finally, move back to the heart.
Generative Wisdom and Generative
Leadership
Adaptive and generative leadership
requires integration across all three brains to bring the greatest possible
intelligence to bear in the organization. It also requires the multiple brains
be aligned through their Highest Expressions so that generative wisdom emerges
in the leader’s actions, decisions and ways of being.
Generative wisdom is wisdom that
is enacted; it is wisdom that is inculcated and behaviorally practiced in the
way the leader lives their life. And for wisdom to be generative it needs to be
creative, compassionate and courageous.
Generative wisdom is a wisdom
that is holistic and transformational. It continually transforms who you are,
how you see the world and how you relate to it. In essence, generative wisdom
is about continually emerging your highest sense of self through the pragmatics
of daily living. And for leaders, this includes the way you are leading your
organization, your industry, and the wider communities you impact.
Summary: mBIT (multiple Brain Integration Techniques) and Leadership
The latest findings in Neuroscience
show we have three functioning brains in our head, heart and gut respectively.
Using these findings as the basis for further behavioral modeling research, we
have discovered patterns of competencies that are foundational to adaptive and
generative leadership. We have also developed a body of techniques and
processes for aligning and harnessing the wisdom of the three brains which we
call ‘multiple brain integration
techniques’, or mBIT for short.
mBIT provides leaders with a
range of simple and pragmatic tools and methods for engaging and developing the head, heart and gut intelligences
of every individual and team within an organization.
There are obvious and immediate
applications of mBIT to organizational decision making, talent development,
relationship building, coaching, and the full range of people skills that make
a leader truly great. The best companies develop ‘complete’ leaders, and with mBIT, those leaders are able to tap
into and harness the intuitive intelligence of their multiple brains to know
how to wisely guide and evolve their people, their relationships, their
decisions and their organizational worlds.
As Dotlich, Cairo and Rhinesmith
point out, great leaders turn out to be those who are deeply in touch with
their head, heart and guts. Even more so, it is our view that some of the
greatest gains to organizational success come from harnessing the intuitive
wisdom of both leaders and those they lead, so that organizations can truly
evolve and adapt with generative wisdom within our complex and rapidly changing
world.
[More information about mBIT can
found in the book ‘mBraining – using your
multiple brains to do cool stuff’ by Marvin Oka and Grant Soosalu. Also,
you can visit www.mBraining.com ]
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