Neuroleadership is an emerging trend in the field of management. As we look at the importance of global leadership in our ever-changing business environment, we find a connection between our way of thinking and our leadership and decision-making style.
Instructions: Please reply in 250 words to the articles listed below.
Hogan, T. (2010). Neuroscience provides tools to navigate the new business reality. People and Strategy, 33(4), 8-9.
The four domains of NeuroLeadership; problem solving, emotion regulation, collaborating and facilitating change provide an interesting lens through which to examine the field of global leadership development. Leaders today face greater challenges than ever before as they work across multiple geographies, functions, product lines and national cultures. Neuorscience provides a useful framework for understanding how leaders gain insights while learning to work in new ways across traditional boundaries in a borderless world. Leaders, therefore, need to be able to see and process information in new ways, making connections between phenomena that have never been linked before in their minds. This is systems thinking, and it is the hallmark of resourceful and innovative leaders throughout history.
Rock, D. (2010). Impacting leadership with neuroscience. People and Strategy, 33(4), 6-7.
A 2008 study showed that ‘improving leadership’ was the second most urgent human capital imperative for most companies’ business strategies. Up until now, most of the leadership theories evolved out of behavioral observations, or through social psychology research. It appears that this approach has not delivered what it was supposed to do. Recent developments within neuroscience have given people the ability to shed some new light on how the brain functions in real time. This new brain research may provide the missing link between leadership behavior and leadership development. Since 2007, there has been an effort to gather relevant neuroscience findings into a new field called ‘NeuroLeadership.’ NeuroLeadership explores the neuroscience underpinning four key leadership skills, called the four domains of NeuroLeadership. Using neuroscience to explain leadership issues now is happening across major corporate, government and non-profit organizations, including NASA, the National Defense University, Citibank, Microsoft and other firms around the globe.
Rock, D. (2011). NeuroLeadership. Leadership Excellence, 28(8), 11-12.
People in leadership positions are often logical, analytical thinkers. But the human brain is a social organ. Its reactions are directly shaped by social interaction. Although work is often seen as economic transaction, in which people exchange labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will become a distinguishing leadership capability. Five social qualities enable leaders to minimize the threat response and enable the reward response: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF). The SCARF model helps alert you to people’s core concerns and shows you how to calibrate your words and actions. The more practiced you are at reading yourself the more effective you will be.
