Rare Leadership.
Last week I made a promise that I would be sharing a few more key insights from this remarkable book.
My team knows that it’s been a refreshing leadership book that I can’t stop talking about. It’s helped find more language to a few key values that are very important in our organisation.
What I love about this book is that it combines research in the area of neuroscience with practical leadership principles.
Ever heard of the right brain and left brain theory?
Brain research shows us that the left side of the brain usually deals with very concrete matters like logic, facts and analysis, while the right side of the brain is more wired to deal with abstract details like intuition, imagination and creativity, but also relationships.
I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to leadership training and new insights to pursue big dreams. Much of this type of content is often targeted at a ‘set-goals, aim-high, analyse-your-options, get-things-done,’ type of approach.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to understand your field or market, I do get excited about big dreams and I love getting things done!
However, one of the main points from Rare Leadership is that the authors suggest that the left brain is not where leadership starts, and this is quite a revolutionary concept in the world of leadership development.
Once we start leading from the left brain it is really hard to switch back to the right brain in order to have a more holistic approach, become more relational, and operate from a place of creativity, maturity and… joy!
“The problem with hiring or promoting people strictly on the basis of results is that we often place selfish and immature individuals into important positions. Any short-term results will come at the price of a toxic work culture. Our long-term results will not be what we hoped for.”
—Marcus Warner & Jim Wilder in ‘Rare Leadership’
On the contrary, if we start leading ‘from the right brain’ we will start off with creativity, focused on relationships and joy, while still being able to engage the left brain for data, analysis, facts and problem solving.
Come back next week for the actual acronym: RARE Leadership.
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