Whole-Brained Leadership, Teams, & Innovation

Innovation teams, high-performing teams, and new ventures need whole-brained leadership to be successful, and here's why. Teams that are creating something new need to draw on their whole brains and diversity for that mix of of styles and capabilities that can bring something to life. I'd like to share with you a few different ways to diversify your team and to make sure you've got a whole brain team so you don't have any skills and perspectives that are missing and would hold you back. Also, these different styles and ways of understanding people can help you understand yourself. And how you deal with others and how you can deal with them more effectively. First of all, Myers-Briggs. If you haven't taken the MBTI or Myers-Briggs exam, you could go to 16personalities.com and take it for free. First, before going through the 4 dimensions, I would like to share with you how the exam came about. It was World War II. And all over America, men went off to work and women who had not planned on going into factories and offices then had to because they had to keep everything running. So all of a sudden, they've got millions of people all over the nation who need to take jobs and they don't know what jobs they're suited for. A mother-in-law, daughter-in-law team, Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Briggs, put together a test. They started using it, and it was very useful to get people into a job that would fit them reasonably well. Four dimensions that they were testing are these. First of all, extrovert, introvert. Where do you get energy? Do you get energy being with people, or do you gain energy by being alone? If you're a people person, then maybe you should have a managerial role, sales role, etc., dealing with other people. If you're an introvert, maybe you should do the bookkeeping, analyze the numbers, make the corporate reports, etc. S and N, this is sensor and intuitive. Sensors sense what is. Does the factory have the products going out on time? Is the quality okay? How are the financial numbers? Yada yada. Intuitive folks see— can see trends more clearly and envision the future and can come up with new things. Thinker and feeler. Thinkers make decisions based on thoughts, ideas, data. Feelers make decisions based on feelings, their own intuition, and the feelings of the team. Judgers and perceivers. Judgers can walk into a room and say, "That's broken. That's the wrong color. That needs to move. This needs to be fixed." And perceivers will walk into a room— and yes, these are stereotypes. This is, you know, the total left and total right of the continuum. And most people will sit somewhere on the continuum, maybe in the middle. But for now, Judgers and Perceivers. So Perceivers will walk into a room and say, okay, that's broken. I wonder why it's broken. Ooh, that is a problem. Why is it a problem? How is it supposed to work? And why isn't that working? Now, a Judger, an extreme Judger, will go and fix everything. And then may have to refix it because he or she didn't find the real problem before jumping in with a solution. Perceivers can help you slow down, slow down, find out what the problem really is before you design a solution, find out why it's broken so it won't get broken again, and then fix it. So a Again, this blend of all these different dimensions can help you in innovation and running things, a leadership team, and more. All right. Here's a profile of an actual leadership team that I worked with in the Australian government. There were 4 people. And I was very happy to see that they had a mix of everything. And they were using this mix of everything. Although it surprised me, this was actually an economic group set up to do marketing events and sales promotions for the nation's businesses overseas. So it's a marketing and sales organization filled with introverts. So all I could say to these guys is, you might find your work tiring out there on the road doing events, marketing, salesing, schmoozing all the time. Be careful of your energies. The extrovert was pretty happy doing that and did not have a problem. Now, sensing and intuitive. I found it interesting that so many of the intuitive guys were a part of this team, and they were able to connect with potential clients, saying, hey, this is the, the future, these are the trends, you know, you should do business and make some collaborations in this way and sign on in that way. The S in the group actually ran the office and planned the events, and she was the background person, also an introvert, so that was good for her. So she was able to keep track of the budgets and process all the receipts for reimbursement and schedule all the events and the bits and pieces that had to go in the events, and she knew, you know, what was real and what was happening. Now, thinking and feeling— I'm glad to see that there was a mix, and I'm also It was also telling that they were doing sales and marketing, which is often a very feely job. And they were feelers. And the, the person on the top was a feeler. He was the CEO of the group. And I found it interesting that the thinker would naturally come up with, okay, here's the kind of event we had in this location with the type of client. Clients, and here's how it came out. These activities seem to be more effective and these don't. And he would take her advice, but he would make decisions with the whole team in a collegial fashion and make sure that everybody was feeling good and happy moving forward as a team. Now, judgers and perceivers, I was happy to see a mix. Again, because the judgers can say, okay, this was wrong with the event, we should do that next time, we'll change this, etc. And the perceivers would say, well, why didn't that work? Do we have to change vendors or was that a one-off? Right. So this is a— was a nicely, actually a nicely balanced team. And It reminded me of another nicely balanced team example, which will resonate with a lot of your hearts— marriage. Any, you know, the sort of diversity and teams working together issues are not only important for a business situation, they're also important for partnerships and marriage. And I'm thinking of one particular example. And I think, you know, you can guess who it is. But anyway, the wife was an ENTJ and born to be bossy. And the husband was an INFP. Early in the marriage, she always wanted to go out. Let's go to parties. Let's go see our friends. Let's go have dinner with, with these other people. And he would be terribly insulted that she didn't just want to spend time with him alone. And he had to realize that that wasn't because she didn't love him. That's because she's an extrovert and is happy with lots of people. And she was able to bring him a friendship group and, and, and widen their social circle, etc. So it caused some tensions, but it was a productive tension. They were both intuitive. They could see the future. And as long as you're the future you want to work for is the same one, then since these guys, these two people were very different people, their goals were the same. And thankfully, their values were the same. But they were complementary. They dovetailed each other on all of the other dimensions so they could be helpful to each other. A marriage where both people are exactly the same might be more of a friendship than a marriage. It would include the deliciousness of understanding and being understood. But that other person can't necessarily help you. You're not necessarily a more powerful team together than apart. So in any case, they could both see the future and work towards it. Now, the thinker and feeler, the thinker, and I saw this in another company example that was filled with thinkers. And there was one guy who was a feeler. And his feelings were constantly hurt. And he constantly felt that these folks walked all over him. And took no account of his feelings. Because actually, they did. They didn't think about feelings that much. They were a pipe manufacturing group and made engineering decisions, etc. And they didn't really think about it. So once they learned that they did constantly hurt this guy's feelings, feelings, and that was creating an unproductive tension. He learned to understand why, and they learned not to stomp all over him all the time, and they became a more productive team because they became less destructive of each other. And this can happen in a marriage as well. So if you're a thinker, pull back a little and think about the feeler's feelings. If you're a a feeler making decisions on feelings, you may want to include the thinker's data and logic when you're making those decisions. Final thing, J and P, I've pretty well covered already. A judger will rush ahead, make a judgment, and dive into a solution. Whereas a perceiver will say, let's hold back and understand why and how it should be working and why it isn't working. But a perceiver sometimes will never get to the stage of getting the thing fixed. So again, is your tension a creative tension, or is your tension a destructive tension? Creative dissonance is another thing that you can look up in Harvard Business Review. And find some articles on creating positive creative dissonance. So you operate like a jazz band and less like your high school band at the beginning of the term. Enough said on that. All right. The next bit of diversity I'd like to go through with you is from 123test.com. It's DISC. So if you take this exam, you'll find out, are you primarily dominant, which is directive and competitive? Are you primarily composed and reserved? Are you an influencer? So you go out, you're social, you're outgoing. Or are you more factual and analytical? Are you steady? So you're consistent, you're thoughtful, or are you more impulsive and changeful? This used to be actually called support. So someone who's more supportive of a team, etc. Compliance. Are you conventional, reliable, and you have your eyes on the details? Or are you more independent, uninhibited, and you're not really concerned with the rules, the details, and following policy? Um, as you can see on your screen, the DiSC profiles can be split up, um, between the assertive and active versus calm and the people-oriented versus the task-oriented. Now let's get to an actual, let's get to an actual leadership team. So this is actually the same team that I showed you with MBTI, and I tested them also for DiSC. I put their scores up as a team, and I circled the primary score of each person in red and the secondary score of each person in blue. And here's what I found. There, there was one person who was an influencer, and instead of just dominating and giving decisions, would go out and influence. Okay, this was also, you'll notice, the extrovert. And in a marketing and sales situation, that person was very important because she would get out there and and do those things. Stable or supportive was really well represented. This was a team that wanted to be a team. They wanted to support what the team was doing. And they're very, very stable. And they were a government organization. Now, compliant. The person who did the budgets and made sure the policies and rules were adhered to and knew all the details and scheduled everything. Yes, that is the person on the bottom. In MBTI, that person was the S. In DiSC, that was the compliant person. She made sure they complied with all the government rules and scheduled everything and had all the details worked out, and she ran things. Now I noticed, and I was pretty surprised, there's no D. Nobody was dominant or directive, including the guy on the top of the table, who was the CEO of the group. Now, he was also a feeler and a perceiver. And his management style was entirely collegial and collaborative. He didn't make a decision and throw it at everybody and say, "You do this, you do this, you do this." He managed the team by letting the team manage themselves in many regards. And it worked well. But it was quite surprising. Now, Most the— most CEOs are actually ENTJs, and I noticed that that influencer person is 1, 2, 3 levels down from the top. She's the ENTJ, and she was an influencer. So I think what wound up happening was that she would tell him the CEO, and the rest of the group things and was sort of leading from behind. But she didn't want to, you know, number one, it's not her job to be the CEO. And number two, it's not her style to be dominant. So as long as you can have a self-managing team of colleagues, this is fine. But in times of crisis, you often do need a D. Okay, HBDI, Herman Brain Dominance Indicator. So Ned Herman was a neuroscientist who thought that how the brain is wired should have an impact on our styles and our behavior. And as it turns out, he was right. He crafted HBDI, the Hermann Brain Dominance Indicator, on Nobel Prize-winning neuro research. And basically the idea is that yes, we are right-brained and left-brained, and most people have heard of this, but we're also top-brained and bottom-brained. The left brain is generally in charge of the logical, the right brain is generally in charge of the creative. The top of our brains, the cerebral cortex, has to do with higher-order thinking. The base of our brains is the seat of action and emotion. So he theorized and actually showed experimentally a profile of people. So if you take the test, you'll find that you're not just right, left, or left, or top or bottom. You could be cross-brained, or in rare cases, a little mix of everything. That's very, very rare. So if you're top right-brained, this is the profile of someone who generally would be a strategist. They like to make business models, um, very visual. Photographers are up here. Holistic, artistic. Now, if you're top left-brained, then you're not only a thinking person but also logical, so very analytical, um, an analyzer, mathematical, etc. Now, if you're bottom-brained and on the left, then this is someone who is logical and a doer, So this is a planner. This is project manager, program manager, someone who's controlled, organizational, administrative. They get things done and organized. On the bottom and the right, creative, is the talker and emotional person, interpersonal, spiritual, etc. Now, If you're not left-brained or right-brained or a top-brained thinker or a bottom-brained doer, you might be cross-brained. So you might be a combination of analytical and emotional. This would be a classic profile for a child psychologist, uh, perhaps a marriage counselor who does research on marital counseling, etc. If you're cross-brained the other way, then you like to design things and strategize and make business models and get it done. And design and get it done and design and get it done. So this is a classic profile for an inventor, an innovator, an entrepreneur. Design thinking. If you're equal in all of these things, you're what I call Gumby. You can be whoever you need to be in the situation, whatever the situation calls for, you're there. And this is a fabulously flexible resource, resource to have in an organization. Now, I worked with a management team and it was a startup management team. So it's a startup situation, they're crafting something new, they're getting it out, and they need a whole brain team to cover it all. They need some— they need someone to design the offering, do the business strategy, business model. They need someone to analyze what's working and not working. They need, need somebody to get it done because you got to get it out in the marketplace. But it's also very important to take care of the emotional needs of your team who are under a lot of stress. And depending on the business, your community, your customers, etc. So here was a leadership team that I came across. And they were fighting. And the top brain person would say to the others, "You guys are so stupid. I am the only one really doing any thinking in this organization. Yeah, I design stuff, I envision the future, and I'm figuring out what works and doesn't work among what we do. You guys are like chickens running around with your heads cut off." The right-brained person said, you guys are robots. I mean, God, we are, we are a people-based organization. We serve our customers, we serve the community, we've got to take care of our employees and morale because things are tough. And you guys really don't care about anybody, do you? And then the third person, who is the acting CEO, said, "You guys are useless. You know, yeah, we're coming up with all these great visions and strategies, but I'm the only one getting anything done and making sure that we actually deliver. Could you help?" So these Conversations, or we can call them fights, were really, really unproductive. And they were really expressions of frustration. And only after one of them figured out how they were configured did they actually start to get productive with these conversations. Because while they were fighting, they considered splitting up. After seeing their profiles, they realized that they are a whole brain team. They need all the perspectives. And yeah, you may love your own perspective, but you need the others. And if you're on your own, you're possibly going to fail. So their dissonance became creative instead of destructive. It was a really useful thing. So I also used this construct on a leadership team in government, and this is an actual spider chart of the team and how they are— how they were— how they were split up. What, what are their primary and secondary strengths and so forth. And you can see from this that they're actually a pretty well-balanced team. They, they are not strong on analysis. So what can you do if you don't have a balanced team? Okay. First of all, like the founding team that was considering splitting up, if you are a whole brain team, don't. Appreciate and recognize what you've got in your teammates and use dissonance constructively. If you do have some holes, you can change team members. You can hire someone to fill in a particular hole. Individuals can also pull themselves into different quadrants. You can change your style over time actively. Now, Communication is actually rather key. So when you communicate, you need to focus on who's listening to you and what's really going to get the message through to them. So if you become reasonably adept with this way of profiling people, then you can craft your messages according to what they will probably go for. So if it's a top right-brained person, you know, the strategist and designer, futurist and so forth, business models, you need to highlight in whatever it is you're trying to sell them— new project, new business idea, whatever— highlight the new ideas. The vision, the future possibilities, because that's what really excites them. If you're talking, on the other hand, to a top-brained logical person, top left brain, the analytical folks, sell them on the analysis. You've done really fantastic analysis on this business initiative. Here's results that are absolutely achievable. Here's precision and how well I analyzed this opportunity. Now, if you're going instead to talk to the lower left person, um, the organizational person, the program manager, the project manager, then you got to show them you have a plan and you have all the details worked out. This is really, really doable, and you're going to mitigate the risks. This is organized and doable. And if you're going to talk with the bottom right brain person who's very emotionally centered, then you gotta talk to them about passion, shared values, empathy, and the well-being of your customers, your community, your employees, your founding team, etc. Talk to them about well-being. And they'll really hear you. All right, so do customize your communication according to HPDI. It'll help you be more effective. So for more information on all this, I highly recommend a great article by Dorothy Leonard Barton— or it might have been Dorothy Leonard at the time— Harvard Business Review, Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work. It talks about some of these issues and more and gives examples of BMW and other innovation scenarios. In the meantime, I thank you very much and I wish you a diverse and integrated and balanced whole brain future. Thank you.