This content was created by Susan Britton MCC. This content was uploaded by Susan Britton MCC. This is a YouTube presentation titled "The Academies: Four Brains" (created 2019-05-23) featuring Susan Britton MCC delivering a solo workshop-style talk. She introduces a four‑mode framework — bummer brain, buddy brain, business brain, and builder brain — organized along the axes of connecting vs. creating, and discusses how each mode shows up in clients and leaders.
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I want to introduce a concept that we've been playing with here for a number of months. And the idea is that we can operate within one of four sort of brain modes. Okay? This is similar in a sense to the red zone, blue zone. It just breaks it down a little bit more based on these two scales of connecting and creating. Right? So, let's start with the bummer brain. Right? So the narrative here is, life's a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, things will never change, what's the use? That's that bummer brain. Anybody seen a client like that or felt like that yourself recently? Right? And that's because we are in a place where we're not connecting with others and we're reacting instead of creating. On the right-hand side is the buddy brain, and that's the brain that sort of is really concerned with connections and, in fact, in fact, overly concerned, too much concerned, too much concerned about reputation, too much concerned about making everybody happy. Let's just make sure everybody's happy at any cost. And we lose in that process strategy, strategic compassion, the bigger picture, right? Because we're so worried about threats to our relationships and our reputation. Anybody have clients or yourself that you think, I kind of veer towards the buddy brain? And then top left quadrant is what I'm calling the business brain. So this is the brain that says, I'm a competent, capable human being, and from my experience, this is the right way to do it. Let's just do it, move on, go for it, right? I don't care what people— if people think it's stupid. This is where leaders can oftentimes get in trouble, or even ourselves as entrepreneurs sometimes, with I think this is the way to do it, and I haven't connected with other people, gotten other people's input, gotten other people's ideas. So it may be that I'm just totally sort of isolating within my ideas, or I'm veering towards perhaps an arrogant side, which is my way or the highway, or micromanaging side. That's that business brain. I'm sure many of you know leaders who might fall into the business brain. And then finally, the builder brain, so upper right corner. Quadrant. And here is a brain that says problems are opportunities in disguise. And I should probably even put quotations around problems. So bring it on, right? Bring it on. Let's pull together and do this thing. And that's when we're both connecting and creating.
