Bicameral: The latest neuroscience is refining our concepts of left-brain and right-brain functionality. Not very long ago, scientists thought that the right-brain did predominantly creative kinds of thinking. The left-brain, it was thought, did the logical thinking. Today, the understanding is that things are much more integrated, and the two halves of our brain are both creative and logical. The …
Same Questions: I love the story told about Einstein teaching his class of advanced physics students. It goes like this. He administered an examination to the students. One of his teaching assistants noticed that the exam he handed out was the same exam as the prior year. The assistant carefully approached Einstein and pointed out the mistake. After thinking for …
Words: What do you hear when I speak? I’m trying to paint a word picture of what I see in my mind so that you see “the same picture” in your mind. I share those words with you. We speak the same language. Let’s agree that the language, whatever it is, is native to both of us. But I have …
Optical Filters The optical filters with which I am most familiar are those that photographers use to enhance their images and videos. These particular filters screw into or clip onto the camera lens. I’m not going to bore you with examples of how the filters are used. Suffice it to say that filters modify the images recorded. Sometimes they are …
The Silly Season: A great deal of the continuing education I embark on for coaching certification involves understanding how the human brain works. It’s a moving target these days. Things change as we learn more about how the methods we use can be misinterpreted, how incredibly complex the human brain is and how reality is not truly available to us. …
Creative People: That sounds redundant to me. We (people, that is) ARE creative. Can we speak of creativity and not be speaking of people for the most part? Yet we people also wind up somehow creating environments that stifle creativity. Why? Perhaps we don’t know the origins of creativity. Indeed, we haven’t figured out exactly how the brain connects things in creative …
This book, and writing this review, was a trip through memory lane for me! Having spent more than three decades in the semiconductor and high technology space, the people listed in Isaacson’s excellent book were almost all familiar to me. Some I have met, others I have listened to in presentations and almost all I have read about. If you …
Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow required me to be slow and deliberate in my reading. I stopped frequently to mull over what Kahneman had to say and it was worth every bit of energy I expended. Kahneman starts with this “wish:” “So this is my aim for watercooler conversations: improve the ability to identify and understand errors of judgment …
Sooner or later we will see a neuroscience-based profile of leadership. I don’t mean a list of words that are “attributes,” or someone’s list of “Top 10 Habits of Highly Successful Leaders.” What I’m envisioning is a neural map showing synaptic connections and particularly active parts of the leader’s brain. There will be detailed explanations of the connectivity, how one …
I hear this phrase frequently during discussions and meetings. Someone will inevitably start a statement or counter someone else’s comment with the assertion “The truth is . . .” How can that statement be accurate? As leaders, should we let it stand? A more accurate statement might be, “A truth is . . .” or better yet, my favorite is “In …