Wednesday 26 August 2015

Which side of the Brain are you on: Left or Right?

Pop psychology is one of the big beneficiaries of the ongoing social media boom. This is understandable: everyone wishes to unlock the mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything Else in 140 characters or less. One of the pop psychology theories perennially circulating on Facebook and Twitter is the left brain/right brain hypothesis: the idea that the right brain is responsible for intuitive, creative and subjective functions like emotions, artistic appreciation, colour recognition, while the left brain is responsible for rational, analytical and objective functions, like logic, language, critical thinking and so on. This idea owes its existence to Roger Sperry, a 1981 Nobel Laureate (Medicine), who found that physically separating the corpus callosum (the bridge between the two hemispheres of the human brain) greatly reduced symptoms in epilepsy patients, but left either their reasoning or emotive faculties significantly diminished.    
First things first: this theory was outdated many years ago. We now know that both halves of the brain work in harmony, whether we’re reading Keats or solving a quadratic equation. There is well-documented evidence that shows the left and right brain hemispheres collaborating on linguistic as well as reasoning tasks.
Nevertheless, I find the left brain/right brain metaphor to be a useful tool while discussing personality and what it takes to be an effective leader.

Left Brain Leader: A boss who sets firm guidelines and sticks to them, such a person believes in leading by example, which means working harder than anybody else at the workplace. He or she will be highly organised, meticulous and will not take kindly to people who are perceived to be giving less than a hundred per cent. With a left brain leader at the helm, the organisation will run like a well-oiled machine. The chances of failure will be greatly reduced, but this will come at a cost: adaptability and scope for transformational, long-term change will also be reduced.

Right Brain Leader: A right brain leader will be an audacious risk-taker, a person who not only has an unusual perspective on most issues, but also encourages similar innovations from employees. He or she is likely to factor in intangibles while evaluating a person. Traits like punctuality, political correctness and capability for hard work will be respected by such a person, but they will always take a back seat to raw talent, vision and a flair for looking at the larger picture. Under a right brain leader, the organisation may be a little unpredictable (and a little compromised when it comes to day-by-day efficiency), but will have a chance of coming up with a product that changes the face of the industry.


The important thing, therefore, is to marry the strengths of both these kinds of leaders. The ideal CEO is someone who is sincere enough to inspire basic punctuality and efficiency in employees. At the same time, he or she must cut the team some slack every now and then, and simply ask them (without exerting pressure) to come up with ideas, no matter how wild or impractical. 2+2=4 seems obvious, but that’s only because your left and right brains are working together, after all.