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First things first: this theory was outdated many years ago.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.

Welcoming Aboard a New Hire

Welcome aboard!

An effective onboarding program makes new hires feel valued and involved and is a good bet for long term retention…..

It is said that any new recruit irrespective of the level, decides to stay or move on within the first seven days. I have personally experienced this several times in my professional life.

 The first few days are very like the seasoning period when either the new joinee gets accustomed to the new environment, tries to adapt the organization’s culture and smoothly fits into the groove, or on the contrary might just out rightly reject it. The reasons could be many, which would go beyond the pay and perks.

This makes it imperative for any organization to have an impactful onboarding program in place, although, I am an advocate of not having something which is too methodical, instead the focus on creativity and touching the employee’s heart, while giving him the relevant information.

For instance, if someone comes to our home, do we always go as per the plan – 7’o clock tea, 9’o clock breakfast, 12.30 lunch and so on. No we don’t. Instead, we let our guest or the new member to feel at ease and ask for his opinion. Our intention is to make the person feel comfortable and as a good host we would try to accommodate as per our guest’s preference.  Similarly I believe that there can’t be a fixed routine to the onboarding program. Having said that it’s equally important to have a plan in place so that there is no chaos at the end moment, but we should all use your creative judgment in deciding what best suits our new colleague – the new member of the family.

He has to feel invited in the new set-up.

It’s not that only an entry level executive would feel lost in her new job, but even senior employees could feel the same way if her onboarding is not done the right way.

For instance, if a senior executive joins from a competitor’s place. It is likely that he would have several apprehensions in joining your organization irrespective of the hike; he or she may have been offered. So now how do you welcome this new person. Should you start with how the competitor has had all wrong practices in place and your company has got it all right. Or should you make him feel so important on the first day that you show him how you were just waiting for him to come and change the fortune of your company.

I have seen many of my industry colleagues behaving in a similar fashion during such instances. Either they portray a very humble behavior or turn out to be too regimented, and cold.

In my opinion, the new person should be given some time to settle down in the new place and meanwhile you can also take time to evaluate him better.

So here is what I propose to have an effective onboarding program which should be beneficial in retaining employees and achieving business goals.

1.    Soak in the company culture:

Every company has two aspects of the culture. One is the set of rules framed by the company which every employee is expected to follow and on the other hand, there are some unwritten rules. It’s important for the new employee to understand both, and at times it may take a year to get things in place.

I know of a large IT company, where the company especially deputes a co-worker, who takes the new employee through the established guidelines and also the unwritten rules. It’s like you have moved into a new city or a country and how a friend would take you through the brighter and darker sides of the city.  What a great idea of inviting people to your organization and also make them feel comfortable. In such a scenario, it will be much easier for the new employee to adapt the new culture. 

I strongly recommend fostering social relationships with co-workers in making employees feel comfortable from the initial day at work.  Winning organisations consider these relationships as enriching as they make new hires feel invested in their work and the company. As part of the onboarding, companies may organize a team lunch or an evening outing on the first day, which will allow the new hire to mingle with her team, acclimatise with the company culture, work ethics and build positive working relationships. PepsiCo is one such company that I can recall that has developed an online portal called “

“Pre start”. Here new hires can find useful information on company values, culture, organizational structure, etc. In addition, it has also assimilated social media to make them feel like a coherent group.

2.     Try gamifying the process

These days it’s new trend that’s gaining momentum across industries and sector. It's not always about the bottomline, it about engaging the new hires and keeping their enthusiasm atop from day one.  That is why a lot of companies are trying gamified tools for the onboarding process.  These includes, learning challenges, games competitions and contests for the new hires. The passing and sharing of knowledge between the company and the new recruit becomes much easier with this. It eventually changes the boring onboarding process to a fun filled activity and the experience tends to linger on. Like everyone remembers the first day at college, people also keep the memory of first day at work afresh for long. This whole engaging exercise has a positive end goal.At DBS bank, for instance, to engage the new hire’s interest level as well as create curiosity around the induction program, the organization has built Stereoscopic 3D effects on select screens along with engaging videos, personalized welcome messages from department heads help in personalizing the onboarding program as well as boost performance and retention

3.    Treat it like a never-ending process

One common folly that most organizations tend to commit is that they assume that an onboarding process ends on the new hire’s first week on the job. Rather, successful onboarding programs can even span over several months to reap its benefits. The duration of onboarding programs vary in terms of organization. While for some, it may last for a week, for some, it may stretch to four months. In any organisation, the culture is built over years. So how can one expect that a new employee would come and embrace the culture in a few weeks. Every person has his own personal traits and would need a personalised approach to this. 

Assigning a manager/mentor to track employee’s initial months on the job helps to understand their comfort level on the job as well as how things are done at their workplace is also an effective way.  At different stages, the assigned manager/mentorcan ask the new hire about his experiences with the hiring process, if the induction met his expectations, any challenges or issues he may be facing. This will help the organization in understanding the level of engagementor connect the new hire has developedwith the organization. Every onboarding program has to be continually fine-tuned at different stages to keep enhancing its impact and benefits and most importantly, a successful onboarding process is never really over. L’Oreal is one such organization that supports an extended onboarding program. It has a two-year, six-part integration program called “L’Oreal Fit” which builds lasting relationships as well as develops employees for bigger challenges.

While I believe that there are no set onboarding designs or approaches that will work radically for any organization. However, from a business standpoint, it makes no sense to invest on hiring a talent, pay an exorbitant remuneration, lose productivity and then finally lose the employee because the relationship fails to take off on the right foot right at the beginning. To avoid such pitfalls, invest on your people who will help you reap the rewards of a stellar onboarding prgram.