Management Perspectives

For many of us, our way of living and working is highly skewed towards using the left side of the brain—a consequence of our academic education and the ways in which we communicate and work. This doesn’t imply we activate only half of our brain, but rather that the qualities of the left side of the brain dominate our overall functioning. Leaders and managers are especially capable in such left-brain functioning. It has served them well in their professional lives, allowing them to build strong strategic and goal-achievement track records. The left brain is also a powerful problem-solving machine but it can get stuck in its own thinking. When this happens, it can only be unlocked by bringing in the strengths of the right side of the brain. I am referring to the big, hairy issues that are really important and yet not making enough headway.

Our ‘right brain’ is able to see the whole, the proverbial wood for the trees, and to see the new, bringing a fresh perspective to situations fraught with complexities and contradictions. By engaging the ‘right brain’ it is possible to capture a situation in a single representation, regardless of its long history of details, number of parties involved, conflicting interests, etc. The ‘right brain can see and express a complex whole all at once.

But bringing the qualities of the ‘right brain’ actively into our day-to-day is not obvious to us because language, our dominant way of communicating, is the processing mode of the left side of our brain. The right side of the brain processes and communicates in images. Hence we often say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.

You may remember a time where you could not figure out how to get something done. Then while you are doing something entirely different, such as reading the newspaper or glancing at some advertisement, all of a sudden, there is a glimmer of an idea. Or a colleague makes an off-hand comment and you can sense something shifting. It can literally seem like the idea is at the edge of your awareness, and you have to pause to see it and hold on to it, to ‘grab’ it. These new insights enter the right brain first, which means that we can’t immediately articulate them. “Give me a moment to find my words,” is an often-heard expression.

The ‘right brain’s’ capacity to see the whole and the new is especially invaluable when dealing with the kind of problems where it feels like you are going in circles. Without a doubt, activating the ‘right brain’ in your employees is vital for enhancing their innovative and creative problem-solving skills.

Here are three vital techniques to practice with your teams to engage their ‘right brains’ and help them become better problem-solvers:

1. Change the question
   “What do you think?” is almost the standard way we proceed once a topic has been introduced in a conversation. Most likely you have asked or have been asked this many times today. For most people, this generates a left-brain response: a logical, structured, argument. Yet once an argument has been stated, many people focus on defending their thoughts or adding additional information that strengthens their argument, rather than investigating their point of view.
   
   If we instead ask, “What do you see, hear, or sense?” we invite a right[1]brain response which naturally focuses on bringing a situation to life. This gives us a richer picture of the topic at hand, invites exploration, and inevitably generates new ideas.
2. Metaphors
   Many leaders will be familiar with the power of a good metaphor. Whether going after some ‘low-hanging fruit’, ‘riding out the financial storm’, ‘boiling the ocean’, or ‘winning the battle’—metaphors are often used in business conversations.
   
   Metaphors immediately activate the ‘right brain’ as they invoke images in our mind. Someone might naturally say, ‘this just feels heavy’ when referring to a piece of work. Your role as the leader is to capture the image your employee has given you and make it more visible. A little prompt like, ‘heavy, tell me more, what kind of heavy…?’, can already invite the ‘right brain’ to elaborate.
   Not everyone speaks easily in metaphors, yet you can guide someone into a particular type of metaphor. For example, by asking what landscape, colour, sports, music, or animal comes to mind when thinking about a person or a situation.
   
   In conversations with metaphors, the approach is as follows:
    Get someone talking about their metaphor and make the metaphor visible to both of you. Turn on your curiosity, that is all you need. You have to truly see the metaphor in both your own mind’s   eye.
    Once the image is clear, it is a good idea to explore together within the metaphor what to do next. Share ideas freely, the ‘right brain’ has remarkable intuition about what to do within the image.   When the next step in the metaphor is clear, then link back to the actual situation and explore together what that step in the metaphoric world represents in the real world. This will reveal actionable steps the employee can take to solve the problem at hand.
3. Drawing
   Drawing works particularly well to illustrate a complicated situation with a lot of history and facts, where the essence can be difficult to summarise in a few words. It can naturally focus the mind and conversation, possibly because it is impossible to illustrate all the details in the same way that we can with words.
   
   In business meetings, when a discussion gets challenging, often someone walks to the flip chart to draw or write something. When we are looking at a piece of paper together, it instantly impacts the atmosphere which typically becomes more collaborative and stimulates new thinking.
   
   A big advantage of drawing is that you can find a pen and a piece of paper just about anywhere. Even Zoom and other video conferencing platforms have whiteboards. Often people have some hesitation, saying for example, “I can’t draw,” yet a small nudge like “Just a few lines, anything simple to illustrate what’s going on is fine,” can bring someone over the line.

In a nutshell, when inviting the ‘right brain’ to participate in a conversation we see more, think differently, and bring new insights. In a world where the problem-solving abilities of AI are increasing every day, we need to get smarter too. The ‘right brain’ is like your personal genie in the bottle—an enormous power for you, and your team, to release and use.