Harness the Three Brains of Leadership

Harness the Three Brains of Leadership

To be an effective leader in today’s climate of challenge and change, harness the Three Brains of leadership — not just the one in your head, but the ones found in your gut and your heart. If you rely solely on using your head, you’re leaving these two other vital resources untapped.

 

Three Brains?

A wealth of neurological evidence is emerging, pointing to each of us having three “brains” — the intelligence found in our head, but also in our gut (the enteric brain) and heart (the cardiac brain). All are innate and at work 24/7, whether you utilize their messages or not. My goal with this series is to introduce you to the findings from these scientific studies as an exciting new way of operating in your work and life, and to help you to develop it.

Head Intelligence

My series started with The Role of Heart Intelligence in Leadership followed by How to Listen to Your Gut. I deliberately saved Head Intelligence for last as it’s the most familiar to us all.

Our head is constantly taking in and processing information in order to make decisions. We rely on this as our primary source of information. It also governs things that are so automatic we don’t even notice, ie: our breathing, heart beat, fighting infection, etc. Amazing that we carry on, largely unaware of the very things that are at work moment by moment, even the ones that are literally keeping us alive!

Heart and Gut Intelligence

Similarly, our heart and gut are also taking in information and communicating to us. They can serve us greatly, if we only tuned in! We’d have much more information at our disposal about people, projects and situations from which to pick and choose, apply or reserve.

The ability to do this is showing up as a key quality to carry leadership forward in a demanding world. Much is beginning to be written about this, for example, this article by Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka:  In it they say, “A new field of leadership development is emerging, known as mBIT (multiple brain integration techniques). It provides organizational leaders with practical methods for aligning and integrating their head, heart and gut brains for increased levels of emergent wisdom in their decision-making, and for developing an expanded core identity as an authentic leader.”

Integrate Your Three Brains

Now that you know that science is finding Heart and Gut Intelligence to be as real and calculable as our brain function, the key is to combine what all three have to offer, to truly be at your best.

Instead of making decisions, taking action, and communicating based solely on what you have in your head, imagine taking advantage of this additional, very real and useful intelligence to add to or blend the information from your head!

Leaders who make it to the top often rely on their instincts – their gut intelligence, or by listening to their heart — and have confidence to act boldly. We think of them as mavericks, apart from us mere mortals. Rare.

But my point is that none of us are “mere” anything! We all have these three brains within us, ready and available. We develop our brains through experience and education. All that needs to be developed for our Heart and Gut Intelligence to serve us is our awareness of them, and an ability to utilize each to the degree needed with any given person or situation.

Can you imagine feeling as comfortable sourcing what your gut and heart tell you as you do with your head? To access only one is to miss operating at your full potential not just your work, but with your family, friends, and in your community — not to mention your own life experience too!

The good news is, by the mere fact of your reading this far, we’ve begun that inner conversation! That small shift can begin to create, in its quiet way, concrete changes over time. If you want to learn how to identify which brain you are or could be using, and judge when to act on it – or not act, that is my specialty!

Please get in touch and let’s talk about your goals!

The Role of Heart Intelligence in Leadership

The Role of Heart Intelligence in Leadership

Leadership. When you think of what it takes, what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s education and skills, strategic planning and execution, or the ability to marshal talent and manage teams. And you’d be right… but it also takes courage, vision, empathy, and instinct. Each of those qualities come from one of three sources — the head, the heart or the gut. Those three have been called the Three Brains of Leadership.

Heart Intelligence is an essential part of leadership, especially in these challenging times. And that is more about the person leading than it is about the title. I saw this aspect emerge within my own work and that of my clients, to the point that my focus toward being a Courage Specialist came out of a clear need for it.

“Wise decisions aren’t always analytical.”

Doris Quote Testimonial

The new world that we’re quickly adapting to working within — and the future it’s taking us toward — begs for innovation, original thinking and fresh business models. And those require that we tune into the untapped resources of our heart and gut intelligence rather than solely relying on our rational, strategic brain.

In Asian Cultures, the values are that head and heart are often connected. There are even words for this. In Japanese, it’s called Kokoro; In Chinese it is xīn, where the word for heart and mind are actually one in the same!

Yet in Western society we’ve separated the head from the more instinctual heart and gut, and we’ve done so at our peril. When immersed in the responsibilities of a leadership position, it’s easy to focus on our intellectual resources and yet wise decisions aren’t always analytical. By valuing only our head we are losing access to information that would help us every day.

The awareness of this connection goes far back. Aristotle, a student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great, taught a ‘cardiocentric‘ model of human anatomy, where the heart was the true center of human intelligence, not the brain. In our age, science has evidence to back that up. Modern neurologists and scientists have pioneered and furthered the concept of a functional brain in the heart and the higher level of awareness available from it. From these analyses and the work of groups like the HeartMath Institute, we’ve come to know that “the heart has its own nervous system, which actually sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.”

Really good leaders harness this Heart Intelligence and navigate from intuition with courage and conviction.

ThePerformanceSolution.com summarized this beautifully: “Without the head intelligence, the decision will not have been properly thought through and analyzed. Without the heart intelligence, there will not be sufficient values-driven emotional energy to care enough to act on or prioritize the decision against competing pressures. Without the gut intelligence there will not be sufficient attention to managing risks nor enough willpower to mobilize and execute the decision once challenges arise.”  

In today’s world, especially when you have to make critical decisions, having the ability to access all the three modes is key. It requires a whole new level of self-awareness and self-facilitation. One of the precepts of my work is about reawakening your heart and gut and connecting them to your head. I find helping people to access wisdom and grow their consciousness as they make decisions and carve out new paths for themselves exciting!

If this resonates with you, let’s connect and learn how we can work together on your specific path.

This is the first in a continuing series on this fascinating, cutting-edge topic. Keep an eye out right here for the next post — or sign on to my mailing list to be notified about them, my workshops and more!

This is the first of a three part series on Intelligence to raise awareness of all – from the heart, gut and head. They all work together, and this series is to help you realize you may have only been aware of, or using, using one. My goal is to help you be aware of them all, how you can access each, and work toward balancing how you switch between them based on what kind of wisdom and courage you need to access at any given moment in your endeavors.