Posts under ‘leadership’

For years I attended toxic meetings where one guy yammered on and one  fellow worker turned off his hearing aids. It’s the only time I can remember wishing for Gordon’s hearing disability.
That’s how bad these meetings were. People moved back and forth  from bored to bitching, while Gordon slept with his eyes open and [...]

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?
1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such [...]

Canadian Alanna Mitchell, this year’s winner of the Atkinson Fellowship in public policy named brains as the secret to better schools. Not all agree.
Mitchell recalled a Minister of Education who asked a neuroscientist: “The brain? What does the brain have to do with education?” In my renewal work across many countries I heard similar [...]

Research shows leaderships skills as  highly inadequate – and leadership gaps  are consistent across countries, organizations and levels in the organization. Have you seen lack of leader skills where you work? If so, read on …
The Center for Creative Leadership surveyed 2200 leaders for 15 organizations in three countries between 2006 and 2008, and  found [...]

Great news from GE leaders today,  according to WSJ’s Paul Glader.  Any organization willing to change and grow, after a fall,  also holds potential to create a prototype for global change and growth.  Both qualities urgently needed in the broader business community. Bravo!
Let’s get behind GE’s  initiative and begin to move in new directions as [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Two days ago, while in Jamaica to speak about MITA brain based renewal, I spotted revival alive and well from a car radio. In a vehicle that transported Dr. Robyn McMaster and I to the University of West Indies, radio guests discussed broken systems in general, and Jamaican policies that got  implemented without discussion [...]

Today President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize for worldwide efforts to communicate peace rather than launch wars against people who differ or disagree. When conflict strikes war and peace vie for solutions. Politicians rarely tame their amygdalas and so it’s no surprise that they frequently choose war to resolve differences. It takes brain powered [...]

Here in Radio City Hall, we are challenged to consider innovation as a way of life where we work.
Gary Hamel invites live, 5000 top global business leaders at Radio City Hall,  to rethink a new management model where you work. He also questions why we change so little. Have you seen it too?

In Hamel’s words:
To [...]

Each day offers a distinct choice to act humbly for peace, to or react by arrogant attempts to seize power in your race to the top. But what’s this humility David Rubenstein proposes for leaders?
Without doubt, humility that is hardwired into minds, is the stuff that builds and sustains a brain powered community. It’s also [...]

Facilitators with brains in mind, blast open 10 entry points that inspire innovation:

At meetings – facilitators add zip to roundtables because people speak and feel heard.
Across professions – facilitators inspire shared language that leaves behind jargon to favor communication.
In learning circles facilitators draw on multiple literacies to engage voices on the other side and [...]

Daily you see snippets of courage from leaders you admire – through questions asked and stories shared. Courage to embrace mental confidence, and face danger bravely,  remains the last virtue on center stage after you sacrifice who you are now, to embrace who you can become. Have you seen it?
Special thanks for this [...]

What would it take to renew university learning and draw more brainpower from learners and leaders? We know adult intelligence improves – from MDs such as Dan Siegel, Director of  Mindsight Inst at UCLA School of Medicine, who draws on recent science to harness the brain’s circuitry. The results?
Research offers increased brainpower opportunities that [...]

When government tosses out money as renewal incentives, in hope that dollars buy benefits, bureaucracies respond with inferiority.  Rewards and pay-for-performance practices work against renewal, according to Alfie Kohn who draws from hundreds of studies. Do you agree?
Have leaders of educational institutes removed themselves from the heart of problems ordinary people face? Sadly,  many leaders [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]

Imagine a climate of peace, with humility that inspires, and people who recognize talents, and you’ve just begun to awaken intrapersonal intelligence. Build healthy relationships that shape character, and your brain cultivates new neuron pathways toward spirit and highest values such as caring in your character and in others. Or trust that turned LA’s most [...]

Yesterday,  on a walk in the woods with a gifted young leader, I once again saw his ethics, openness and willingness to become vulnerable in order to learn new skills. Without notice a mountain biker appeared on our winding path and startled my friend’s dog Jack, who in return snapped at the bikers feet. The [...]

New York burns while Albany fiddles. News of political infighting, stalemates, accusations and posturing flood us daily, while opportunities for greatness fade for NY. A closer look, though, shows bureaucracy working against ethical brainpower. How so? 
Neuro discoveries uncover organizational problems and possibilities.
1. Secondary schools and universities in crisis continue to downsize rather than reconfigure [...]

Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:

1. No Brain Left [...]

The mark of a successful secondary school is motivated teens achieving at the peaks. Does it happen in your community?
This summer launches Rochester’s first MITA Brain Institute – custom designed for secondary faculty, and poised to reconfigure learning – with the brain in mind.
Participants will create curriculum together to jumpstart teen brains for higher motivation [...]