Dr. Sandy Gluckman's Blog | Sandy Gluckman

Spirited Leaders Leverage Different Thinking Styles

Different Thinking Styles Apparent for Spirited Leaders

One of the characteristics of great organizational leaders who demonstrate high leadership spirit is that they are well-read and informed about the fact that mobilizing the workforce to deliver exceptional performance requires the ability to ‘speak the language’ that the employee relates to. What this means is that some employees prefer to communicate with the logical left brain and others prefer the creative, emotive communication of the right brain. Speak to a left brainer in an emotive, intuitive way and guess what? They don’t get the message! Speak to a right brainer in a logical, ordered way … and they don’t get it! Great leaders learn to communicate with the whole brain thereby mobilizing all employees and inspiring them to deliver exceptional productivity.

Sandy Gluckman has a Ph.D in whole brain education and communication.

Spirited leaders also know that profitable and innovative decisions are made when there is open and honest dialogue during the decision-making process. Creative and often heated debate is always the result of team members having different perspectives on the same issue. Physiologically speaking having diverse perspectives amongst team members means that some individuals are right brain thinkers and others are left brain thinkers. The result is that every possible aspect of the issue is being taken into account and all possibilities and opportunities are brought to the table.

This is critical to formulating competitive strategies and making great decisions. It means that leaders need to be educated about the physiological ways in which their team members’ brains prefer to think … and then purposefully leverage this diversity of thinking style for the development of strategies and plans that will bring huge success.

Finally spirited leaders make a conscious effor not to hire people who think like they do. Instead they hire people who think differently and who have the courage and spirit to speak out at meetings and share ideas that can, and often do, lead to opportunities not previously seen.

Half Brained Teams Deliver Half Brained Results

Do you have a team of ‘clones’ who all think in the same way about most things? Or do you have a team that views the world from diverse perspectives and courageously communicate these diverse perspectives in the interest of making powerful decisions that will benefit the team, as well as the organization?

When the team consists of both left and right brainers, they will integrate logic and intuition, theory and imagination, details and the panoramic view, all of which enables them to discover innovative solutions and make profitable decisions that will keep them a step ahead of the competitors. I highly recommend that your team consider completing a Brain Dominance Profile. Being aware of the thinking style of the team will alert you to what your team will think about and what they will leave out in planning and decision-making.

Using the Whole Brain in Education

Whole Brain in Education

The power and energy for every single potent act and thought is a sense of self worth. The way we feel about ourselves will determine the degree of courage with which we take control of our own destinies, our ability to dream dreams of greatness, and act upon them, the state of our physical and mental health, our ability to learn and apply our talents and the capacity to give and receive genuine love.

We do not have to develop a sense of self worth or a positive self-esteem. We are born with this. However it is a gift within us that needs to be continuously honored and nurtured, just as we honor and nurture our intellect. If we are going to own and strengthen our self worth as we grow through childhood into adulthood, we will need to learn these skills as a part of our education.

Intellectual versus Emotional Thinking Styles

The problem is that education does not usually do this because educators don’t think this way. Continue reading Using the Whole Brain in Education

Did Their Egos Get in the Way?

So Sad to Watch Great Leaders Sabotage Themselves with their Egos

Oh No! That tricky ego at play yet again! So here is the scenario. Three great leaders all under the influence of ego. One of these leaders is actually the President of the USA, another an esteemed Harvard Professor and the third a dedicated and gifted officer of the law. And yet, with all their brilliance and talent, each one fell prey to their ego creating a truly unnecessary series of events that did not benefit them in any way. In actual fact, they each sabotaged their higher goals by not managing their egos.

EGO At Work

Here’s how the ego works. At a very tender age we discover that our authentic, spirited self is frowned upon by others who tell us that we should be what they want us to be and not who we truly are because this doesn’t work for them! So we develop the ego self. This is a second personality which we use whenever we think we need to do and say things that will get us the approval we seek. Then we reach adulthood and we often can’t tell which is the real me and which is the ego me. And for the rest of our lives every time we feel a sense of personal slight and think we need to assert our point of view, out comes the ego and we act in ways that make us small-minded and petty, self-righteous and arrogant.

The truly great leader is one who knows how to control and manage their ego. Or let me express this another way. The truly great leader is one whose spirit of openness and balance is stronger than their ego. Great leaders do not feel the need to behave as though their point of view is the only point of view that has any validity. Polarizing points of view is the trick of the ego. Continue reading Did Their Egos Get in the Way?

New Recession-Proof Leadership Program Announced

Different Economic Realities Call for Different Leadership Skills

Leadership’s ability to renew the spirit, energy and focus of anxious, dis-spirited employees is the key to building a sustainable organization in the new global economy. But yesterday’s leadership skills are no longer enough to achieve this.

Dr. Sandy Gluckman and Ed Rankin are combining their expertise to offer organizational leaders a program teaching how to apply corporate and team spirit as a hard-edged economic driver. When spirit goes up, operational costs go down and productivity and profitability go up. (see bottom of post for contact information)

Continue reading New Recession-Proof Leadership Program Announced

Use Spirited Economics to Create the Next Wave of Economic Progress

In a recent keynote Harvard Business blog post Mr Jeff Immelt used a great phrase. He said that ‘the world has been reset.’ The way I see it, one of the critical problems about this is that the behavior and communication skills of corporate leaders have not been reset to be aligned to this new world.

Corporate Leaders have a Responsibility

Corporate leaders have a responsibility to renew America by building strong sustainable businesses. This requires that they understand that new times call for new leadership skills. Yesterday’s leadership skills are just not good enough. They have outlived their usefulness. But the acceptance of this statement by leaders requires that they have the courage to be brutally honest with themselves. They will need to ‘clear away arrogance and false assumptions’ and make way for a ‘stiff dose of candor.’ I cannot see how this could happen unless leaders are willing to learn how to manage their egos and lead instead with a spirit of authenticity.

Continue reading Use Spirited Economics to Create the Next Wave of Economic Progress