Transformed Leadership Thinking

The nomadic leadership journey is one of adaptation, adjustment & awareness of 2 worlds:  the internal world of our thinking and the external world where that thinking interacts with people and the environment.

Here’s an example.  I am a part of a few cross-cultural partnerships.  In one recent meeting we had a great outcome, but our process revealed some deeply-set thinking.   This is typical of most meetings and with all people, but as I tried to discern whether in this case it was cultural or personality-based it occurred to me that behind both is a common denominator...the BRAIN.

Reflecting on that meeting, one realization I came to is that whether something we hold to is defined as a cultural value or a personality characteristic, our behaviour towards each other can change because our brains can change.  We can transform our thinking as leaders.

We create limiting borders for ourselves and others when we make claims such as: "it’s their culture”, or “that is how they are wired”.  While there is truth underlying those declarations, it is a limiting truth. 

For clarity:

Culture is a shared pattern of thinking and behaviour, which is developed and reinforced by a person’s ethnic group.  Geert Hofstede refers to culture as the “collective programming of the mind”

Personality has a genetic component but also is the unique software of the brain developed and nurtured while interacting with the world around us.  Bio-physical influences, social teachers, environmental systems, experiences and more all contribute to defining and then rooting our personality.

Both culture and personality are developed as our brain interacts with our surroundings.  Over time we develop certain patterns which can then be hard to shake.  Think of your brain development in this way:  As an infant, your brains’ neural pathways were like a wide sheet of water on a flat plain.  As you developed & processed information, small streams began to form.  Continual learning and experiences added more streams on the  open landscape of your brain.  Confirmations & affirmations consistent with your thinking then served to deepen those streams into rivers.  Ongoing learning and experience is then framed by, or channeled into these existing rivers, because that’s easier to do than creating new streams of thinking.  That’s why learning new skills or perspectives as we age gets harder (but not impossible).  

Soon, however, those rivers become deeper and form canyons.  Once  deep enough, it’s difficult to see out to a new horizon.  The multiple vistas that were available to us when we were younger now take a lot more energy to see, let alone process.

If you are honest you will notice in yourself that you tend to seek out learning, opinions and people that confirm or align with what you already know & perceive (confirmation bias). Not to excuse it, but this is actually related to a brain physiology issue; it takes less physical energy to process something that can be channeled into one of those existing rivers.   Think of it this way – your brain is like a computer with a hard disk and RAM.  Your RAM, the frontal cortex, is where new learning takes place.  While it is only about 4-7% of your brain, it consumes the most physical energy.  So, where will we default?  Where the pathway takes less energy – the stored learning in the hard disk, not the new learning.

This 'hard wired' analogy played out in my partnership meeting.  A partner was fixed in their thinking and had a hard time looking out and over that canyon.  It was far easier for this person to bring everything into their canyon to interpret it from that perspective.  In my default mode, I do exactly the same thing.

Our cultures, our personality and our training all give us a framework for life.  This is necessary because we all need some lens through which to initially interpret life.  But let’s acknowledge that much of our thinking exists in a few canyons we have dug out over years and years of processing life in a certain way.  Getting out and abandoning those ways entirely is not really possible, BUT it is possible to start a new stream, a new neural pathway.

Speaking to the cross cultural contexts I am in, ethnic culture needs to be both honored and challenged.  While on one hand it provides a leader with community, security and a sense of ‘place’, it also bears limitations.  There is a trans-cultural way of thinking, found in the teachings and ways of Jesus.  Following His ways does not lead a person to abandon culture or personality so much as it leads us to think & act above those ‘canyons’ we have created.

God calls us to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’.  Our Creator wired our brains and knows we can get fixed in destructive or limiting thinking.   So, is the answer to think your way into transformation?  Afraid not!  We all need Divine help because quite simply, our thinking is affected by a universally shared selfishness that defines ‘me’ as the center of reality.  That can’t be fully overcome independently.  Only the presence and the power of the One who crafted your brain can come alongside you and affect true transformation.

I coach people using a brain- based approach.  I help you to think about your thinking so that you can create new neural pathways in order to move forward in some aspect of your life.  I have seen this help people transform their thinking to take a significant new step in their business, pursue a dream, make a career shift.  What I could never do is help you approach life and this world from a trans-cultural, divine perspective.....only following the way of Jesus can accomplish that.  He can transform you by the renewing of your mind. 

For information on a brain-based coaching approach or on the way Jesus can fully transform your mind & life, contact me at:

Harv Matchullis

harvey@visiontracks.ca - www.visiontracks.ca