Integrated Leadership - leverage your mind, brain and body to lead well
It amazes me. In spite of so much new and interesting information about health, exercise, brain function and nutrition, we see leadership and growth mindset as something that occurs above the shoulders, while fitness and wellbeing falls below the shoulders. Just take a look at the vast literature available today in each of these domains and you'll get my point.
It's a simple case: the brain and mind are subject to the same biological rules as the rest of the body. If diet, hydration, fitness and sleep are poor then the brain will simply not function as well as it could. Take a leadership as a broad example, from the perspective of brain systems, to consider what happens under wellbeing deprivation. The leaders brain conducts an amazing array of complex processes that many of us simply take for granted:
- Decision making (we generally make around 35,000 decisions a day)
- Problem solving
- Managing competing demands and resources
- Applying values and beliefs
- Speaking and presenting
- Listening (which most of us do poorly)
- Influencing and convincing
- Managing our emotions and our own internal battles
This is all going on inside an organ that is already our most expensive 'equipment' to run, consuming 20-25% of our biological resources each minute of our day.
Despite all of this, we rarely give a second thought to supporting the brain with the quality and quantity of resources needed to be on our game each day.
So this begins a series of blogs taking a deeper look int the inputs that we need to ensure that others around us see and receive our best brain.
