LEADERSHIP CONVERSATION

Ellen Weber Celebrates New Ideas from Unexpected Places

Ellen Weber calls herself "a whole-brain leader who loves to ally with others who can lead us to a finer future." As President of the MITA International Renewal Center, supporting brain-based leadership strategies, she combines deep background in neuroscience with Multiple Intelligences research, traveling all over the world to share her work.  She teaches, writes, and speaks to all of us about how to build better methods for learning and innovation through appreciation for how the brain can literally change itself. I found Ellen through her remarkable blog, "Brain Leaders and Learners" and her contributions to Gary Hamel's Management Innovation Exchange. It's a treat to engage her!

Q.  Ellen, what rocks your world these days?

A. I want people to ally with me in working toward a better world. It's a matter of staying open to new ideas with the brain in mind; of needing others to help lead in a way that brings us together, that helps us grow from our differences.  I'm curious about how we get to outcomes as human beings, and especially what kind of genius we can discover because we are using our brainpower together. It's our diversity that can stimulate us to reach higher and farther.

Q. How is your approach different from others?

A. I am different from others engaged in innovation work.  I'm not so interested in what causes depression or conflict as I am in what positively wires us for creativity.  It's not that scientific research into the 'why' is unimportant, but what we know is the human brain is constantly rewiring itself based on actions, not thoughts.  If I'm depressed knowing why can be less helpful than simply acting like a person who is not depressed, regardless of my feelings.  Then, genius is released from the fact that I've actually done something different. It is this action that causes the brain while I'm sleeping to build new neural pathways.  As such, I'm vitally interested in the evidence of new results.  If I can operate in a creative, optimistic way, I can begin to ask where those new behaviors are taking me. The goal is to stay in the race long enough to see and talk about new results and outcomes.

Q. Are you saying that talking about new results, such as overcoming a conflict or depression, helps reinforce the brain, deepens the new groove, so to speak?

A. Not so much.  Talking and thinking are much less important than acting. Acting can give me a boost of serotonin, the brain's well-being chemical.  If I continue to focus on disappointments or anger, I build that into my brain and I can expect more of the same.  The talk that helps would come from talking with a wise, intra-personally developed person, but not because of the talk, but of the action that I may be inspired to take.  It's when I let go of thinking and talking and act -- that's the way out. I may be mad at a colleague who has disappointed me, but if I do even a simple thing, like bringing that person a cup of coffee, because it's action, I can begin to watch for a different kind of result for myself and for the relationship.

The goal is to do exactly what I want others to see in me.  As I do that I become more of what I want others to see and I can then check for results.  If I follow this dynamic, I make decisions based on the results I am likely to get, not just what makes me happy or comforted in the moment. I choose to be different -- that's the key.

Q.  Ellen, are you saying this is descriptive - the way it is, the way people currently operate; or are you saying, this is a prescription for a better way of living?

A. This is prescriptive and it's about the wonder and power of a brain that is eminently at our disposal.  When I give serotonin the stage, the world is a different place and I am empowered.  By comparison, if I let cortisol have the stage, I'll retreat into anxious, low-risk behaviors.  The good news is that the more we know about how the brain operates, the better we are at noticing what's going on around us and within us. The market slides, killings are reported in the news, the recession takes another dip, and we are at risk for sliding into cortisol driven conduct.  We can counter the slide through new action that simply contradicts the slide's apparent power. 

I think about people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.  They did not have a lot of tangible resources, but they were brilliant in the way that made others want to add resources. They counter-acted the trip that cortisol takes us on and substituted the power of serotonin through their own vision and action.

As another example, I remember being part a think tank, bar none, of faith-based leaders. I saw, intensively, how with the right facilitation brain power could cross our differences to give us all a grander perspective. It wasn't that we never challenged each other or that it was all harmony. To the contrary, we did challenge, but we never attacked.  If you are enough of a friend to push me against a wall, I'll come back with a bigger picture. I love that notion of mutual mentoring, what I call "mind-guiding."

Q.  What kind of facilitation fosters mutual mind-guiding, Ellen?

A.  You might have a few guidelines; for example, asking people to consider what it will really take for others to hear and understand your ideas in the way you want them understood.  But mostly it's about the two-sided questions that get asked, questions that deeply involve us as people and disable the old traditions that kill ideas.  What you want is to create an environment in which we are all interacting as peers together, the 14 year-old pimply teenager with purple tips in his hair and the insecure 65 year-old CEO who is scared of new voices, new impulses.  The traditions that kill are the ones that say there's only one pie in that room and the 65-year-old gets 9/10ths of it. But the better way is to remind people they each have their own whole pie and when we get together there's even more pies.  We create together what goes beyond my talents and yours. When people get this, the mind jumpstarts itself.  It solves for the X, the unknown variable in algebra.  It spurts out, a spurt being defined as a drip under pressure.

Q. How do we measure the effects of this synergy?

A. We have to keep in mind the genius is in the interaction and the evidence of results.  We need measurements that are "intelligence-fair."  What I mean by that is that you and I have agreed in advance what we are attempting to achieve together. And the first voice to speak is not you, not you the jealous supervisor, but me, as I tell you how I've reached the goal.  It's not that the supervisor can't judge or won't, but it's not about the supervisor's judgment alone.  When we measure in this new way, it can change a whole organization for the better.

What I see is how the world today is not actually interested in the evidence of results. Congress has the lowest ratings because we see no results.  And Congress also represents a great many corporate boardrooms.  It's the modus operandi - to keep wiring ourselves for war and competition, for violence, for killing and taking what we want. But it can be so different if I learn to use good tone when I speak, when I look for takeaways and learning from every single person in the room.  If I adopt this second approach, then the results will show something truly new.  What if, like the think tank I was part of, we were wired not for war but for a robust peace?  One where there's push, but there's also thoughtfulness, and good tone, and the right words?  What future could that lead us all to?

Q.  How do we learn to help each other in this way?

A.  The brain works best when it is teaching.  I think of my 2 year-old grandson and how he is teaching me as his Nana.  When he's around I'm full of oxytocin.

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