Mindframe

What is a leader? The simplest and perhaps most literal definition is “someone with followers.” But the presence of followers alone doesn’t signify that you’re any good at the act of leadership. History is littered with men and women who blithely led others straight into disaster. Great leaders do three things that set them apart. First of all, they start with a growth mindset, a term coined by psychologist Carol Dweck. This is far more than a simple positive attitude. Positive thinking alone can lend situations an undeserved—even dangerous—rosy cast, verging into denial. Growth mindset, which holds that improvement is made possible through honest self-assessment and hard work, encourages people to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes. Dave Guy, who plays trumpet alongside The Roots, Jimmy Fallon’s house band on the Tonight Show, is one of the foremost trumpeters alive. Early in his career, he made it his goal to learn how to play in as many different genres as he could—b...

There was a time, and it was not so long ago, that conventional wisdom said if you were born into nobility, you possessed a set of superior traits that automatically qualified you for governance. Got royal parents? Congratulations, you've won the leadership lottery. There was just one problem: the system often produced people uniquely unqualified to rule. Consider Charles II of Spain. He came from a line of the Spanish Hapsburgs so intermarried that one ancestor appears on his family tree in 14 separate places. Charles took the throne in 1665 despite a host of physical and mental disabilities—he couldn't chew, drooled frequently, was never really educated, and at one point it's rumored he ordered his deceased family members dug up so he could look at them. Consider King George IV of England, famous for his extravagant spending, love of leisure—and utterly selfish, irresponsible behavior. Consider the many kings and queens who were handed the reigns to their count...

Last week, I talked about whole brain strategy . This week, a look at what happens inside a workplace when a company or organization tries to implement a new policy without understanding how the human brain works. If you've ever witnessed a giant disconnect between the systems a company claims to use, and the way their employees actually operate (call it Ghost Ship Syndrome, if you will), unbalanced brain strategy may very well be to blame. So without further ado, I give you: The Top Six Errors in Unbalanced Brain Strategy 1.    Ignoring the importance of habit 53% of our day is composed of habits, or bits of neural code that dictate specific behaviors. For example, we tend to sit in the same chair every night for dinner, even when all the chairs are identical to each other. Habits are built through repetitive action, which gradually reinforces certain neural pathways by adding layers of an insulator called myelin. Habits take roughly 21 days to create and...

“So, what's up with the pile of words?” you ask. This is part of an experiment we conducted earlier this year on how to be the perfect leader. Sooner or later, most of us wind up in a position of some power, whether it’s running a cub scout den or a girl scout troop, heading up a committee at church or your job, or residing over your flamenco dance group or your flamingo lawn ornament club. And when you nobly accepted the challenge of being in charge, your brain released a little shot of cortisol, the stress hormone. In your moment of panic, you made the executive decision to discover the secret to being a good leader. If you were like me, you went down to your local bookstore and perused the aisles looking for books on leadership. After all, you wanted to be the best president the flamingo lawn ornament club had ever known, recognizing a club needs to be more than really swanky pink shirts. In my case, the bookstore anticipated my arrival and had at the ready a slew of...