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The Neuroscience of Strategic Leadership
Article

The Neuroscience of Strategic Leadership

Research shows how leaders can take the high road less traveled.


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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

What if you could change your results in life by harnessing the power of your thoughts? If you go to work feeling anxious, come home irritated and are often left out of important workplace decisions, the problem may lie within. Jeffrey Schwartz, Josie Thomson and Art Kleiner teach you the power of mindfulness, “mentalizing” and “self-directed neuroplasticity.” The authors advocate for daily meditation sessions and teach you how to make changes to your behavior patterns. getAbstract recommends this summary to people with an interest in optimizing their most valuable resource: brain power.

Take-Aways

  • Repetitive thoughts strengthen relevant pathways in the brain, making it easier to continue thinking in a certain way, whether beneficial or harmful.
  • Most people engage in “Low Road” thinking while at work; they focus on incentives and making people happy as quickly as possible. While such thinking has its place, it rarely leads to long-term benefits.
  • Strategic leaders engage in “High Road” thinking. They consider problems from multiple viewpoints and find long-term, systemwide solutions.

About the Authors

Jeffrey Schwartz is a psychiatrist and an author. Josie Thomson is a leadership coach. Art Kleiner is the editor in chief at stragegy+business.