I learned many things in the process of completing my dissertation and it began my enduring fascination with the brain and learning.  I also read Gazzaniga, Sperry, and other pioneers in the field which prepped me for the many works to come.

I finished my dissertation in l986 at the University of Virginia.  Three years earlier in a proposal defense I was in front of a group of five rather distinguished professors.  My proposal was to study the degree to which principals—elementary, middle, and high school—evidence behaviors and thinking associated with the right hemisphere or those associated with the left hemisphere.  The proposed title of my dissertation was “Cerebral Laterality and Leadership Styles of Principals.” 

At one time during the proposal defense, it seemed that I wasn’t even at the table.  The professors were debating among themselves the legitimacy of the projected research.  One individual with a cognitive scientist bent said that relating behaviors to functions of the brain could not be substantiated.  He, however, was overruled and I was given the go-ahead.  I am aware that I could not present my proposal in the same manner today.  I used the right/left brain descriptors, but my dissertation occurred before the use of fMRI to discern brain function and we know so much more!

Fast forward years later as I finished reading Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, on an airplane trip from Richmond to New Orleans.  I was excited and amazed that Pink’s outline of the six fundamental human abilities that he deemed essential for professional success and personal fulfillment paralleled the attributes associated with integrated or right brain leadership talked about in my dissertation. 

I know there is more to be written on the topic of the brain and leadership. Wouldn’t it be revealing to compare the brains of world leaders in the process of making critical decisions?