A Stroke of Insight!

If you haven't seen Jill Bolte Taylor's speech at TED, you really should take 17 minutes and watch it. On a lot of levels, it's worth every minute. It's the most watched speech of the entire TED series. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

If you are as interested as I am, you will then read the book "A Stroke of Insight".

Essentially, the speech is about her sudden discovery of her right brain hemisphere that happened as the result of a stroke that closed down her left brain hemisphere. She had a fully developed left brain hemisphere that served her well as a brain scientist, so she hadn't spent much time and energy developing her right brain....that is, until she suddenly lost most of her left brain hemisphere. It took her eight years to recover her left brain, so now she is fully developed on both sides. As a result, she has a unique ability to be both scientific and artful in her speech and book.

I have met others who have a good balance between left and right brain development, but they are rare. Most of us seem to have developed much more on one side or the other. The people I know from business are left brain dominant, for the most part. The people I know in other careers such as arts and humanities, are more right brain dominant. These two different worlds seem polarized. I can go into either camp and hear very bad things about the other camp. The polarization seems to have become worse as I think back to the beginning of my career. I've worked and thrived in both worlds. I think I'm more right brain dominant with a focus on relationships and creativity at the expense of being logical and sequential. But I do have a lot of affection and respect for left brain people and organizaitons.

Jill Bolte Taylor's video made me suddenly aware that my career has always been focused on working with dominant left brain people who need to use right brain tools, techniques and awareness in order to get something done. So, it's no accident that I've ended up working with mostly engineers and accountants in established corporations. These are the most left brain dominant cultures in the world and they don't welcome right brain dominant employees for very long. So, I get rented, from time to time, to help with something that usually involves relationship building, emotional processing, or creativity and innovation. In short, 'people stuff'.

Once I defined my business proposition this way, everything fell into place . My client list made sense. The lack of competition is understandable (how many right brain people want to spend their time in left brain settings?). The next big challenge became clear.

The next big challenge? It's been in front of me for years and I didn't see it. I have a lot of very left brain dominant clients who have risen in their careers to a point where their jobs have suddenly changed from requiring strong left brain capabilities (plan the work and work the plan) to requiring strong right brain capabilities (set visions, inspire people, create strong relationships). The requirement change is severe and it often happens in just one promotion.

These clients hire me to help with one or two things, but they are overwhelmed and struggling because they need someone with my skills on almost everything they do. I can often shed light on the problem of having too much left brain dominance in a right brain job, but then they want to solve that problem....and, of course they want to solve the problem with a left brain approach. "What book can I read?"

Development of a long dormant right brain hemisphere will require time, immersion, practice and commitment. There are places you can go to get that development, but they are often shrouded in 'new age' style that is the last place any of these left brain dominant people would ever go.

We need a right brain development center and program that makes sense to left brain executives who need to get more balance between left and right brain capability. I've done a search. I don't see an existing resource that I think would work.

So, we've had our own stroke of insight. I'm working on building a right brain development center. We are piloting some programs this winter and I hope we can launch a full blown pilot in the spring.

Thanks to Jill Bolte Taylor's "Stroke of Insight".