Thursday, February 17, 2005
Right AND Left Brain Rules!
I was having lunch with a friend the other day and we were talking about all the fuss these days on the coming of the Right Brain thinkers into business and the mainstream. You know, they were always treated as an outsider in school whether they were a right OR a left-brain kid. Either way, they were called geeks or nerds. But the brainiacs were mostly the ones who excelled at math and science. In many ways, a lot of us got vindicated when the technology boom came in the 80's with the introduction of the PC. Being a geek became cool (and lucrative.) But artists and writers were considered even further out there on the fringes.
So now right-brain thinkers are getting some overdue recognition as the wunderkind of the decade. I think rarer still are the right- AND left-brain thinkers who can truly manage to straddle both sides of their brains without going mad! In fact, if you really think about it (no pun intended), too little -- or no -- communication between the two brains and you're schizophrenic or bipolar. Too much communication and you're either insane or ADD. Ahh -- the science of the brain! So the logical conclusion is that the most valued thinkers will be those who traverse the hemispheres with ease. Low single-digit percentile. Probably not a category that can be easily defined or tested by today's standards. I suspect once all the current trend dies down about right-brain thinkers as CEOs, everyone might realize that the scales just keep tipping from one extreme to another. (Hey -- this almost sounds like politics!)
So how would you define a WHOLE brain thinker and how do you find them?
