The Executive Paradox

What if the least "business-y" thing you could do would immeasurably benefit your role in business? Spoiler alert: it can. It starts with a (not so) little thing I like to call the Executive Paradox. It goes something like this...

In modern day America, business is like a bad boob job. It's way too heavy on the left and lacking serious heft on the right. I'm not referring to what fills cups here, but rather to what's splitting our skulls. Or, more precisely, what's split beneath our skulls. The left and right to which I am referring are the hemispheres of your brain. Allow me to begin with a little review of neuroanatomy and brain function.

Your brain is split into two halves, aka hemispheres (literally "half of a sphere"). These two halves are separate but deeply connected. Both sides of the brain contain unique structures and control unique functions. Even areas that span both hemispheres, such as the amygdala (responsible for emotional processing and memory, social cognition, and many autonomic processes), and the prefrontal cortex (home to higher order functions, working memory, and emotional regulation) have a bit of a split personality vibe. Though these are considered singular structures in the brain, and their tissues cross the brain's midline, you'll find different functions happening in the left brain's half of these areas compared to the portions housed to the right.

Overall, your left brain is responsible for linear, concrete thinking. It deals with what is, with the known and experienced. The left brain is highly analytical, finds itself bound by logic and language, and is fond of data, which it tends to organize sequentially. Very useful, your left brain. I wouldn't leave home without it.

It's worth noting at this juncture that most executives would never, yet they head for the office sans right brain on a daily basis. We'll come back to that. For now, we'll gaze just across the bridge of neural tissue that links your hemispheres (called the corpus callosum, if you're going for nerd bonus points) to the side of your brain that reads less like a business journal and more like a fairy tale.

Your right hemisphere, like that odd auntie you can't help but love, can't be bothered with restrictions like logic. In fact, left to its own devices, it may very well forget you have a body (if you haven't seen Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk, now is the time). This side of your neural landscape isn't terribly concerned with what its neighbor to the left might label "reality." In the right hemisphere, anything is possible and creation is the flavor of the day, every day. Rhythm, emotion, non-verbal communication, and imagination live here. If neuroscience could point to a home for intuition, it would be in this neighborhood. The right brain collects images and patterns, rather than specific points of data, and organizes them in what the left hemisphere would consider no order whatsoever (but which may, in fact, be genius new amalgamations). Where the left brain takes sequential steps, the right brain makes balletic, often quantum, leaps.

And herein we find our paradox. In American business culture, the left brain (not coincidentally associated with masculine energy) is King. Logic is vaunted above intuition. "Proven" methods are preferred to novel approaches. Data analysis beats explorative doodling and sequential progress is not only accepted, but expected. Consider this wee experiment. Ponder the terms think tank, mastermind, and brainstorm. Though think, mind, and brain are all words that can be applied to the right hemisphere as easily as the left, I'll bet you imagined rooms full of people furiously generating logical thoughts. I doubt you envisioned a room full of humans drawing on the walls, playing in a drum circle, or quietly breathing together, exploring their newly synched heart rates.

Why does any of this matter? The American workplace is broken. The 2024 Businessolver Empathy study found that 55% of C-Suite executives are experiencing mental health issues. According to a recent National Federation of Independent Businesses poll, more than half of small business owners had open positions in their companies in February of this year. It's a continuing trend. Looking to the recent past, a 2022 study by Deloitte gathered this terrifying list of statistics:

• 70% of C-Suite execs are seriously considering leaving their positions

• The C-Suite is out of touch with their teams, consistently overestimating their physical, mental, social, and financial wellbeing (sometimes by more than 100%)

• Nearly half of all employees and over one-third of executives report being exhausted

• Only around one-third of employees say their workplace has a positive effect on their wellbeing, while more than one in four say it has a negative effect on their physical health and 34% report negative impacts on their mental wellbeing.

The way business has been done for generations, the left brain and its properties leading like a gyrated reincarnation of Napoleon, isn't working. One could argue that it has never truly worked, certainly not for the humans used as cogs in the American Business Machine, but that argument is beyond our current discussion. At the moment, I'm suggesting what's missing is that very un-business-like thing I mentioned above: the properties and prospects of the right brain.

And herein lies our paradox. To paraphrase Einstein, you cannot solve a problem with the same hemisphere that created it. Yet that is exactly what so many executives are trying to do. In corner offices around the country, leaders cradle their aching heads in shaking hands, wracking their left brains for logical, linear answers to a question that can only be answered by letting the river overflow the banks, by allowing the system to break down and be rebuilt in an entirely new, currently inconceivable way. What is a leader to do?

The way forward, the solution to the paradox, begins as all things do: with awareness. Take a deep breath with me now. Slowly, ever so gently, acknowledge that none of the tools you've been given are appropriate for this challenge. You've got hammers and drills, screwdrivers and saws. But the issue before you is neither nail nor screw, not wooden nor metallic. You're staring at a Seuss-like whooflickle, with nary a scubidoodle in sight. This idea may feel a bit like relief--it's not just you. I, however, would bet my money that this isn't the case, or that the relief quickly fades, leaving in its place a crippling, existential fear. If not this, then WHAT???

Take another deep, slow breath. Continue this until the palpitations begin to fade. You, my friend, were literally made for this. You were born into robust right brain function. Once, Little You operated primarily from this hemisphere. What is needed is less a completely new machine than a reboot, a return to the original software configuration. It's not so much becoming something new as it is reverting to what you were meant to be.

This space, where thinking looks nothing like you were taught to define the concept, feels like home. So much of your genius is in your right brain. There are solutions here your left brain literally cannot conceive of. The wisdom lying, unattended, on this side of your skull is a bottomless well of innovation, a conflagration of ideas, sparks flying in every possible direction. Wormholes are born here, allowing you to traverse from Point A directly to Point Z, gleefully skipping the steps in between. The fact that materialist culture, in business and beyond, refuses to believe in this reality has no effect on its existence. Admit it: part of you is shaking your head right now, denying this and labeling me a borderline lunatic. But underneath that part, something is jumping for joy. Your intuitive, creative, magical nature is glowing with recognition right now, bursting with the joy of being seen.

Wondering how I know? The unraveling of this paradox is, on so many levels, the story of my professional evolution. I spent the first 40 years of my life living in Left Brain Land, happily(ish) pressing myself into the cookie cutter labeled Successful Entrepreneur. In fact, I built my home there on the fringiest fringes, way left. Immensely rigid, I spent most of my time planning and the rest of it disintegrating emotionally and mentally when my plans invariably needed an adjustment. I was forever in pursuit of an established system, some "way that it's always been done" that would guide my business forward, show me the next step on my entrepreneurial ladder. If I couldn't see it in existence somewhere, measure it with conventional tools, and package it in a widely recognizable format, I avoided it like a sandwich dipped in coronavirus and crawling with locusts.

I would love to tell you a grand tale here, something involving a necessary change of approach to build success, or having a fell-to-my-knees revelation at some networking cocktail hour. In actuality, I built a very successful business this way. Then added a side-hustle. You know, because more is better. I worked. I sacrificed. I did both of those things a great deal (more harmful paradigms in business culture--perhaps we'll come back here another time). I believed I thrived on the stress, that the rigidity and the accepted paths of travel were moving me in the direction every entrepreneur wants to go--up!

Crushing the hearts of storytellers everywhere, there was no shining moment when I was gifted, from on high, the realization that the other half of my brain wanted a seat at my corporate table. There were no epiphanies, no leadership books, no life-altering mentors who showed up to save me from this ultra-logical version of myself. Instead, I got sick. I quite literally worked myself ill. The details here are a story for another time, but the moral of that story is this: to heal, I had to connect with parts of me that I had never met. Nearly all of those parts lived on the other side of the tracks, in my right hemisphere.

Fast forward to today and you're more likely to find me "researching" a solution by automatic writing than by asking Google. If I feel stuck in a project, you won't find me trying to think my way out. Instead, I'll hum, meditate, or maybe tap on the area over my heart whilst thinking of nothing in particular. I make major decisions in my business by talking to my business--an entity that does not exist on the left side of my brain. I have board meetings...with the voices in my head. And I have never had greater clarity in my business. I am cured of analysis paralysis. I take action in my business daily, rather than spending weeks or months planning for action I will likely never take. And the best part? I feel satisfied, effective, replete.

I know we don't talk about feelings in business. But let's do it anyway (my right brain loves to break the rules my left brain creates!). Let's talk about how it feels to approach everything with logic, in sequence, following the known path. To keep doing the same thing, even with you know it isn't working as well as it could be (or worse, that it isn't working at all). It might very well feel safe. You're wired to prefer the devil you know to the one you've not yet met. Coloring inside the lines has earned you a lot of praise. What might happen if you were to scribble all over the place?

If you notice that feeling of sameness equaling safety, I'm inviting you to look deeper. Peek beneath the veneer of safety. What do you find there? For me, a business lodged in my left brain felt stifled. Stiff, incurious, stagnant--like an old suit of clothes that was made for someone else's body. And it felt panicked. The safety of the way it had always been done was an illusion; I didn't feel remotely safe in my business. I felt unprepared, under-informed, always scrambling to figure out how to get ahead. There was never enough--time, money resources, me.

When you unwind the paradox, business gets easier. And it feels better. You have access to more answers, to greater innovation, to deeper connection. And you have access to an experience of leadership that surpasses what you've been taught to expect and accept. To begin moving beyond the Executive Paradox, spend time with the underrepresented part of you. Walk in nature, sans devices. Sit barefoot under a tree and let your gaze soften. Hum, doodle, build something from scraps. Meditate. Journal. Learn to listen to your gut.

Explore the other half of your intelligence. Notice where its wisdom differs from what you were taught, from what you've always done. Get curious about what work and life would be like if this wisdom had equal shares on your internal Board of Directors. Color outside the lines, even if it's just a little. Notice what comes up for you, what happens in the world around you. And by all means, let's talk about this. Let's hold space for one another to evolve beyond the outdated paradigms, to play with how it feels to finally be in your "right mind."