Thinking styles are important because collaboration and communication can be difficult if thinking differences are not acknowledged and addressed. – as when I’m talking in straight lines and you’re talking in spirals.
Lest you think one style is better than the other, the whole-brain approach strongly supports the notion that both left-brain and right-brain thinking styles are equally valid and valuable. Both need to be cultivated at all levels of an organization.
In fact, research at the Harvard Business School has demonstrated that the higher up you go in the organization, the more important it is to combine right-brain intuition with left-brain rationality.
Effective managers, for example, use intuition during all phases of the problem-solving process. They combine a gut feeling that points them in a given direction with systematic analysis, quantified data, and thoughtfulness. They also tend to value thinking differences in themselves and others.
Your preferred thinking style affects your perception of the best way to communicate and collaborate. It suggests the words you use and the sequence in which you use them. How you communicate can cause people to move toward you or away from you.
For example, if you talk to right-brains about details, numbers, facts, and sequences, they’ll tend to turn off, experience actual physiological stress, and want to shout, “What are you doing?” If, on the other hand, you present left-brains with pictures, metaphors, and analogies, they’ll feel like hopping up and down, screaming, “How are you going to do it?”
Knowing that you and others have disparate thinking styles can lead to a recognition and appreciation of different cognitive frameworks, which, in turn, can lead to greater sensitivity, understanding, and tolerance. One size and style definitely does not fit all!
Instead, the two styles working together produce a synergy, increasing the overall effectiveness more than either one alone. By generating awareness of thinking styles and valuing those differences, the whole-brain approach both allows and fosters creativity. For companies this can be helpful for hiring, firing, promoting, assigning tasks, and building teams.
You can discover your own thinking style. You can discover your own thinking resources and potential. You can determine that power and potential in others. As a problem solver, you can feel freer to try new things. You can match people and tasks more effectively. And, you can see and break down communication barriers which inhibit productivity and work and life satisfaction by addressing the other person in the mode they find most understandable.
Try this quick quiz which is based on the Herrmann Brain Dominance Profile, a 120-item questionnaire, which shows you not only how you think but also how you like to think.
– Which work element do you prefer? A. Brainstorming B. Planning
– What word best describes your interest in things? A. What? B. How?
– What word best describes you? A. Creative B. Analytical
– Which hobby do prefer? A. Gardening B. Home improvements
– Which statement applies to you more? A. “I rely on hunches and the feeling of ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ when working on a problem’s solution.” B. “I dislike things being uncertain and unpredictable.”
Three or more “A”s means you tend to be more right-brained, preferring feelings, relationships, and qualitative information. Three of more “B”s means you tend to be more left-brained, preferring logic, sequences, and quantitative information. Now see if you can figure out what other people might be and how best to communicate with their preferred thinking style.