This is your brain on leadership: QMN021
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Wednesday, 22 May
(Today’s report is a six minute read)
BLUF: A recent article making the rounds on LinkedIn argues that neural pathways formed during the brain’s natural adaptation to age may help develop qualities vital to good leadership.
KSA here. What makes a good leader? No… really, what makes a good leader? According to a new article on QZ.com, leadership may be the result of the aging brain’s adaptive processes: in other words, neural maturation. The article, written by Katherine Ellen Foley and provocatively titled “Scientifically, this is the best age for you to lead,” is built around statements made by Dr. Darlene Howard, a neuropsychology and cognition researcher, drawing connections between the brain’s compensatory intellectual mechanisms and a theorized age window in which these brain changes make for optimal leadership capabilities.
Although Dr. Howard is not, for whatever reasons, directly quoted by Foley, her comments are related by the author to the Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC) asserted in “The Adaptive Brain: Aging and Neurocognitive Scaffolding,” an article by researchers Patricia Reuter-Lorenz and Denise Park published in The Annual Review of Psychology in 2009. Reuter-Lorenz and Park outline STAC, saying that it
“provides an integrative view of the aging mind, suggesting that pervasive increased frontal activation with age is a marker of an adaptive brain that engages in compensatory scaffolding in response to the challenges posed by declining neural structures and function. Scaffolding is a normal process present across the lifespan that involves use and development of complementary, alternative neural circuits to achieve a particular cognitive goal. Scaffolding is protective of cognitive function in the aging brain, and available evidence suggests that the ability to use this mechanism is strengthened by cognitive engagement, exercise, and low levels of default network engagement.”
The researchers demonstrate this using fMRI and PET imaging to highlight brain changes in volume and reduced receptor activity in some areas that seem to trigger neural workarounds: different types of connections in regions of the brain that aren’t as profoundly affected by aging as others. According to Foley,
“In some cases this adaptation may actually be beneficial. Older adults can have better vocabularies (pdf), because, although recalling words may be harder, they’ve had time to learn more of them, Howard said. They can also be better at solving interpersonal or abstract problems—the kind advice columns often try to tackle. Temporal discounting, or valuing the future just as much if not more than the present, tends to also get better with age, as does the ability to regulate emotions and cope with negative feelings, Howard explained at a forum at the National Press Foundation earlier this month.” (Links from original)
But do all workaround pathways lead to good decision-making? Will an older applicant pool always yield good leaders? Foley admits that age is “not a perfect predictor of ideal leadership skills,” she still notes that seven CEOs of Fortune’s top ten companies are between the ages of 50 and 60. This, however, is a kind of circular reasoning: akin to arguing that “older CEOs are better leaders because 70% of the best CEOs are older.” Although the science is certainly sound, brain plasticity – whether structural or functional or in adolescence or middle-age – is largely dependent on experience and not just aging per se. So what makes a good leader? At the risk of falling into the same logical fallacy, the answer is experience leading: that is, making sound decisions under duress, assuming responsibility for the welfare of others, and being accountable for the successes and failures of a team of subordinates. That kind of leadership experience, as opposed to mere ‘management,’ is more valuable than others, regardless of age.
NOTES: HANDWRITTEN VS. TYPED Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away (3 min) “...note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. Generative note-taking pertains to "summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping," while nongenerative note-taking involves copying something verbatim.”
“And there are two hypotheses to why note-taking is beneficial in the first place. The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, "the processing that occurs" will improve "learning and retention." The second, called the external-storage hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people.” Leuchtturm & Blackwing forever! (BJM)
EXPERIENCE AND REFLECTION: The Nature of Genius (2 min) A little more to pile onto yesterday’s theme - “As for myself, I am always at work, I meditate a great deal. If I seem always prepared to reply to all, to meet all, it is that before undertaking anything, I have meditated a long time, I have foreseen what might occur. It is not a genius which reveals to me suddenly, in secret, what I am to say or do in an emergency by the rest of people unexpected – it is my reflection, it is my meditation. I am constantly at work, at meals, at the theater; at night I get up to work.” (BJM)
THE JUNIOR EXEC BY CPP: Getting/Giving Feedback
Yesterday we talked about getting and giving feedback; here’s a simple model when speaking with reports or your boss: RASA. Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask. This ‘active listening’ mnemonic is a helpful tool in demonstrating your engagement while confirming what you heard. When you are listening, you Receive the information (with your words, tone, and body language). While listening you can Appreciate and acknowledge what is being said. When you are done listening you then Summarize what you heard, and Ask if you heard it right.
“Good point, Jim, thanks. Just to summarize, you’d like us to work tighter with marketing on our sales messaging, correct?"
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA), Brady Moore (BJM), & Chris Papasadero (CPP)