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Robert K. Cooper: Robert Cooper is chair of Advanced Excellence Systems, a leadership consulting firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan (www.theother90percent.com). He is a faculty member in the Lessons in Leadership Distinguished Speaker Series and a Fellow at the Silicon Valley World Internet Center. Dr Cooper is widely known for his work on how exceptional leaders and teams liberate untapped human capacity and excel under pressure. His books include Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organizations (Grosset/Putnam, 1997), and The Other 90%[sup]TM: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life (Crown Business Books, May 2001).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: # Copyright by Robert K. Cooper and Advanced Excellence Systems. All rights reserved.
Centuries ago, when hardly anything was known of neuroscience, the mysteries of the brain and the heart's internal workings enthralled most people. This lively ability to sense, think, feel, imagine, and take action seemed amazing, an outright miracle. And great leaders somehow knew, at a gut level, that they had to mobilize those qualities in themselves and others.
As scientific investigations began, a handful of business thinkers and leaders were using newly discovered fundamentals of neuroscience to help them build inventive and enduring organizations. However, most managers and supervisors found it easier to erect walls of distance, calculation, committees, and paper work between the people who did jobs and the need to understand how these same people, under the right circumstances, could be inspired to contribute far more of their discretionary - and largely untapped - capacity to learn, invent, deliver results and grow.
In the Industrial Age and through the early decades of the Knowledge Age, management assumed that it was getting the job done despite this dehumanization. But no longer. Today, the growth of technology and pace of life have joined to make many people - perhaps most people - feel increasingly invisible and devalued through much of every workday. In many organizations, people are holding on by their fingertips while their bosses call for more commitment, innovation and effort. It won't happen unless we change what we are doing and how we are doing it. The latest wave of discoveries in neuroscience and data on successful management hold some of the keys for accomplishing that.
Use your brains: all...