Project Aristotle – What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build The Perfect Team. It is not about how smart you are, or how much you know. It is how you work with people, how you access their trust and their talent. Taking a look at Neuroscience and how to leverage it in your Leadership IS your Access to 21st Century
Here are the basics to how it works…..
We have our thoughts, and while thinking is a strong element in problem solving and analyzing root cause, when it comes to working with people, mostly our thoughts don’t add much value. These are the tapes in our heads that play over and over about how people treat us, what people should be doing, what they should or shouldn’t have said, how we should be treated, etc.
While Logic, Reasoning, Sequencing and Planning also come from our thinking and thoughts, unless we are operating in a state of effectiveness, our ability to access that thought is clouded with rigidity, judgment, and maybe analysis paralysis. Additionally, when we spend too much time in our left hemisphere and we lean in too much to that part of our thinking, we lose connection with people, and we do not create an environment for trust, partnership or teamwork.
On the other side of the brain is our Right Hemisphere. When we elevate our self-awareness, we raise our level of consciousness and our ability to see the whole picture (Yes, we can do this without taking one of Elon Musk’s magic brain pills). When we raise our consciousness, we elevate our ability to see, view and create in ways we just can’t in the Left Hemisphere “thinking zone”.
Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation come from the Right Hemisphere of the Brain. While these elements are powerful in bringing people together and coming up with new ways to solve problems, these elements alone are insufficient when operating in their own silo of the brain.
Just as a major KEY to building a highly effective, Constructive Culture is breaking down the Silos, a major KEY to being your most effective leadership self is breaking down your brain Silos and integrating both hemispheres.
Highly effective leaders have mastered the ability to INTEGRATE both Hemispheres. Just like you would not fly an airplane with one engine on “stand by”, leading from one half of your brain, simply makes no sense.
RH) Empathy, Connection, Creativity = Trust, Collaboration, Innovation LH) Logic, Planning, Efficiency = Results, Achievement, ROI INTEGRATION = High-Performance Team
Now, here is what Google Learned:
What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face” when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,” we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations.
We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers, then send emails to our marketing colleagues, and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us.
We want to know that work is more than just labor.