Leading with Your Upper Brain: How to Create the Behaviors That Unlock Performance Excellence

It’s never been this urgent to build employee relationships that spark higher brain thinking and the skills to connect with people to encourage their highest performance. In other words, it’s vital to engage team members’ upper brains, which control critical reasoning, judgment, and creativity. When that positive connection is lacking, leaders risk provoking team members’ lower brains—which govern fear and survival behaviors—and creating a toxic workplace. Research shows that a leader’s behavior is the most important predictor of a team’s success. Leading with Your Upper Brain helps you understand why. It provides an innovative framework to shift your behavior in ways that help employees tap into their upper-brain resources that drive higher levels of performance. The authors use cutting-edge neuroscience research to illustrate how a positive connection with their leader builds trust and affects team members’ brain function that leads to overall team success. They share a modern, science-based approach to performance management and leadership development that fits any organization. Each chapter offers key takeaways, tips, and questions to help you put the principles into practice.