Whole-Brain Leadership

A new mandate to reskill the C-suite

C-Suite leaders are at a fork in the road. The known path—defined by what’s traditionally been thought of as left-brained capabilities with a focus on analytics and data—is no longer viewed as the best approach to engage with customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Many C-suite leaders find themselves without a roadmap of the new route, wondering how to travel in a new era that requires the addition of deeply human-centered approaches to leadership. When lost, who better to guide them than a Pathfinder?

Pathfinders are a group of self-perceived empowered stakeholders that share a common mindset about how leaders need to change. The ‘Whole-Brain Leadership: The New Rules of Engagement for the C-suite’ report from Accenture Strategy based on interviews with 200 C-suite executives and a survey of more than 11,000 employees and consumers globally, uncovered this new influential group with the power to destabilize business.
 

Pathfinders expect C-suite leaders to address issues that benefit society such as sustainability, workers’ rights, inclusivity, and others. This group is five times more likely to act in numbers against their employer. Pathfinders leverage social media, with 79% saying it increased the power of their voice in companies where they work and 71% saying it increased their ability to influence the behavior of companies they buy from. 

James Gemmell, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Akamai, a leading content delivery network services provider for media and software delivery, and cloud security solutions is seeing a new dynamic with stakeholders play out at his company. “Our relationships with customers and employees have definitely become more complex and more challenging. This is correlated with the availability of information to everyone. Information equals power. In the past, it was concentrated in the hands of companies, but that has changed, and it’s become an equalizer for customers and employees. This has put an emphasis on being transparent,” he said.   

Combined with other disruptive forces, like emerging technologies and new market entrants, Pathfinders are motivating the C-suite to employ a whole-brain approach to leadership. This “whole-brain” approach balances “left” (scientific) brain skills with increasingly valued “right” (creative) brain skills, such as empathy, innovation, and intuition. 

The majority (89%) of today’s C-suite hold business school, science or technology degrees and have honed traditional left-brain skills – such as critical reasoning, decision-making, and results-orientation. While these skills will always be valuable, C-suite leaders recognize the need to strengthen their right-brain skills for a well-rounded whole-brain skillset. Sixty-five percent say that right-brain skills are their weakest and only 8% report their organizations using a whole-brain approach today. The value proposition for taking this new approach is strong. Leaders that adopt a whole-brain approach in their companies see a positive bottom-line impact and realize an average 22 percent higher revenue growth and 34 percent higher profitability growth

Using this whole-brain approach will give C-suite members the tools needed to respond to the compounding pressures facing them. For example, this new leadership approach must entail creative thinking, continuous learning, willingness to experiment, ability to influence, coach and empower others. Leaders must be focused on creating an inclusive team environment that fosters empathy and nurtures a willingness to embrace and enact change. It’s about solving human problems with human solutions.

For example, with an eye on promoting idea generation throughout the company, Akamai has developed programs that allow employees to submit their ideas to senior leadership – and it has resulted in new products with strong revenue streams. “We see a strong linkage between engagement and productivity. As our business continues to evolve and new competitors emerge, we need to move fast and create an internal growth mindset,” added Gemmell.

Leaders are aware that it is time for a change. Company leaders can chart their path forward by:
 

 

 

Heading down the path less traveled can be difficult for today’s C-suite. However, reskilling will allow these leaders to gain a new perspective on analytical and human-centric thinking and approach decisions with a whole-brained approach. 

Katherine LaVelle is a Managing Director and North America Lead for Talent & Organization at Accenture Strategy. She helps organizations develop and implement workforce transformation programs to improve employee performance and deliver bottom-line results. Connect Katherine LaVelle Follow @KDLaVelle1