Real Story: Segue to the “Beyonder” zone by leveraging “Whole Brain”

C-suite leaders adopting a whole-brain approach see a positive bottom-line impact and realize on average 22% higher revenue growth and 34% higher profitability growth.

– Whole-Brain Leadership: New Rules of Engagement 2019 research study, Accenture

This is what is likely to happen with 14 senior sales leaders we worked with (who have complex business problems to solve and are finding leading-edge dimensions to do so). These leaders are from one of the most advanced 3D engineering organization worldwide. They understood their “Brain preferences” and learned powerful techniques to leverage “Whole Brain” for significant business impact.

We administered one of the most well researched and advanced assessment on Whole Brain Thinking i.e. Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI) for these 14 senior sales leaders of the business transformation vertical. For the first time in their multiple decades of career, these exceptionally talented and bright leaders discovered their dominant thinking preferences or brain preferences and significant possibilities that exist by leveraging all quadrants and dimensions of the brain.

Moment of truth:

In the 3hr session, we unpacked the thinking styles of every individual and mapped them as a group. Leaders were easily able to first unearth reasons for the choices, strategies, and style of communication they had adopted as individuals over the years, and learned to navigate all the dimensions of the brain in different business settings and context for maximum impact.

Learning lab:

We divided the group into triads and through real contextualised and controlled sales simulations each team was assigned and allowed to use only 2 dimensions of thinking styles while making a sales pitch. What surfaced left individuals absolutely mesmerised. The group came up with 8 different sales pitches each one with its own merits and impact zones.

Research with more than 200 C-suite executives and over 11,400 employees and consumers in China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and the US found that leadership teams that actively acquire, deploy, demonstrate and embed diversified—whole-brain— thinking across the enterprise fare better financially than those that don’t. – Whole-Brain Leadership: New Rules of Engagement 2019 research study, Accenture

Insights:

• Different styles resulted in a significantly different sales pitch. It was an eye-opener for leaders in terms of language, information shared, structure, questions and overall approach to sales conversations using only selected brain quadrants. Example: A Realist’s and Strategist’s approach to a sales conversation Vs an Imagineer’s and Socializer’s approach had a very different impact on others.
• Choose to leverage and communicate through dimensions which are most appropriate in different settings and contexts, notwithstanding your own dominant preference. To understand others’ dominant thinking style and design sales pitch and conversations in tune with that.
• The tendency to stay in ones’ own dominant or high preference quadrant results in ordinary outcomes and consciously navigating all quadrants of the brain garners beyond ordinary results in strategy and decision making
• Cues about others’ thinking styles and designing communication strategy informed from customers “Thinking styles” or “Brain preferences”

What the client organization’s leaders said post the learning lab:

Thank you Deep and Puja for this great session on “Whole brain”. Interesting conversations and insights throughout the session. Hope to put these learnings into action.

It was a great learning. Thank you for this session on Whole Brain Thinking, I feel more empowered to influence and land with impact in my conversations with key stakeholders

The sessions were extremely insightful. I hope to employ the tools and suggestions on whole brain thinking that you have shared

Author

Dr. Deep Bali, CEO & Managing Partner, Recalibrate Pvt. Ltd.  

Deep is a Columbia University Global Leadership Coach, and is acknowledged by business leaders and CEOs across geographies for his super ability to enable leaders, teams and businesses to “Pivot”.