A Manual for Your Brain!

I’d like to recommend a book that I don’t believe made any popular lists: The Owner’s Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research by Pierce J. Howard.  Here’s why I love this book:

1. It’s easy to read.  It’s quite large which my seem intimidating but this isn’t the kind of book I personally would read cover-to-cover and I recommend you let go of this notion as well.  It’s not written for academics, but for people who want an easy way to read the research (a.k.a wannabe academic, like me).

2. It covers a vast array of topics.  You can read about the brain’s structure, development, function, the impact of drugs, learning, creativity, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

You might be thinking, “okay…but what does this have to do with leadership?”.  A primary function, and dare I say responsibility, of a leader is understanding how to connect to your people.  This book gives you some basic, scientific understanding and techniques on how you can do that!  Part Eight is particularly useful “Working Smarter: The Brain in the Workplace”, but there are other nuggets of gold there too (i.e. chapter 24 “A Matter of Style: Our different Ways of Learning” could help you design a meaningful on-boarding process for new staff for example - something I'm more than happy to help with).  The foundation of creativity is knowledge!  Go learn something small so you can build something grand 😉

How would you apply something you read in this book?