This Is Your Brain on the Job
Neuroscientists Are Finding
That Business Leaders
Really May Think Differently
By PHRED DVORAK and JACLYNE BADAL
September 20, 2007; Page B1
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- How do you make a great leader? Pierre Balthazard starts by wiring electrodes to managers' scalps and recording electrical activity in their brains.
After he completes 500 such scans, the Arizona State University management professor hopes the resulting data will enable him to plot a map of a leader's brain. Then, he wants to train ordinary brains to act like those of leaders
Mr. Balthazard says the first 50 scans, of local luminaries, suggest that visionary leaders use their brains differently than others. In the past month, he added 20 Arizona State graduate students; next month, he's planning to scan 50 West Point cadets.
"We're coming up with the genome -- the brain map -- of the leader," says Mr. Balthazard from his ASU office, one littered with brain diagrams, plastic models and a windup toy brain with chattering teeth
Mr. Balthazard is among a growing number of researchers looking inside the brain for business insights. The surge in interest among researchers is fueled by more powerful diagnostic tools and an improved understanding of how the brain influences character, personality and behavior.
Researchers have applied neuroscience to areas like economics, finance and marketing. Academics from Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify parts of the brain that influence buying decisions.
Executive coaches and researchers are increasingly tapping neuroscience tidbits to bolster pet management theories. Scientists at Gallup Organization, for example, say brain research helps managers understand why praise works: it boosts levels of dopamine, a chemical linked to joy.
But as more nonspecialists jump in, it becomes harder to separate science from hype. "A lot of this will end up science-fiction," says Michael Gazzaniga, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who pioneered research in the 1960s and '70s on the difference between the left and right sides of the brain. Mr. Gazzaniga says his research was oversimplified and misused by an eager public; he fears a similar outcome with the application of neuroscience to management.
Mr. Balthazard's project is among the most ambitious, because it seeks both to identify brain patterns, and then train managers to replicate the patterns within their own brains. The team uses electroencephalograms, or EEGs, which record electric signals through sensors placed on the scalp
Advances in EEG technology make it easier to "map" a brain's electrical activity. But it isn't clear that leaders exhibit defined brain-wave patterns, or that changing such patterns automatically alters behavior. Not all brains function the same way, neuroscientists say. Nor do people with similar brain patterns necessarily act in similar ways.
Some of Mr. Balthazard's colleagues are wary, too. David Waldman, an Arizona State management professor who designed the psychological tests Mr. Balthazard uses, says he supports the research but views brain-training "with a grain of salt." Leadership is complex, he says, and brain maps will most likely be useful to help managers develop specific skills, such as showing greater sensitivity to others.
Mr. Balthazard vows to follow scientific protocols, including trying to repeat results with different subjects and consulting with ethicists. He's enlisted a well-known neuroscientist and EEG expert, Robert Thatcher, to help analyze his data. And he stresses that brain training will be a leadership-development tool, not a magic bullet. "We don't want to get into quackery here," he says.
Mr. Balthazard, 47, is a tall, chatty Canadian and systems-engineering specialist. In 2001, while studying ways to measure managers' performance, he met Jeffrey Fannin, a psychologist and former airline pilot who runs a clinic near the Arizona State campus. Mr. Fannin was using EEGs to find and treat brain-wave patterns associated with illnesses like depression or anxiety -- a procedure still considered experimental by many doctors. He claimed the same procedure had helped managers' performance in certain areas, like enhancing their ability to concentrate. Messrs. Balthazard and Fannin wondered whether EEGs would reveal patterns of brain activity common to good leaders. If so, they hoped to train other brains to mimic those patterns.
Mr. Balthazard sought local leaders to brain-map, including a former dean at Arizona State and a one-footed mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest. The subjects took Mr. Waldman's psychological tests to pinpoint their leadership and personality styles. Then Mr. Fannin scanned their brains. The researchers sought to correlate the psychological test results with the brain-wave patterns.
Messrs. Balthazard and Fannin demonstrated their work one June afternoon at Mr. Fannin's clinic, where Joanne Cacciatore, the head of a bereavement foundation, was getting her brain mapped. Mr. Fannin put a red cap studded with 19 electrodes on Ms. Cacciatore's head, squirting gel under the sensors to better detect the signals. A computer screen nearby filled with squiggly lines, which spike when they register electrical activity.
Mr. Fannin watched the screen and recorded Ms. Cacciatore's brain activity while Mr. Balthazard asked questions. Some tested her vision as a leader, others explored her sense of ethics. She was asked to deal with a fictional employee with probing questions about a sensitive corporate deal. "I don't like being a politician," Ms. Cacciatore groaned.
As Ms. Cacciatore silently mulled another question, Mr. Fannin interjected. "You're talking to yourself," he said, pointing to spikes tracing to an electrode on the left side of Ms. Cacciatore's head. Ms. Cacciatore nodded in agreement. The electrode was above a part of the brain responsible for language, Mr. Fannin explained.
In another room, Mr. Fannin demonstrated the brain-training technique on retired information-technology manager George Holland, who was suffering anxiety. When Mr. Holland's EEG detected high-frequency waves associated with anxiety, a dolphin on the computer screen he was watching stopped swimming. When the readings were near normal, the dolphin swam smoothly. Mr. Holland, who has since completed his treatment, said the technique has enabled him to stop taking anxiety medication.
Messrs. Fannin and Balthazard say they'll use the same procedure for leadership training -- once they can establish an appropriate template.
That's where Mr. Thatcher, a neuroscientist who's worked on EEGs and behavior for 35 years, comes in. Mr. Thatcher sifts through the data from sessions like Ms. Cacciatore's, looking for brain-wave patterns.
Mr. Thatcher says preliminary analysis of 50 brain maps shows some big differences in activity between managers who rate high on a psychological test of visionary leadership, and those who rate low. The visionary leaders had more efficient left brains, which deal with logic and reasoning, and better connected right brains, which are responsible for social skills.
Mr. Balthazard is getting ready. He's seeking funding for hundreds more scans, and will brain-map West Point cadets this fall. He hopes to begin brain-training students as early as next year.
The school's marketing department has supplied Mr. Balthazard with small, rubber brains emblazoned with the Arizona State logo and the words: "Are you wired for leadership?"
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