Connecting Leadership to the Brain. . - book review

School Administrator, Sept, 2002 by Brian L. Benzel

Connecting Leadership to the Brain provides insight into how brain physiology and processes affect the way leaders do their work and the way such work gets perceived in the public square.

Co-authors Michael H. Dickmann and Nancy Stanford-Blair, associate professors of educational leadership at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, extend the research and basic understanding of the structure and operation of our brain into the more elusive arena of applied leadership. Their work integrates the modern leadership literature and builds a powerful connection for how we need to think about building the personal capacity of the people we lead.

Starting with a description of the brain and how it works, the book describes a model for thinking about leadership in the context of how the human brain works. Their book models a series of thought-provoking structures that asks the reader to connect to her or his experience and apply it to new knowledge about interacting with people based on what is being discovered about the operation of our brain. The book builds to a strong closing that promotes leadership strategies of participation, inclusion and active engagement because they are deeply rooted in the brain's physiological and emotional structures.

This book will stimulate awareness about the complexity of leadership work, establish a framework for examining that awareness, provide provocative study exercises for the individual or a team and model how multiple intelligences can be used to enhance decision making.

(Connecting Leadership to the Brain, by Michael H. Dickmann and Nancy Stanford-Blair, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2002, 263 pp. with index, $29.95 softcover)