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Since leaving the Law to attempt to become a journalist five years ago, Ive never felt happier. Thanks to Ned Herrmann, now I know why.
Herrmann, a 67-year-old American, specialises in telling executives (from firms such as IBM, Shell, Apple and General Electric) how their brains work. After completing one of his "participant surveys" on Friday, I know I am too "lower right-sided" - and that makes me too talkative and emotional to be a decent lawyer.
Herrmann explained his philosophy:
He began exploring the brain when he was 12. Strong in maths and science, he also liked to sing and act (he once sang bass at Carnegie Hall and has appeared in various television shows). "I started wondering about my own duality", he says.
Much later, as head of management education at General Electric, he took his research more seriously: "I was 45 and suddenly found myself a successful artist. In 15 years, I produced 600 paintings and 100 sculptures. As a result, I began to question the nature and source of creativity, where it comes from and what can you do about it? And is it teachable?"
Herrmanns studies led him to the "split brain" research of Nobel prize-winner Roger Sperry. According to Sperry, the left side of the brain controls language while the right looks after our visual and spatial skills.
But for Herrmann this was too simplistic. His studies have led him to the conviction that the brain is divided, not just in halves, but in four sections: upper left, lower left, upper right and lower right. The upper "cerebral" quadrants govern analytic intelligence, while the lower "limbic" modes control emotion and motivation.
Depending on our personality, some quadrants will be stronger than others. Those of us with a logical and statistical bent tend to have a strong upper left while the more conservative and cautious have dominant lower lefts. The spiritual and talkative (like me!) are big in the lower right, while the intuitive and idea-generators have strong upper rights.
Herrmann also reckons that we each give away our relative quadrant strengths and weaknesses by the way we talk. Upper lefts prefer expressions like "key point" and "knowing the bottom line", while lower lefts go for "we have always done it this way" and "law and order". The more wishy-washy lower rights talk in terms of "human values" and "the family", while their completely spaced-out colleagues with strong upper rights prefer "the big picture" and "conceptual".
Likewise, our quadrants determine what jobs we do - or should be doing. Strong upper lefts make the best engineers; lower lefts the best accountants; lower rights are social workers and upper rights become musicians.
At a recent Herrmann seminar, an American telephone companys executives completed a 120-question survey and were stood in line according to their answers. As you might expect, all the lawyers, accountants and engineers finished on the left, with their evidently more creative marketing and advertising colleagues on the right.
There seemed to be just one anomaly: the companys most senior lawyer found himself with the free spirits on the right. But his colleagues were not in the least surprised: it turned out that he was the senior lawyer in title only - for years, the chief executive had relied on him for strategic, general advice rather than detailed legal work.
Not everyone is as fortunate in having such an intuitive boss.
"Most companies dont understand the mental preferences of their employees", says Herrmann. "They put them all together and usually miss".
By using his technique, he claims, a company should at last discover why some people have never seemed happy in their jobs - and perhaps how it might get more out of them.
Some of the questions in Herrmanns participant survey might seem daft, but each one, he says, is vital.
For instance, one question asks whether you can read while travelling in a car without suffering nausea or vomiting. But this is not as silly as it seems: according to Herrmann, if you put 100 accountants to this test they will suffer a lower incidence of car sickness than 100 artists.
America, France, West Germany, Australia and Mexico already have Brain Dominance Institutes.
Herrmann is opening in Britain "to give British business the opportunity to use my management tool", he says
"Most peoples productivity is in the order of 50-60%. Rarely do they achieve 80-90%. With my help they can achieve it."
The Japanese will not know what has hit them.
Chris Blackhurst The Sunday Times - Business Section
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