Do You Identify As a Manager, Leader, or Neuroleader?
If you are 50 or older, you may say yes to all three
Several members of the Gifted Professionals and Communicators community have been calling and sending emails about neuroleadership, plasticity, and the Imagination Age. Because they are jazzed about it and getting certifications that are brand new to me—someone who has worked with more than 600 different certification providers since 1990, curiosity took hold.
What I found was fascinating and perhaps you know more about this than I do.
Silvia Damiano, scientist and founder of About My Brain Institute presents a thrilling ride through A 100-Year Perspective on How Leadership and Wellbeing Have Changed. Do you identify as a manager, leader, or neuroleader? If you are almost 50 or older, you may say yes to all three.
The visual of all three and the different ages I’ve lived through grabbed me. We humans have been around for millions of years and it’s just the last 100 that we are seeing a graph that explains why our lives feel as if we’ve been speeding through challenges, changes, transitions, and increasing demands, without any rest.
If you identify with all three, did you do it in phases? Did you focus on becoming a manager when you were in the Industrial Age, then become a leader when you lived through the information age? Then did you notice there was something more and better and it’s called neuroleader, here in the current, Imagination Age?
Now I wonder further about this and your experience. Did you do it in layers? Do you still identify as a manager, but then you added leadership traits and characteristics to your business and personal life? I wonder further—did you more recently feel the world change under your feet again and you became a neuroleader, with more collaboration, empathy, and authenticity?
Is it possible you got stuck in one of those eras? Do you still identify as a manager, who emphasizes authority, control, power, systems, and tasks? Is it possible you moved on to leader and stayed in the Information Age where knowledge is power and you are still selling your expertise?
What is the advantage of moving to the next age?
Why does becoming a neuroleader in the Information Age matter?
First, what is a neuroleader? A neuroleader understands how the brain works and uses this knowledge to lead more effectively. You might just be a neuroleader if you have these characteristics: Self-awareness, empathy, and emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, resilience, and mindfulness—emphasis on understanding everyone’s brain works differently.
One way to look at this is to look at the ages themselves and what they mean to us. The action, greatest achievements, and bigger money are always in the next age. That’s the short answer. Let’s dig deeper.
For a long time, we all lived in the Agriculture Age. Just about everyone grew their food or had gardens. Then came the Industrial Age and when people went to work in manufacturing and multiple crafts and fields necessary to build trains, cars, neighborhoods, towns, and cities, because that’s where the action and greater money was. People still needed food and some still worked in agricultural businesses. Grocery stores and malls took care of the distribution of agriculture-age items to an industrial-age population.
Then came the Information Age and that’s where the action and greater money went. People still worked in agricultural businesses and many still worked in manufacturing, crafts, construction, and thousands of other professions which grew rapidly during the industrial age. The top five occupations in the Information Age are software development and engineering, IT systems design and management, data scientist, cybersecurity professional, and social media creator and marketing.
Moving on to the Imagination Age, the fast growth and greater money are in areas and occupations such as these: Neuroscience, sustainability professionals and strategists, community managers for online co-working and co-living, personal branding coaches, artificial intelligence creators and ethics advisors, and virtual reality designers.
Where has your life taken you, so far, and how will you learn faster for what’s coming next?
Most of us and certainly every professional over 50 can recall the books and workshops they soaked up to “skill up” or take on new challenges.
Silvia Damiano covers the past 100 years and for this article, let’s see what happened in the past 50 years. Let’s look at the books you may have read and might still have in your personal library
Manager: From 1950 to 1980, the top business books were these: The Practice of Management by Peter F. Drucker, The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor, The Nature of Managerial Work by Henry Mintzberg, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices by Peter F. Drucker, and Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, Philip Kotler
Then we learned more. We failed at a few things and the smart ones among us sought feedback loops to build success on top of the total picture of who you are and what you care about.
Many of us became leaders. From 1980 to 2010, the top business books and workshops were these: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell, and Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Then we learned more about our brains, our intelligence, artificial intelligence, and transformative experiences. We learned that transactions are fleeting and maybe a high note, such as buying a new car. Transactions are temporary and maybe a deep low, such as personal loss or realizing you’ve been used or abused.
After years of not exactly feeling like we had become all we were meant to become and noticing that we could do more, many professionals, communicators, and gifted adults actively sought breakthroughs in neuroscience and behavioral psychology, including lessons in neuroplasticity, emotional and logical thinking, mindful productivity, self-care, and relaxation.
The top five neuroscience reads from 2010 to 2024 are these: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, and The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain by Tara Swart.
For us, the next phase became the Gifted Professionals and Communicators community.
Why this and why now? This neuroscience context makes sense around the creation of the GPC in 2023. We are all about collectively listening to each other because we each bring a large load of experiences, relationships, trials, tribulations, and triumphs to the conversations.
It’s about conversations instead of transactions. It’s about coming together with better questions that are more productive and healthier than old questions.
Old questions from the Industrial Age: What’s in it for me? What do you do for a living? Do you want to recommend me and my products to others? What is your vision of the future? Shall we spend more time on systems and lists of tasks instead of outcomes?
Better questions of the Imagination Age: What would you like to learn, next? What experience has happened in your one life, so far, which someone else would love to learn about? How many different and unusual ideas can all of us, all at once, throw at this one problem that needs our attention? Can you tell us the story about a measurable outcome of something you created —what difference did you make? In what ways do you see AI enhancing your profession and communication with the world?
By drawing insights from the past and embracing innovative approaches, we can cultivate cultures of leadership and well-being that empower individuals to reach their full potential and contribute to a better world.
One of the featured gifted professionals in our blog is Anne-Laure LeCunff who wrote The Illusion of Productivity: Why We Are Addicted to Busyness. She writes, “Reclaiming your time to focus on what really matters can have a big impact on where you will be one year from now. All these moments we spend on irrelevant and meaningless tasks to avoid being alone with ourselves can be used for thinking, exciting work, or time spent with loved ones. It all adds up pretty quickly, so getting rid of the illusion of productivity is worth the initial discomfort of confronting our own thoughts.”
We are on a mission to find and feature professionals who initiate meaningful conversations with other gifted minds and storytellers–and who they serve. They connect regularly through this newsletter and their emails to nurture and support the network that enriches them. See if their words and actions work for you or engage directly by commenting and sharing your insights.
If you are curious about how sensitive, creative, intense, multipotential, professional, ethical, expressive, and clear you are about your intentions, wants, and needs, go here to check your GPC Score.
Learn more about Gifted Professionals and Communicators via:
👉 Our Community
👉 Our LinkedIn page
👉 Our blog (GPC Journal)
If you enjoyed this article, the greatest compliment you can offer is to share this article with a few friends and encourage them to subscribe. Maybe it’ll start an important conversation. It’s super simple and your friends (and I) will thank you. You can make sure I keep writing and focusing on what matters to you by sending people to the main website. There you see how to collaborate and work with me, professionally (beyond free).