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Leveraging Your Groggy Brain
by Christine N. Lee
How would you like to effectively manage your cognitive energy at work to elevate your productivity and impact? Specifically, is it worth carving out times for strategy sessions that leverage your differing cognitive energies during the day?
What’s fascinating is that neuroscience underpins morning strategy sessions that leverage the creative juices that flow freely during the first hour of the day when we wake up and our pre-frontal cortex is impaired - just think, groggy brain is our friend!
This is because of our brain anatomy. The prefrontal cortex is the brain’s boss and command center affecting our executive function and linear logic - and this boss is usually large and in charge. But during the first hour, because the boss is out, we are able to think more creatively and laterally - and utilize our divergent or creative logic, where we are able to think outward and explore possibilities, and find new solutions to existing problems.
Usually, our Linear and convergent logic holds that A leads to B, which leads to C, then leads to D - and we certainly must check off items on our to-do list to be productive at work. But tapping into our Creative and divergent logic is about finding shortcuts, redefining the premise, charting new territories and reframing solutions, altogether.
Our groggy brain at the first hour is fantastic at creative logic, which fuels our strategy work, big-picture thought, and writing synthesis - there is no writer’s block when your prefrontal cortex is down, imagine that! The groggy brain helps us capitalize on creative juices naturally flowing during that first hour. So please don’t caffeinate it away - leverage your groggy brain, she is a true gift that supercharges your strategy sessions.
Further, our first-hour creative strategy session is also a way to give ourselves psychological safety to intellectually play and explore without needing every thought to be right - and after some time exploring new possibilities and new solutions to existing problems during that first hour, we can hone in and focus on one of the possibilities and use our convergent, linear logic to execute on that idea.
Because, let’s face it - later on in the day, you’d better be right - you can’t be exploring and making mistakes all day. But at that first hour of day, you can give yourself that psychological safety, space, and time to creatively play, explore, and utilize your divergent logic to expand your world of possibilities and strategize in new and powerful ways.
The higher we go up in organizations, the more important strategizing becomes to our work - there is a severe difference in impact of asking strategic, big-picture questions versus shying away from these impossible questions because they are too daunting. In fact, failing to ask the big questions can prevent you from navigating well at work and in life, and handicap your leadership.
But the Creative First Hour is about asking big strategy questions and spending an hour working on them, then walking away to unlock what David Kadavvy calls your passive genius - where creative ideas will simmer in the back of your mind like the slow cooker, and reveal an answer after some time - maybe at your next creative first-hour session, next week, or while you’re out for a walk on the weekend, exercising or in the shower - the answer may come to you unexpectedly.
But this isn’t random - the revelations come only because you bothered to ask the question in the first place and the idea had been simmering all along - and your passive genius was at work even when you weren’t. Asking the big questions and engaging in first-hour strategy sessions unlocks the passive genius in you.
Creative sessions are different from your linear logic check-off list, where things hang over you until the items are all checked off, like a weight on your shoulder that lifts only when you complete it. No, creative sessions are not like that at all - they’re about ongoing problem solving - and giving yourself that first hour to think expansively, using your divergent logic, ideating, writing - then walking away towards your to-do list items for the day, to simply reengage later at your next strategy session opportunity.
If you are not a naturally creative or strategic person, that first hour of the day may be the only time where you can engage in creative strategy sessions at all, before your prefrontal cortex wakes up and takes over.
If you are a creative person, you can maximize your creative output tenfold by engaging in your first hour sessions. As a musician, I have written entire songs with music and lyrics in one hour at my creative first-hour sessions, and I usually hate song writing. My work writing also flows out of me with ease at this hour as well. You can gather your sources in the afternoon but save the actual writing for that first hour - no writer’s block!
Do you know who also utilizes the creative first hour strategy sessions for their work? Jeff Bezos spends his first hour drinking coffee to “putter around” and read the news, and intentionally stays off his phone. He says that having this time helps him make better strategic decisions.
Jensen Huang calls this time “Victory before 9am.” He decides on a strategy topic the night before, and spends his one hour of focused time in the morning on that topic to think creatively and strategically.
Elon Musk uses his one-hour focus time at the same time, same chair, using the same pen - he uses even these “atomic habits” to amplify his creative juices.
You don’t have to override your linear logical mindset - this is about augmenting it with a big-picture strategy by building a bridge between today’s problems and tomorrow' s opportunities. And this kind of lateral thinking is best done at the first hour of your day.
Give it a whirl, and let me know how it goes! For more helpful strategies in augmenting your leadership, please contact me.
© GiANT Worldwide
Know Yourself - to Empower Your Self, Team, and Company
by Christine N. Lee
How can looking inward empower your next level journey for your career and company? What is the value of having employees who know and lead with their strengths, and the company impact of building team synergies bolstered by and not intimidated by the varying strengths represented in the room?
Our modern work environment is shifting quickly and will continue to evolve quicker than we’d like. The reality is that just knowing the landscape of how things work in our industry or city will no longer be enough. In order to navigate your career and company well, you have to know yourself well - and ultimately, lean into your strengths and intrinsic motivations, in order to lead yourself and your team powerfully.
The Five Voices Framework by GiANT Worldwide is a powerful summary of your wired-in strengths and intrinsic motivations - both at work and in life. Simply put, you bring more value when you operate out of what you value. In this way, identifying your natural leadership strengths and motivations helps maximize your contributions to your company - and develop your personal “hedgehog concept” à la Jim Collins’ Good to Great.
Could this be a test of your self-awareness? Absolutely. But the Five Voices Assessment is meant to empower, not to intimidate. Understanding your natural strengths and motivations captured by the Five Voices Framework will catapult your contributions to the next level, while also empowering you to intentionally lead others based on their Leadership Voices as well. And next to leading yourself well, developing an effective leadership pipeline in a healthy work culture is arguably the most important objective for thriving companies today.
The 5 Voices Assessment stands out from the other assessments in both efficacy and empowerment:
While the Working Genius and Strengths Finder identify person-to-task orientation, the Five Voices identify people-to-people orientation - this enables building effective teams who lead and communicate better and build powerful synergies, instead of working in silos.
EOS is a powerful implementer but less effective at the most important, early stages of aligning people with strategy and vision. Only after you have set the correct course with the right people on the bus, will implementation matter - otherwise, you can head off speedily in the wrong direction and end up in the wrong place altogether.
The DISC profile is similarly limited in observing external behaviors but short on training for development - is everyone meant to fall in line to further the Dominant style’s objective, or are there powerful next steps to growing and developing everyone’s’ leadership and influence and building team alignment which will multiply impact for each individual and ultimately achieve that much more to the team?
Lastly - Whereas MBTI and Enneagram fall short in applications to the workplace, the Five Voices assessments are designed for maximizing work team effectiveness and alignment while also having powerful implications for how we lead ourselves in all our spheres of life.
The Five Voices can empower you beyond your current role to maximize your contribution, leadership, and communication to the next level and build powerful teams and companies. Through our training, we have seen clients upleveling their team contributions and leadership to attain promotions at Northrup Grumman, Collins RTX, USBank, Daimler Truck North America, and more. We also partner with companies to build thriving work cultures where intentional alignment of empowered voices elevates team deliverables and company performance for the long haul.
Imagine a work team where the Creative voice is able to capitalize on future opportunities and communicate clearly - the Guardian speaks into possible gaps and respectfully helps substantiate dreams into plans - the Pioneer executes on the plan and spearheads new initiatives while listening to others - the Connector multiplies resources and impact by selling the deliverable to enthusiastic buyers - all the while the Nurturer operates as the relational oil for the team so that this dynamic troupe could and would want to work together for the long haul - this is the power of the Five Voices at work in your world, and this is only just one possible scenario of the synergy within reach.
What’s more, because everyone has all five voices within them, but in different ordering by strengths, each person’s Voice Order enables intentional alignment between team members - by empowering each individual to elevate varying voices within themselves in order to better communicate with a different Voice in the room. This is powerful team alignment in action.
The Five Voices also provides salient pathways for growth and development for each individual as well, by intentionally developing a lower voice - which will multiply impact and effectiveness for the individual, team and company as a whole.
Take a plunge and see for yourself what the Five Voices training can do for your leadership. You can take your Five Voices assessment - with the caveat that the assessment has 50% accuracy due to aspirational answering - but you can certainly utilize it as a starting point for your leadership growth journey.
Knowledge and insights alone won’t change you, though. Workout regimens are what build your new leadership muscles. This is the difference between music appreciation vs. being a formidable pianist, and the gap between having a big brain vs. having big muscles - and we can absolutely help you build salient muscle memory of powerful leadership behaviors well-suited to your Voice.
So consider joining our Next Level Leaders Training to identify and work out your particular leadership muscles, and gain new muscle memory in how you can lead and show up to all the teams in your life. These salient leadership tools powered by GiANT Worldwide, can help you make maximum impact right where you are - in your self-leadership, your team, and your company.