Leading with Your Upper Brain: How to Create the Behaviors That Unlock Performance Excellence

It’s never been this urgent to build employee relationships that spark higher brain thinking and the skills to connect with people to encourage their highest performance. In other words, it’s vital to engage team members’ upper brains, which control critical reasoning, judgment, and creativity. When that positive connection is lacking, leaders risk provoking team members’ lower brains—which govern fear and survival behaviors—and creating a toxic workplace. Research shows that a leader’s behavior is the most important predictor of a team’s success. Leading with Your Upper Brain helps you understand why. It provides an innovative framework to shift your behavior in ways that help employees tap into their upper-brain resources that drive higher levels of performance. The authors use cutting-edge neuroscience research to illustrate how a positive connection with their leader builds trust and affects team members’ brain function that leads to overall team success. They share a modern, science-based approach to performance management and leadership development that fits any organization. Each chapter offers key takeaways, tips, and questions to help you put the principles into practice.

Robert W. Frisina, MA, is a principal in the Frisina Group and executive director at the Center for Influential Leadership, with primary responsibility for program development and research in leadership effectiveness and organizational development. He is a member of the US Army Reserve and served as a civil affairs specialist with the Second Brigade Combat Team in the 101st Airborne Division in southern Afghanistan. Michael E. Frisina, PhD, has authored more than 50 papers and published articles on leadership and organizational effectiveness. He is a contributing author to the Borden Institute’s highly acclaimed textbook series on military medicine. He is a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center in New York, a visiting fellow in medical humanities at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and a John C. Maxwell Top 100 Transformational Leader.

Chapter 1 - The Effective Leadership Equation Chapter 2 - Self-Awareness Chapter 3 - Self-Management Chapter 4 - The Engagement Equation Chapter 5 - Creating a Culture of Purpose and Performance Chapter 6 - Leadership Behaviors That Drive Engagement Chapter 7 - The Performance Equation Chapter 8 - The Technical Tyrant Chapter 9 - Behavior Capacity