Right Brain Management : The Need of the Hour*
Dr.Prem
Saran,IAS
Commissioner & Secretary, Administrative Reforms and
Training,
Dispur, Guwahati-781006
Email : [email protected]
Abstract. Human Resource Development has become the key functional area in Public Administration, and in Management generally, since technology per se no longer grants sufficient competitive advantage in today’s global world of accelerated dissemination of information and knowledge. People resources are, therefore, to be optimally tapped for organisational excellence, and here again the over-emphasised leftbrain skills of analysis and logical manipulation are being found to be insufficient to meet the transformational needs generated by quickening change.
Again, recent studies have shown that the need of the hour is "rightbrain management". And it is here that Indic knowledge systems find their entree into contemporary management theory and practice. The author accordingly outlines a traditional Indian technique of disciplined rightbrain-tapping, suitably modified for a contemporary audience. Thereby individual creativity can be systematically released, to generate organisational synergy. The author sums up with a brief survey of current research in the Behavioural Sciences, such as Maslow’s work on "self-actualisation", Cziksentmihalyi’s on "flow", and Seligman’s on "learned optimism". He then concludes with a reference to Debashis Chatterjee’s concept of "leading consciously", which has recently been highlighted by the Harvard Business School, and which is related to the ultimate Maslowian human need for "transcendence".
After Roger Sperry’s Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the special modes of functioning of the human rightbrain, there has been much research interest in finding ways of systematically tapping its vast potential. This interest has inevitably spilled over into the field of Management theory and practice too, especially in the area of Human Resource Management. This paper is a cross-disciplinary effort in that direction, being in fact an elaboration of a presentation made at the 30th National Convention of the Indian Society for Training and Development, which was held in Calcutta from 19th 20th January,2000. The general theme of that Convention was Training for Transformation, and my paper therein focussed on the use of traditional and highly sophisticated Indic methods of rightbrain tapping, for the contemporary and down-to-earth purpose of Human Resource Development.
The model described here is based on the author’s multidisciplinary professional background: as a technocrat (i.e. Chemical Engineer, and MBA from IIM Calcutta with specialization in HRD), as an Indologist-cum-Cultural Anthropologist (with degrees from the Universities of Pennsylvania and California), and a public administrator with over 21 years of experience in the Indian Administrative Service. It is also a cross-cultural model, using elements from both the Indic and Western universes of discourse.
Given current globalizing trends, the model therefore has a potentially substantial audience that is both Indian and Western, for it draws on highly effective Indic techniques of self-awareness, fine-tuned with findings from the latest research in the Behavioral Sciences. Moreover, the model has been tested successfully on subjects in India as well as in the USA, so much so that the Government of Andhra Pradesh has recently invited the author to train their senior IAS Officers with it.
In
what follows, I first indicate the broad Indological and Cultural –
Anthropological parameters of my cross-cultural HRD model. Thereafter I outline
the philosophical and pragmatic bases of the model, and explicate its utility
for the purposes of Stress Control, Creativity, and Rightbrain
Management. I then lay out the model as a do-it-yourself technique,
which is performed in three stages, viz. relaxing the body, relaxing the
mind, and autoprogramming. Finally, I round out my arguments by
situating my model within the context of current mainstream research in the
Behavioral Sciences.
________________________
* Published in Vol.32,No.1(July-Sept.2000) of Management in Government, the quarterly journal of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Govt. of India.
Indic Cultural Background.
The model is informed by a
naunced knowledge of four core themes in the Indic civilization. This was
acquired during a year’s Ph.D. field research conducted in Nepal on the subject
of South Asian Tantrism, in which the author is a traditional initiate and an
international expert. (Cf. "my Tantra: Hedonism in Indian Culture", D.K.
Printworld, 2nd edition, 1998; and my Yoga, Bhoga, and
Ardhanariswara, which is currently being processed for possible publication by
Oxford University Press)
First, unlike the atomistic personality structure of the modern West, South Asian personhood is porous. For it is holonic, to use Arthur Koestler’s term: everything in nature is a holon, i.e. a whole that is in turn a part of other wholes. This holistic psycho-cultural understanding is crossculturally much more accurate than the Western, as Western anthropologists like Melford Spiro and Malcolm Crick have themselves shown. That is in fact partly why well-known transpersonally -oriented psychologists like Robert Assagioli and Abraham Maslow have significantly enriched their work by the use of perspectives from Indic and related meditative traditions.
Secondly, as opposed to the Judeo-Christian worldview of the Western civilization, with its distinctive and almost pathological Protestant work-ethic, the South Asian cultural ethos is more playful. This is indicated by the salience of the Indic cosmogony of lila , which views the creation of the cosmos as bring due to the (erotic) sport of the "divine". This cultural syndrome has very positive and humanistic practical effects, because it makes for a more relaxed and healthier attitude towards life.
Thirdly, and this is intimately concerned with the previous theme, there is the Indic cultural salience of the pleasure-principle. This is quite clearly evinced by the pan-South Asian persistence of the Tantric cult, with its foregrounding of a balanced hedonism in order to attain the altered state of ‘samadhi’, which is the pan-Indic term for the mystical experience of union with the ground of being. This sophisticated appreciation of the role of Eros in human life also happens to resonate with Freud’s realization, towards the end of his life, that the libido is naught but the life-force.
Finally, as against the androcentric, Judeo-Christian metaphysical and therefore socio-cultural biases of Western culture, Indic philosophy and culture are pervasively imbued with the ancient bipolar ideology of Samkhya with its characteristic and basic attitude of gender-mutuality/-complementarity. This can perhaps be related with the Jungian speculations about the anima and animus, which allude to the psycho-spiritual basis of the relationship between the sexes. At any rate, it is this equi-gendered view of reality that underlies the centuries-old yogic technique of Kundalini-visualization, to which we now turn.
To put it briefly, the core of my HRD model is a radically simplified version of the traditional Kundalini technique of bipolar yogic visualization. It basically consists of the following three stages. Initially, the body is relaxed by using a process of autogenic visualization. Then the mind is put into an "altered state" by visualizing an "inner body", within which is a fine tube running down its center from its anal region to the crown of the head ; thereafter, by visually directing the attention up the tube, from its bottom end to its top, a deep hypnogogic state is achieved. Finally, in this state of deep relaxation, one programs oneself to achieve desired goals, whether personal or organisational.
The effectiveness of any tool or technique depends on how simple it is, as Edward de Bono has pointed out. The technique above is both simple and extremely effective, as is brought home to me whenever I use it in training courses for hardboiled professionals, such as senior IAS and IPS Officers. For within minutes, worldly-wise subjects such as these are enabled to enter a profound meditative state, within which they can then be very easily taught to become better managers and leaders. That is to say, this technique can be profitably used for bottomline organizational objectives, through the synergic achievement of optimal Stress Control, enhanced Creativity, and a balanced Rightbrain-Management style, as I indicate below.
There are about 2 dozen schools of yoga in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. And the eminent French Indologist Louis Renou has aptly characterized these Indic techniques of meditation as a "discipline of the unconscious". To use contemporary terms, such techniques can help one to get out of one’s normal leftbrain mode of consciousness, which constitutes merely the iceberg’s tip of one’s mental capacities. One can thereby learn to systematically access the vast submerged and untapped potentials of the rightbrain. In other words, by regular practice of such rightbrain-manifesting states of meditative absorption, and thus of deep relaxation, one can effectively release the bulk of one’s accumulated stresses. One can then increasingly operate at optimal stress levels, and as a result significantly bootstrap one’s own performance.
According to many experts, individual creativity depends essentially on the ability to make novel conceptual associations, whereby one is then able to generate innovative ideas. This is a process that is eminently facilitated by such techniques of rightbrain-tapping, which enable one to bypass the routine functioning style of the leftbrain mode, and enter the visual mode of the rightbrain. This latter holistic mode permits one to make the imaginative leaps that constitute what de Bono calls "lateral thinking". The creative ideas that are thus generated can subsequently be critically evaluated for their practicality and feasibility, by using the logical activity of the leftbrain. The net result is that one begins to learn to operate in the whole-brain manner of the most effective CEOs and other top organizational leaders, as Harry Alder has shown.
According to management writers like Edward de Bono and Harry Mintzberg, even the well-known management schools are unable to produce the kind of managers that today’s society needs. In Alder’s diagnosis, the main reason for this is that management-training programs are almost entirely leftbrain-oriented. For they focus mainly on the over-valued skills of critical analysis, sadly neglecting the powerful rightbrain modes. And even more to the point, Alder found that most of the top British CEO’s he studied had actually learned to access their rightbrain capacities, and to trust the resultant outputs. There is thus a definite trend towards the "right brain manager", who values this style of "creative management", as Gareth Morgan terms it.
My rightbrain-tapping technique is now described below, in the following four sections. I first outline its three successive phases, namely (A) The progressive relaxation of one’s body, which is followed by (B) The progressive achievement of a deeply relaxed but alert mental state, in which (C) one then programs oneself in order to accomplish one’s goals. Then, in the section (D), I make some useful points for its effective practice.
1.
Lie comfortably on your back. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths imagining
that you are exhaling all your worries and tensions with each out-breath, and
inhaling deep feelings of relaxation and peacefulness, with each
in-breath.
2. Direct your attention to your feet. Imagine that they are
becoming warm, as through steeped in warm water, with currents of warmth flowing
through them. They gradually become very pleasantly relaxed and heavy.
3.
Repeat these with your legs, thighs, hips, lower and upper back, shoulders,
hands, wrists, lower arms, upper arms, chest, stomach, abdomen. Progressively
your feeling of relaxation deepens ... heavy and warm....
4. Now imagine the
same with your neck, back of head, scalp, forehead, eyes and eyeballs. Let your
mouth open slightly, with your tongue lying limp inside, then your jaws, chin
and throat get relaxed. Now you are in a state of very deep relaxation ...
heaviness and warmth ...
5. Next imagine you are going down in an elevator,
20 floors downwards. As you count each passing floor, you are more totally
relaxed. At the 20th floor, when the elevator doors open, you find
yourself in a beautiful scene: perhaps a garden, a mountain vale, or a solitary
beach ... some place where you have been before. And you recall those earlier
feelings of being at peace with yourself, with nature, and the entire Universe
....
You find yourself lying there in that relaxing place, and you now begin to imagine a fine tube inside you, extending from the bottom of your body to the crown of your head. You imagine that there is a fluid inside the tube, rising up slowly. At the bottom of the tube the fluid is red; midway to your navel, orange; navel, yellow; heart-region, green; throat, blue; forehead, indigo; crown, violet.
Finally, when the fluid reaches the crown of your head, it fountains out through a very fine hole there. It covers and bathes you entire body, and your very being, with a feeling of peace, total calm, and contentment. You feel as through you have become an inert doll made of salt, which has been dipped into the sea, so that you fully melt and become one with the surrounding ocean ....
1. Imagine now a blackboard in your mind, on which you write the
syllable "Kleeng". You also say this to yourself mentally. If your mind wanders,
as it will, let it do so ... when you remember the sound again, just repeat it
some more, for as long as you wish, until you feel that your mind is calm and
relaxed....
2. On the blackboard of your mind you then begin to write a
brief, positively - worded affirmation about your goals: "I easily
achieve (whatever your goal is)"....You also say the affirmation to yourself.
And you visualize in detail that your goal is already achieved ... and your
friends and other people are congratulating you....
3. Now you gradually
end your meditation, counting backwards from 20 to 0. As you pass 10 and also at
5, you tell yourself that you wake up feeling relaxed and alert: "I rise feeling
energetic and confident...." . And you then go about your daily
activities, feeling progressively better each time you practice the technique.
1.
Practice improves the effect: do it twice a day for 15 to 20 minutes, just after
waking in the morning, and just before sleeping at night, and if possible, a
third time at midday.
2. The colors in the tube are the rainbow colors
"VIBGYOR", in reverse.
3. While visualizing, it is not
important to have your images picture – perfect: it is the feeling of vividness
that causes the effects of relaxation, not the perfectness of the imagery.
4. You will be able to use the syllable "Kleeng" as a key word, or mnemonic,
anytime during your daily round, and it will trigger off your feelings of
confidence and relaxation.
To sum up, it will be useful to refine our understanding of the above Indic Model, by viewing it from some interesting and relevant contemporary perspectives. We may start with Abraham Maslow’s studies of "peak experience", which are also cognate with those states of consciousness that Czikszentmihalyi calls "flow". In such rightbrain states, one finds oneself functioning optimally precisely because one is so absorbed in what one is experiencing or doing, and is thus unselfconscious and oblivious of oneself. Both these researchers have also made explicit comparisons of these states with yogic experiences of meditative absorption.
Moreover, by putting one increasingly in touch with one’s own internal resources, such "psychedelic" or "mind-manifesting" procedures generate the positive mindset that Martin Seligman calls "learned optimism". This reinforces those positive feedback loops that synergize learning and growth, both in individuals and organizations. And that in turn generates the high need-achievement described by McClelland, thereby reinforcing the motivation required to fuel the Maslowian drive toward self actualization and creativity. It is therefore not surprising that Alder’s top business leaders are so dependent for their success on their constant recourse to the pleasurable, freewheeling modes of rightbrain thinking.
Finally, in this global age of resurgent interest in non-Western modes of knowledge and praxis, it is only apt that Japanese, Chinese and Indian ideas should begin increasingly to cross-fertilize the field of management too. We thus have the Japanese philosophy of kaizen (or "continuous improvement"), and the Chinese "Tao of Leadership". And from Indian management theorists, we have S.K.Chakravorty’s "Management by Values", and Debasis Chatterjee’s concept of "Leading Consciously".
The latter was in fact recently cited by Harvard Business School as one of 15 "thought leaders" who have made salient contributions to leadership theory and practice. For Chatterjee’s model takes the "rightbrain manager" onto the next turn of the spiral, where she comes face to face with the ultimate human need, as theorized by Maslow. This is the need for "transcendence", which holistically subsumes all the other needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. At that stage, management and public administration begin to get transmuted from a vocation into an avocation, with the concomitant optimization of the pragmatic benefits that can accrue to both individual and society.
In sum, my above simplified version of the traditional Indic technique of kundalini-visualization can provide the basic tool for such a radical and humanistic transformation. It therefore constitutes a cross-culturally valid and powerful model of whole-brain functioning, and thus of Human Resource Development. In other words, it can really bring out the human side of human organizational enterprises, in the coming years of this new millenium.
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