Have you noticed that the boundaries between “what women do and how they do it” and “what men do and how they do it” have become increasingly blurred. It’s a bit of a relief, really – women can now expect their husbands to help with the domestic chores, can become engineers, electricians and astronauts, and they can play most sports at a professional level and men can pamper themselves, say they feel sad and have actual relationships with their children. So many of the old rules and societal expectations about how men and women must behave are being broken. What I’m loving about this is how it’s giving us all permission to use our whole brains, rather than limiting us to just the half of our brain that’s society has typically allocated our gender. But let me back up a little…

We’ve been living in a masculine, left-brain world

If you haven’t read Dan Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind” yet, make sure you get it and slip it on the top of your reading pile (if you’re anything like me, you’re reading 8 to 10 books at a time!). It’s a compelling read. Basically what Pink is saying is that we’ve been living in a left-brain-oriented world where the predominant thinking style that’s been encouraged and rewarded in our educational system and the world of work is all about thinking sequentially and procedurally, processing information in a linear fashion, looking for detail, and analyzing information by categorizing and labeling – think language, maths and science.

The more right-brain-oriented ways of thinking have, to some extent, been side-lined or considered to be more feminine (and therefore less superior) ways of thinking. Right-brain-oriented thinking styles are more about synthesizing information, seeing the links or relationships between the different parts in a system, perceiving the big picture, understanding information visually and metaphorically, appreciating aesthetic beauty, recognizing emotional and nonverbal messages and focusing on communicating and relating to people.

You know how it’s gone: we were all encouraged to focus on maths and science at school, and art class, home economics and woodwork were for the artsy-fartsy types – the people who “are good with their hands” (a euphemism for “not good with their minds”). And we’ve been encouraged to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, computer programmers, and discouraged from becoming social workers, nurses, artists, actors, and writers – unless you’re a pretty girl who’d hopefully be able to marry one of those lawyers or programmers who could bring home the bacon.

But technological advancements are changing the world of work.

Computers are increasingly taking over the left-brain-oriented functions in the workplace. And technological advancements are spreading globalization, which is making it easier for organizations to outsource the rest of the left-brain-oriented functions to cheaper locations offshore. The main point Pink makes is that it’s no longer enough to be just an information analyst, techie or business process specialist anymore – and innovators like Seth Godin agree.

And so we need to develop androgynous thinking styles if we want to thrive:

To keep adding value, and ultimately to keep yourself marketable in the workplace, you’ll need to be able to straddle the left- and right-brain-oriented worlds. You’ll have to start thinking like a girl! Well actually, to be more precise, he says that the people with “androgynous” thinking styles – the ability to hop between thinking in typically masculine left-brain-oriented ways and typically feminine right-brain-oriented ways, are going to be the most successful in this era that he calls the “Conceptual Age.”

For once, I’m feeling quite proud of my “tomboyishness” – hopefully I can put it to good use now! What do you think? Are we becoming an androgynous world? If we are, if this a good thing?

For those of you who’d like to get a quick low-down on the book, check out the very cool mindmap of the book that Luciano Passuello over at Litemind has created.

22 June – Teleseminar “How to Put Your Intuition to Work”

I’m looking forward to interviewing Intuitioneer, Laurie Foley about why using your whole mind has become such a crucial skill for thriving in this era, and having her demystify the whole idea of intuition and share with us some practical tools and tips for accessing your intuition and using it to get better results (and more happiness!) in your work. For more details, and to sign up for the call, click here.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or hang out with me on Twitter. All commenters on this blog are entered into a monthly draw to stand a chance to win a 60min Resource Mining Session. The draw takes place at the end of each month.

Photo by Vintage Lulu

Tweet This Post