The Leading Brain

CHAPTER 1

FIND YOUR SWEET SPOT

How Do You Gain the Right Mix of Neurochemicals to Perform at Your Very Best When You Need To? On May 15, shortly before dawn, Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., wearing a new suit and carrying a metal box about the size of a large briefcase, took an elevator up ten stories,1 got off, and was promptly strapped into a padded chair by waiting attendants who were dressed in white coats. The area around him was extremely cramped, similar to what you d find in a -typical commercial airline restroom. But Cooper, known as Gordo by his friends, wasn t sitting in an airline bathroom. He was sealed inside a cone-shaped aluminum space capsule that was perched atop 200,000 pounds of extremely flammable liquid oxygen and was about to embark on a journey of 546,167 miles.2        The year was 1963, and astronaut Gordo Cooper was scheduled to be just the sixth American to venture into outer space. This was no joy ride. Several of the previous flights had encountered problems. Serious problems. A little more than a year earlier, Cooper s colleague John Glenn narrowly missed being incinerated in the Earth s atmosphere after his spacecraft s heat shield had come loose.3 Despite the fact that the astronauts were all experienced pilots who had been chosen for their mental toughness, Cooper s mission was bound to place even the hardiest fighter pilot under significant stress.        A series of holds in the mission s countdown were agonizing even for the control room s seasoned technicians. As Cooper was forced to endure yet another delay, doctors on the ground were closely monitoring his biomedical telemetry. What they saw from their readouts shocked them to the point of disbelief. Although it seemed almost inconceivable, astronaut Gordo Cooper was actually taking a nap!4

Outside a modest laboratory in Lille, France, hours after the workday had officially ended and more than a century before Gordo Cooper traveled

Friederike Fabritius is a neuropsychologist and a leading expert in the field of Neuroleadership. As an executive coach and leadership specialist, she has extensive expertise working with top executives from Fortune 500 companies. A sought-after keynote speaker, she has addressed large audiences at events hosted by prominent multinational corporations, including EY (Ernst & Young), thyssenkrupp, Trivago, and Audi.


Hans W. Hagemann, Ph.D., is managing partner/co-founder at the global leadership consultancy firm Munich Leadership Group, which counts Allianz Global Investors, Bayer, BMW, EY, Expedia, Montblanc, SAP, Siemens, and thyssenkrupp among their clients. He is a global expert on leadership and innovation who has led seminars, coaching sessions and in-depth workshops with top executives in more than 40 countries.

"The Leading Brain is the best integration of neuroscience and leadership that I have ever seen."
Dr. Jonathan Schooler, Neuroscientist and Professor at UC Santa Barbara

"Combines neuroscience and leadership in a way that is both highly informative and fun. The Leading Brain covers a vast array of fascinating topics, such as habit formation, emotional regulation, intuition, and optimal decision making. There are tons of useful strategies in this book that you can apply to your life and your work right away!"
-- Scott Barry Kaufman, co-author, Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

Breathtaking. It s both a lecture on modern sciences and kind of a thriller. I ve never read a book on management so fast.
Peter Gerber, CEO of Lufthansa Cargo
 
"Really enjoyable and informative. Covers much of what I teach my students, that they must take command of their own psychological machinery to be successful in any endeavor. I hope to incorporate many of the lessons in my lectures and recommend the book to my students."
Ken Singer, Managing Director, Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, UC Berkeley
 
I very much like the approach to a complicated and much-misunderstood topic. I quickly gained confidence that I can understand, self-diagnose, and to some extent hack' my brain in order to improve my productivity, health and happiness. Hagemann and Fabritius have gathered or generated great analogies and stories that support a skillful demystification of brain science without dumbing it down.
Jeremy Clark, Director of Innovation Services at PARC
 
Amusing and inspiring. Most of the books in this domain explain behavioral patterns by using observation and experimentation Looking at these phenomena through the lens of neuroscience definitely adds plausibility to the picture. I found The