I started my professional career as a computer programmer.

That probably tells you something about how my brain was wired professionally from the very start. Very Left-Brained. Programming is logical. Structured. There is a definitive answer to the problem, and your job is to find it. If the program has a bug, you don’t gather everyone together to discuss how the error message made them feel. You find the bad code and fix it. I thrived in that work and was generally very good at it.

And even though my career eventually took me far away from writing computer code and into banking, payments, consulting, innovation and leadership, that analytical orientation came along for the ride. Give me a problem and my natural inclination is still to analyze it. What are the facts? What does the data say? Where is the risk? What happens next? Which are all good questions.

But they are not always the only or right questions.

Over the latter part of my career, I have increasingly focused on developing what I would call my Right-Brain mode. This focuses on creativity, intuition, context, relationships, possibilities and the ability to connect things that may not initially appear connected. I am by no means suggesting that I have perfected this transition, far from it, but I have become much more aware of my analytical default and, more importantly, more willing to switch modes when the situation demands it. I have come to believe that the ability to make that switch may be one of the most important skills a leader can develop.

Forget Left Brain Versus Right Brain

For years, brain experts have talked about people as being “left-brained” or “right-brained.” Left-brained people were supposedly analytical, logical and precise. Right-brained people were creative, intuitive and imaginative. Heck, I even delivered keynotes to address the right brain / left brain dominance, convinced that this was settled science. Turns out, this is not really how the brain works. Research has made clear that while certain brain functions are lateralized, we are not walking around as distinctly left-brained and right-brained human beings. Both hemispheres are constantly working together, but the left brain / right brain metaphor is still useful.

Instead of left and right brain, lets rebrand and use Analytical Mode and Integrative Mode to denote default thinking. Analytical Mode emphasizes logic, sequence, evidence, precision and risk control. Integrative Mode emphasizes context, patterns, connection, possibility and meaning. Both are forms of intelligence, and effective leadership requires access and use of both. I like these because it removes traditional labels. This isn’t about whether you are a man or woman, an accountant or marketer, an introvert or extrovert. Individual variation is enormous, and averages should never become assumptions about the person sitting across the conference table.

The real leadership question, therefore, isn’t, “Which default brain mode am I?” It is, “What mode does this moment require?” That …  is a much more important question.

Your Default Brain Is a Bully

Here is the problem: all of us have a default brain mode. And your default brain … is a bully.

It tries to solve today’s problem the same way it successfully solved yesterday’s problem. Past success actually reinforces this behavior. If being highly analytical helped you become CFO, then when you become CEO, you naturally keep reaching for analysis. If your ability to build consensus propelled you into senior leadership, you may instinctively try to build consensus even when the situation requires somebody to simply make a decision. Repeated success can lead to operating in an autopilot mode.

Autopilot success reinforces confidence but that does not mean it is always right.

In my 2016 book, Grounded, I highlighted what I call the “numbing effect of routine,” which occurs at an especially high rate in banking. We build procedures, train people to follow them and become extraordinarily good at repeating them. The danger comes when circumstances change and we continue executing the old procedure because we’re operating in autopilot mode, what our brains know how to do.

To break the autopilot mode, we need to recognize when circumstances dictate that we use a different brain mode.  This forces us to “think about how you think.” I describe this as metacognition, which is when we recognize we are operating on autopilot and deliberately examine our own thought process. This introspection turns out to be central to whole-brain leadership.

Metacognition is essentially the ability to catch yourself thinking. To think to yourself, “What is my mind doing right now?”

Am I looking for facts because facts are what this situation requires or because facts make me comfortable? Am I trusting my intuition because I genuinely recognize a pattern or because I don’t want someone challenging my idea with inconvenient data? Am I protecting the mission or protecting my ego? Ouch.

Every Strength Casts a Shadow

Here’s another brain factoid I’ve learned: your biggest leadership problem may not be your weakness. It may be an overused strength.

Analytical leaders bring enormous value to organizations, and particularly to banks. They turn ambiguity into structure. They identify risk. They create repeatable execution. They find flaws before those flaws turn into expensive failures. Banking without analytical thinkers would be … well, risky.

But analysis mode thinkers can overwork. More data begats avoidance. Precision becomes rigidity. Risk management quietly morphs into fear of change. Analyzers wait for perfect information while the market moves right past. I see this frequently in financial services. We study an emerging technology for years because we need “more information,” while non-bank competitors implement it, improve it and begin teaching our customers what a modern banking experience looks like. Eventually we acquire plenty of data yet may have fewer customers.

Integrative thinking has its own shadow. Creative leaders see possibilities. They connect seemingly unrelated ideas. They read people well, build trust and imagine futures that don’t yet exist. Those are incredibly valuable capabilities, particularly when innovation is required. But integration can also overwork. Possibilities become distractions. Collaboration begats indecision. Empathy becomes avoidance of difficult conversations. A compelling idea can become so exciting that nobody bothers asking whether the numbers actually work.

That is why neither mode gets the trophy. Excellent Leaders are able to switch modes, and even better, know when to switch.

Bankers Need Both

This matters enormously for community financial institutions. Banking has always been a business of managing risk. We should never apologize for that. People entrust us with their money, their businesses and enormous amounts of highly sensitive information. “We threw caution to the wind” would be a really bad sentence in a regulatory response.

Yet, excessive caution has a cost too. I have spent years challenging community bankers to become more innovative, improve their digital services, rethink branches, use data more effectively and pay much closer attention to the expectations of younger customers. The institutions that survive long term cannot simply protect yesterday’s banking model. I have repeatedly argued that innovation requires challenging the status quo and giving people permission to generate ideas, even ideas that initially sound a little crazy.

Effective leaders require both modes. Analysis prevents recklessness. Integration prevents irrelevance.

A bank considering an AI customer-service pilot is a good example. The analytical questions are obvious: What does it cost? What are the compliance implications? How accurate is it? What customer data does it access? What could go wrong?

Excellent questions. Now switch modes.

How will customers feel using it? What problems could it solve that we haven’t considered? How might employees use it? What could this technology become in three years? Would it create an experience customers would genuinely value?

If you are only asking the first group of questions, you haven’t made a complete decision. You’ve made an analytical decision. If you only consider the second group of questions, you might miss key technical, legal and compliance elements of an AI system you deploy. You’ve made an integrative decision.

There is a big difference between those two outcomes. While either might work out, when you consider both the analytical and integrative viewpoints, your outcomes will almost always be better. It’s all about mastering cognitive range.

Think Like a CFO. Listen Like a Coach. Imagine Like an Entrepreneur.

Can you think like a CFO when rigor is required? Can you listen like a coach when someone needs to be understood? Can you imagine like an entrepreneur when the existing model is no longer sufficient? Can you recognize which one the moment requires? And perhaps most importantly, can you respond instead of reacting?

Maybe We Just Need to P.A.U.S.E.

There is a practical way to build this capability that I call the P.A.U.S.E. method.

Pause. Assess. Understand. Select. Execute.

Pause long enough to create a gap between stimulus and response.

Assess your default thinking mode.

Understand the people, circumstances and context involved.

Select the thinking mode the moment actually requires. Then …

Execute toward the desired outcome.

Simple? Yes.

Easy? Not even a little bit.

Under pressure, our defaults get louder. That is exactly when analytical people become more analytical and integrative people become more integrative. It takes conscious effort to recognize that the trusted tool we are reaching for might not be the right tool for this particular job. Most leadership failures aren’t necessarily intelligence failures. Sometimes they are P.A.U.S.E. failures.  Note: It’s critical to avoid a reaction, which typically is a knee-jerk response before you have fully applied the P.A.U.S.E. technique. When you react, you get what you get. When you respond, you are likely to get the outcome you want.

What Is Your Default?

This may be hard for some to understand but my default is Analysis. You say, “But you’re Chief Innovation Officer at FNBB. You have to be an Integrative!” I would like to think that I have developed my Integrative mode significantly over the years but my default is Analytics. I started doing it professionally as a programmer, and decades of working with technology, banking and payments only reinforced it. Analytical thinking has served me extraordinarily well.

But it isn’t enough.

As my career progressed, my desire to achieve innovative results required me to spend more time in Integrative Mode, to connect ideas, tell stories, read the room, imagine possibilities and occasionally advocate for something before every last cell in the spreadsheet had turned green.

I haven’t perfected the switch. I doubt anyone has. But I am much better at recognizing that there is the ability to switch. And maybe that is the point. Great leaders don’t choose a side of their brain and proudly live there. They develop enough self-awareness to recognize their default, enough humility to question it and enough cognitive range to deliberately choose another mode when circumstances require it.

Same equipment. Different defaults. More choices. The objective isn’t to become less analytical or more creative. The objective is to become a leader who knows when each is needed. So…which brain did you bring to work today?

More importantly, is it the one you need right now?

Authors Note: ChatGPT was used in researching this article