BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
GUEST COLUMNL
Can daydreaming help us become better leaders?
D aydreaming was are time-wasting or that we have our head in the clouds. However, certain kinds of daydreaming can help us become better entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators and creators. Daydreaming is supported by our imaginal capability (which some people associate with right brain activities) something most of us were told off for doing at school, and if we do it now people say we whereas being logical, verbal and orderly is supported by our rational capability – often associated with the left brain. To be at our best in business and in life, we need both capabilities – and brain hemispheres – working well together. This happens when, for example, we allow our minds to roam and dream actively before opening our laptops each day or when we take a moment each morning to remember our dreams before looking at our phones. Albert Einstein famously said that he lived his daydreams in music. He was a rational scientist who was hugely influenced and inspired by his imagination, and he frequently allowed himself to be carried away by music and dreams. For Einstein, these moments were the source of his brilliant ideas and theories. Daydreaming as a means of improving the way we understand people, or think and innovate, is different from the kind of daydreaming we do when we simply drift off in pleasant thoughts about, for example, winning the lottery or moving
to a place in the sun. When daydreaming becomes a practice – like yoga or mindful breathing – and is something we do regularly and intentionally, it can bring surprising benefits. We can experience inspiration, ideas, and insights that would not have occurred to us had we remained in our usual rational, problem-solving, hyper-busy routines. The conscious practice of stimulating both hemispheres of our brain means that those ideas and insights arise ‘around the clock’ – not just when we’re daydreaming. Unfortunately, many of us do rely almost exclusively on our rational capability because as children we were not taught to use our imagination as well as we were taught to use our intellect. On top of that, our culture rewards rational logic and behaviour over intuition and feeling, which makes us value these things and shapes the way we relate to others and the way in which we solve problems. People who are oriented to rational thinking are often less empathic, less comfortable with novelty and the unfamiliar, less spontaneous, and tend to divide up the world around them into parts and categories. As a result, they fail to see the deeper meanings and connections between people and situations. Rational people might appear to be smarter, but their thinking and behaviour is less complex than those whose rational and imaginal brain muscles are working well together. Rationalists will often struggle to ‘think out of the box’ or engage in creative ‘blue sky’ activities at work because their imaginal brain, rarely
used, doesn’t have the skill or ability to help out on demand. The reason our rational capability is less effective on its own is because it is a closed system that can only work with the contents already in it. If nothing new is offered then it will simply rehash the same old ideas and theories to explain things and make decisions. But ‘explaining’ – which the rational brain is good at – is not the same as ‘understanding’. When we understand something, we see it in its context and experience it more fully and deeply. Day (and night) dreaming dissolves the hard boundary between the rational and the imaginal and enables us to truly understand ourselves, others and situations. When we dream, we allow the contents of our unconscious mind to influence us and it is from the ‘Mind Palace’ of our unconscious that the clues and suggestions for solving life’s mysteries will emerge. It's worth remembering that much of our greatest literature, mechanical and technological inventions, medical breakthroughs and understanding of the universe has come from open-minded daydreamers who have embraced the novel, the absurd and the unintelligible. If more of us became daydream believers, our workplaces and relationships would thrive as we start to see the possibility, mystery and beauty of the everyday and the ordinary. Nelisha Wickremasinghe is a psychologist and an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
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