Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Brain based leaders ... like Maya Angelou ... exchange the question, “How smart am I?” for the very different question, “How am I smart?” Have you noticed that people tend to discover more of their multiple intelligences when they discover ways to cross cultures, genders and ages?  

When a fuller range of intelligences is welcomed within any community, harmony begins to replace exclusion and discrimination. It makes sense. People find contentment when they use intellectual gifts and abilities to conquer challenges they face. And contentment leads to acceptance of others. The opposite is also true, as gifted writer and teacher, as Maya Angelou points out frequently in her books.

Angelou’s friends often tell you that she speaks up without fear whenever racial or sexist slurs slink into her circles. On several occasions Maya asked prominent people to leave her home abruptly, because in conversation they subtly slammed somebody else’s culture. Can you imagine asking an invited guest who arrived for the weekend to leave your home, as other guests unpack for the night?  In front of an entire circle of celebrity friends?  It makes me wonder where people like Maya find passion and purpose to slice silence and diffuse discord? 

If honest, many of us have endured subtle slurs to other cultures with silent responses if not with sanction for racism and sexism expressed as jokes.  New lyrics for harmony hummed by a few in my lifetime provide melodies that prevent cruel crashes some cultures feel on a regular basis.  As I have come to know Maya through her many books, I grew acquainted with a woman not only scarred by vicious slights and slurs, but also met a model scholar with rare sensibility for all humanity. No wonder so many applaud her life, and no wonder she teaches the rest of us ....

What do you think?