When recently trying to introduce Points of You to an accounting company, some partners stated, “We’re an accounting company. We deal with numbers, data, spreadsheets and financial statements. Don’t try to talk to us about all this right brain stuff concerning people, developing relationships, authentic conversations and trust.” The VP of a software development company echoed the same sentiments in referring to his software engineers who write code all day – “These people write code and can’t possibly have any interest in values, emotions, feelings and all that right-brain hokey stuff.” The COO of a non-profit organization said much the same about his left-brain Operations managers.

What a costly mistake these senior managers of “left-brain-oriented” organizations are making. They all agree that their key to long-term competitive advantage is their people and yet regard their left-brain workers more like robots than human beings. They minimize their investments in the development of their people – preferring to recommend workshops and courses related to their industries (accounting, software development, operations) rather than invest in people-focused seminars such as leadership, emotional intelligence, authentic conversations, etc. These organizations are short-changing their workers, under-estimating their potential and leaving themselves vulnerable in both the labor and business marketplaces.

Ned Herrmann, founder of the renowned Herrmann Institute, wrote in his brilliant book The Creative Brain that, “the left brain’s cognitive focus on fact, rationality and verbal communication eventually earned it a position of power over the quiescent modes of the right brain. It has done so within each of us, within most of our social institutions and in all of our business organizations…There have been unfortunate – even devastating – consequences to this rigid emphasis on the left brain.”

I urge you managers of these so-called left-brain organizations to wake up! Your left-brain workers actually have whole brains. Our educational institutions and your workplaces have shaped the mental preferences of your workers by emphasizing left-brain thinking and putting down right-brain modes of thinking. In so doing, you are not allowing them to tap into their right brains which are critical in areas such as talent development and innovation. You are leaving your organizations vulnerable to competitors who offer more dynamic workplaces and understand that your people can be their sources of competitive differentiation. You are denying the fact that your left-brain workers have emotions, feelings and creative urges that need to be recognized and developed. You are actually denying your workers’ humanity.

Read Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” to better understand why the age of “left-brain dominance” is over and the key to future business success is the development of “creative and empathetic right-brain thinkers”. But, please, wake up!