The Science of Leadership

Can brain scans provide insights into what makes a good strategic thinker? In this BBC report, Rory Cellan-Jones speaks to a team of scientists as they put Sir John Madejski into an MRI scanner. Neuroscientists, psychologists and management experts at Reading University are collaborating on a study which aims to examine the brains of chief executives and leaders in other field like the military or voluntary organisations.

Dr Kevin Money of Henley Business School, now part of Reading University, explains the aims: “We hope to look at how leaders from different sectors make decisions, what actually leads people to move from making good to bad decisions, what goes on in people’s minds and how they make those choices.”

So is there a chance that a recruitment industry which already uses psychometrics will now look to other techniques, including perhaps brain scanning? One headhunter is sceptical.

Virginia Eastman of Heidrick and Struggles hunts down candidates for senior roles in global media organisations. She says that new technology is helping to make the process of communicating with and assessing suitable leaders more rapid, but it only goes so far: “Our whole profession is built on one thing, the consensus that we all know what good looks like, and that we make that judgement. No machine can replace that.”