In his seminal work The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist explores the profound influence of the brain’s hemispheric dichotomy on Western civilization. His argument was (and still is, as far as I know) that the right hemisphere, the “Master”, provides a holistic, integrative view of the world, while the left hemisphere, the “Emissary”, specializes in analysis, categorization and manipulation of discrete elements.

Societal flourishing occurs when the right hemisphere guides the left — a balance evident during periods of cultural renaissance. Conversely, he suggests that civilizations stagnate when the emissary usurps the master’s role, prioritizing control and reductionism over creativity and depth.

Donald Trump’s leadership style offers a contemporary case study of left-brain dominance. His transactional approach to politics and governance is emblematic of the emissary unbound: decisions are reduced to zero-sum games, relationships are leveraged for immediate gain, and complexity is often flattened into binary oppositions. Trump’s rhetoric frequently bypasses nuance in favour of slogans and soundbites, designed for quick consumption rather than reflective engagement. This mirrors the left hemisphere’s preference for clarity, certainty and control, often at the expense of deeper understanding.

A clear illustration of this transactional mindset is seen in Trump’s implementation of new trade tariffs with Canada, China and Mexico. They are being framed as strategic moves to “win” trade wars, emphasizing immediate economic gains and perceived advantages for the U.S. economy. Yet… in neglecting the broader, more complex realities of international trade relationships which range from long-term diplomatic ties to supply chain dependencies, such a short-term approach ignores the multifaceted nature of global economic ecosystems. The tariffs create their ripple effects of retaliatory measures, market instability and strained alliances; consequences that highlight the limitations of Trump’s left-brain, transactional approach to governance.

Taking a step back in history, the Renaissance exemplifies an era when things were very different — the master directed the emissary. Visionaries like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo embodied right-hemispheric thinking — curious, integrative and attuned to the interconnectedness of art, science, and the natural world. Their achievements were not transactional but transcendent, arising from an environment where the left hemisphere’s analytical skills served the expansive, exploratory impulses of the right. The result was an unprecedented flowering of human creativity, scientific discovery, and philosophical depth.

Coming back to modern times; the post-Second World War economic growth of the USA has been increasingly characterized by left-brain dominance, with Trump taking this a big step further. His approach, focused on immediate results and quantifiable success, reflects a broader societal trend where quantitative metrics, performance indicators and efficiency have become the benchmarks of progress. The qualitative aspects of human experience that the right hemisphere champions: empathy, meaning, and the aesthetic appreciation of ambiguity, are increasingly sidelined.

Does such a shift risk encouraging a culture that values utility over beauty, profit over purpose and information over wisdom? Or are we already there?

History teaches us that true creative expansion emerges when the emissary recognizes the authority of the master. The Renaissance was not merely a rejection of the medieval worldview but a rebalancing of hemispheric priorities, allowing analytical rigor to illuminate, rather than constrain the vast landscape of human potential. When the emissary dominates unchecked, societies become brittle, losing the capacity to adapt, innovate, and envision futures beyond immediate self-interest; at least that is McGilchrist’s hypothesis.

Could the rise of artificial intelligence bridge the gap between the hemispheres? I’ll give that a, “maybe, but not yet”. As things are, AI predominantly embodies the emissary’s characteristics. AI excels in analysing vast datasets, optimizing processes and executing rule-based operations with precision. Its strength lies in pattern recognition, logical reasoning and efficiency… functions that prioritize control and quantifiable outputs. At one level, this presents us with extraordinary opportunities and yet, potential danger lies ahead. If society begins to view AI not merely as a tool but as an autonomous decision-maker, this allows the emissary to assume the master’s role.

True intelligence, as suggested by McGilchrist, is not confined to computation but involves wisdom, context and meaning — qualities rooted in the right hemisphere. AI lacks the holistic awareness, empathy, and nuanced understanding that guide human creativity and ethical judgement. The challenge therefore, is to ensure AI remains in service to the broader, integrative vision of human consciousness. When directed by right-hemispheric values, AI can augment our capabilities without supplanting the rich, multidimensional aspects of human experience. AI can then function as an emissary, being powerful, precise and efficient, but always under the guidance of the master who brings human insight, wisdom, and ethical discernment.

Trump seems to be placing significant emphasis on AI, viewing it as a cornerstone for economic and strategic advantage. This aligns with his transactional ethos where efficiency, control and measurable outcomes are what counts. It would seem that his colleague, Elon Musk, thinks much the same way. Yet, this raises critical questions about the broader societal implications of allowing AI to operate relatively unchecked, especially if deployed without the balancing influence of right-hemispheric values such as ethical considerations and holistic thinking.

In reflecting on Trump’s leadership and the rise of AI through McGilchrist’s lens, we are reminded of the importance of restoring balance. Our challenge is not to dismiss the left hemisphere’s contributions but to ensure they are in service to the broader, more integrative vision of the right hemisphere. Only then can foster a society capable of both understanding and transcending itself — a society that is not merely transactional, but transformational.

End-note: Parallels with the Renaissance lie far in the past, so let’s reflect on a holistic yet decidedly entrepreneurial superstar of more recent times. It is unlikely that Steve Jobs read The Master and His Emissary (it was first published just two years before he passed away in 2011) yet his leadership style often reflected a balance between analytical precision and visionary, holistic thinking.
Steve Jobs was known for his interest in literature, philosophy and Eastern thought and for his holistic approach to art, design and technology. His deep appreciation for intuition and creativity led to a number of truly transformational breakthroughs… led by the Master and not the Emissary.
​
ref: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, is a 2009 book written by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist that deals with the specialist hemispheric functioning of the brain.
 
to edit.

​The answers to these questions are similar to that old joke about asking the way to Carnegie hall… practice, practice, practice. Work at it together. It’s about “continuous learning”, I said.

​Team building needs to be worked at. So, this is my preferred model, one of a number I use; and Yes, the reason to work with someone like me (unless of course you can afford and get hold of the very busy Mr Lencioni) is that I can leverage the experience of running thirty plus sessions based on and around such models – adding a few sidesteps into my own leadership narratives. This is more or less what I told the young woman I found myself in conversation with, who turned out to be working in the sales department of a large sport and leisure business.

​“Does it always work?” she asked. 

It's worth remembering that such examples of lateral thinking pre-dated the world of behavioural economics by decades. Yet in that context, I am reminded of a current story about terrible pollution in the gulf of Mexico. Is there some potential to combine a big nudge with a little legal enforcement I wonder? 

More on the UK nudge team at: ​https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jul/23/rise-nudge-unit-politicians-human-behaviour
On nudging and ethics: http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2017/07/19/re-nudges-in-a-post-truth-world/
More on the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe at: http://time.com/4885249/gulf-mexico-dead-zone-pollution/

        There are many models that help build personal and inter-personal trust and all of them depend on a significant investment of time by senior management. This time investment clearly pays off in the good times but the new study shows that it can also help tide you through the more difficult experiences of a business turn-down or the impact that a significant technology change may have on your business.
        Or maybe you just called the 'efficiency consultants' in and they over-promised? You wouldn't be the first who needs to cope with the aftermath effectively.

To access more on this topic, go to: ​https://www.oxford-review.com/prevent-the-downside-of-change/

​Why is this ‘inconsistency’ of interest?
Most people know that the brain is to a certain extent cross-wired. The left hemisphere controls movement on the right side of the body, the right hemisphere controls the left side, and this is true for most animals and birds too. But being at least a little ambidextrous, or showing a lack of clear one-sided handedness is linked to greater left/right brain communication. Results published in a 2013 study suggested that inconsistent (or using more neutral terminology, ‘mixed’ handedness) is associated with increased left/right brain interaction and also increased access to right-brained thinking processes. It works like this.
      A central part of your brain known as the corpus callosum integrates motor, sensory and cognitive performance across both brain hemispheres by enabling communication between the two halves. More consistent hand preference is associated with a smaller corpus callosum and also with decreased right hemisphere activation. 

​In general, women are better at switching information left and right across the two brain hemispheres, while men usually make more connections from front to back. This heightens men’s visual perception skills and helps with hand-eye coordination such as understanding where objects are in a spatial context - throwing a ball or hammering in a nail. But let’s not forget that the concept of a male and a female brain belongs to life’s many over-used generalisations.
      A 2015 study at Tel Aviv University examined the MRI scans from more than 1,400 people and found that only 2% of those studied fitted a clear-cut brain gender profile. That leaves the vast majority of us, namely 98%, as part-male and part-female, at least when it comes to brain gender terms.

​​Belief Updating, Cognitive Flexibility and Creationists

​Once impressions are formed, they are also remarkably perseverant - even when they are demonstrably illogical. So how do you go about influencing others successfully or potentially changing their minds?
       No-one knows for sure how our ability to ‘reason’ developed, but it was probably not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data. Most likely, ‘reason’ developed to help us resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. After all, our key advantage over other species was and still is our ability to cooperate in simple and more complex alliances.
          Habits of mind that may seem weird from an intellectual point of view can prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective. Take “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject contradictory information. It is a topic that is particularly relevant in view of increasingly divided political opinion within E.U. countries and the U.S.A.

​      Students opposed to capital punishment did just the reverse. As a result, those who’d started out pro-capital punishment became even more supportive and those who’d opposed it became more hostile. A healthy attempt to present balanced information ended up heightening the differences.

​         News organizations such as Britain’s BBC strive for impartiality and have the stated aim of attempting to 'balance opposing viewpoints’.  In their ethical guidelines, they state that ‘this does not require absolute neutrality on every issue’ but one might ask, why bother when the balanced facts simply give more credence to the audience's own pre-conceptions?
      Why do we do that? One theory is that for our ancestors, hunter gatherers, being able to reason clearly and precisely was of no particular advantage, yet much was to be gained from actually winning arguments, however we went about it. Back then, life was of course much simpler and they certainly did not have to contend with fake news or Twitter feeds. 

​      Over the centuries, all those inventions have actually created new realms of ignorance, in the sense that if everyone had insisted on mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age would never have got started! With new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering. You don’t need to know everything about everything to develop your own new ideas... but that doesn't stop us having firm opinions concerning those things of which we know very little.

​        If your position on, say, Brexit is baseless and yet, I choose to rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. And after talking to Tom, who also decides he agrees with me, his opinion too is also baseless. But now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug and convinced about our views. If we then reject any information that contradicts our opinion, you get… arguably, the Trump Administration.
      How about something more prosiac such as performance-based pay for teachers? Researchers at Yale asked participants to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with such a proposal. But when instructed to explain the impacts of implementation in as much detail as they could, most people ran into trouble. Here things got interesting; asked again to rate their views, they ratcheted down their intensity, either agreeing or disagreeing less vehemently. And here perhaps is a little candle for our dark world. 

​        Those that use true, honest facts tinged with emotion are destined to be the best ‘influencers’. Yet if ‘alternative facts’ become the basis for emotive arguments, then the public is in danger of being manipulated and I guess that’s the real difference between populists like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump and peacemakers or visionaries like say, Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy.

​Logos (Logical appeal): Then use reason to justify your argument – by for example providing a tangible comparison to the current situation (If… then true).
(The word “logic” is derived from logos.)
Pathos (Emotional appeal): Don't forget to use words/visuals that create a strong emotional response. Storytelling for example or connecting on a personal level – expressing similar desires/interests etc.
(... Pathos being the Greek word for both “suffering” and “experience” and giving us both the words “empathy” as well as “pathetic”.)

​Nb: Ms Colbert’s inspiration for the original article came from reviewing 3 recent books: “The Enigma of Reason”, “The Knowledge Illusion” and “Denying to the Grave”. Her article is at:
​http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

​The results are not very different in other countries, but let’s stay with the U.S. in view of Mr Trump’s victory. Mapping the statistics to the organizational and societal work detailed in John Campbell of the University of Minnesota’s book, 'Determinants of Organizational Effectiveness' published in 1977, we can see how these grouped values compete against each other. Those who are more decisive and competitive have an external focus, contrasting with the more consistent, ‘people first’ nature of those who appreciate the status quo. Those with a creative outlook embrace flexibility, much to the consternation of the more controlled, decisive grouping yet in total, nearly three times as many people can be categorized as being change-resistant and wanting stability.
Over the last 30-40 years, change has certainly been rapid. Whether you consider immigration, changing family and societal values, advances in technology and all its implications, globalization and its impact on work or the type of work available, change has been too rapid and confusing for many to embrace.
Our leaders both in the political and industrial sphere have maintained an external focus on the world and adapted as needed, while demonstrating flexibility wherever possible (see top right segment of the charts). More traditional values which ensured longer term employment and gave a sense of stability have all but vanished. Stress levels and chronic disease have multiplied as people have not been able to keep up; not because they don’t want to but because it is simply not in their nature. Too much change in too short a time-span has made life too difficult and confusing, whether they have managed to keep their jobs or not. That is the true lesson for politicians.
In spite of higher levels of education and our growing internet based economy, not many have shifted from the populous left-hand quadrants to the right-hand ones, or upwards from the lower ‘stable’ side. Genetics beats out the environmental factors so it’s not surprising that people are finally protesting. They are not however demanding change; they just want life to slow down; they want to see a return to more tried and tested approaches and governments cannot simply go on saying, “the world’s changed so you have to change”. A certain number of more ‘decisive, creative visionaries’ have hijacked the majority of the population and the U.S. government in particular has let them get away with it.
To be successful, our leaders need to accept who we are and how we think; to accept that massive change takes many generations to implement and that constructive intervention is needed, not further liberalisation. When it comes to the bulk of people, The Market does not look after itself and capitalism in its current relatively unrestrained form is wounded.
No-one wants to live in a Max Weber style definition of bureaucracy where everything flows from a strict chain of command, but the majority of people do need a bit more structure in their lives, more routines and less change. They want the world to slow down and believe it’s the government’s job to help them do that.
Too many voters wish – in the words of the musical, that they could stop the world and get off. That is not possible but just maybe, in his own unique way, Donald Trump will be able to slow it down a bit.

        Currently popular in the Financial Times Management series is an article about Managers and Leaders, suggesting that both traits are thoroughly intertwined. I too have often thought that such characteristics are complex and they can be illustrated using the Competing Values Framework. Can you be both an organised manager and a visionary leader at the same time? If so, you would probably come across as being somewhat schizophrenic; on the one hand highly controlling and on the other trying to be highly creative at the same time. Yet organisations need both characteristics in different areas of their business at different times.
          The author, Herminia Ibarra of INSEAD, gives the following example from John Kotter's work on the subject:
        "...  John Kotter saw management and leadership as different kinds of work, not different kinds of people. Management aims to ensure efficiency through routine planning, organising and co-ordinating; leadership aims to create change by envisioning a better future, aligning those who can make it happen, or block it, and inspiring them to do it. Most organisations, Prof Kotter argued, require a mix of both, the right dose depending on context: the more complexity — more products, geographies, units — the more management is needed; the more volatile the environment, the more leadership is required. He brought the concepts back in line with Weber by focusing on the levers available to executives rather than on their personalities. When managing, one works within one’s sphere of formal authority; when leading, one influences and motivates outside and beyond, since many crucial stakeholders are external."
        Ms Ibarra continues; "Unfortunately, Prof Kotter’s blockbuster case studies of a day in the life of two contrasting Xerox managers, “Fred” and “Renn”, immortalised the less-nuanced notion of manager and leader as personality types with one clearly less attractive than the other."
        The thing is; although it was popular in Kotter's day to value more the roll of nurture than nature, more recent research has supported the idea that many of our natural abilities, be they physical or mental, are indeed nature given... we must make the best of those talents. Years ago, even well meaning teachers would 'force' left handed people to write with their right hand rather than developing the optimum use of their left hand. And our brains are no different, albeit a bit more complex!
        So you do require different personality types to carry out the different aspects of leading and managing. And both the Jungian psychology of archetypes and the Competing Values approach show why such attempts to balance these opposites in one person usually end in failure.
Source: ​http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/757264a6-7286-11e5-bdb1-e6e4767162cc.html#axzz3qKxkn8iI

Colours for customers
       In the end, if we bring things back to simple customer communications, perhaps Avis is right in bringing their logo more in line with their core colour – although to me, it's beginning to look Levi-like. If you’re currently thinking of choosing a new colour, maybe there’s something to be learned from the car rental companies. At my local “Gare du Midi” car rental location in Brussels, these are the competitors and these are their colours!

Red: Avis… the colour of fire and blood, associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.
Orange: Sixt… combining the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
Yellow: Hertz… the colour of sunshine,  associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Its warming effect arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. Often associated with food, bright yellow is an attention getter, which is the reason taxicabs are painted this colour representing encouragement and stimulation.
Green: Europcar… the colour of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility with strong emotional associations to safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Green has great healing power, suggests stability and endurance and is the most restful colour for the human eye; it can improve vision..It's whose space?"
Blue: Budget… as the colour of the sky and sea, blue is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. Blue is also considered beneficial to the mind and body, slowing human metabolism and producing a calming effect. 
        Sadly, Enterprise are nowhere to be found at this location though their green logo would put them rather at odds with Europcar who you can probably just make out in front of the orange Sixt logo to the right of the photo. Are there certain colour coded agreements in place?