Chris Surdak wrote a piece last week that got me thinking.

About “Whole Brain Thinking” in the age of AI.

I suspect this is going to become a big topic in the coming years.

Chris introduced Dr Iain McGilchrist’s work on Whole Brain Thinking and it’s applicability to AI and LLMs specifically.

With a little digging I learned that “Whole Brain Thinking” is a concept originally developed by Ned Herrmann.

We are all familiar with the popular idea of “left brain vs. right brain” thinking, which suggests individuals are either logical or creative. In reality, both sides of the human brain work together for most tasks.

Chris argues that might be about to change.

He argues that using a one-dimensional mathematical tool in LLMs to “digest” language loses critical context.

“This context is the nuanced, deep, emotional, meaningful elements that are so crucial to human communication” which is being overlooked when “we cram it through the mathematical sieve of linear algebra”.

Does GenAI represent uniquely “left-brained thinking”, without any of the usual “checks and balances” (Chris calls this “regulatory oversight”) of the “right brain”?

I don’t know about you, but I have observed this already.    

I see a common assumption, both in business and more widely, that eloquent, plausible narrative responses are correct. 

To the extent that no critical analysis is performed and factually incorrect information is unwittingly promulgated and its effect multiplied.

In general, my experience is that on a topic in which one is a subject matter expert, there is a greater tendency to “fact check” against ones own knowledge and experience and even refine/confirm through an LLM.

The biggest risk, it seems to me, is in the areas where we do not have expertise and thus the “plausible narrative” risk is magnified.

We don’t just want results faster, we need credible results, accurate results.

If we consider Charles H Green’s “Trust Equation” – credibility and reliability are critical and we should not risk them lightly!

Returning to Iain McGilchrist’s observations, I see some correlation.

• “The left hemisphere sees truth as internal coherence of the system, not correspondence with the reality we experience.”
• “If the detached, highly focused attention of the left hemisphere is brought to bear on living things, and not later resolved into the whole picture by right-hemisphere attention, which yields depth and context, it is destructive.”  
• “On the left hemisphere of the brain: ‘Because it knows less, it thinks it knows everything”. 

Ned Herrmann suggests our thinking spans four modes: analytical, practical, relational, and experimental.

The magic lies in flexing between them depending on the challenge. At work, this could mean combining logic with empathy, structure with flexibility, and detail with big-picture vision. It’s less about “how I prefer to think” and more about “what this problem needs right now.”

This framework feels even more relevant in today’s AI-driven workplace.

AI is exceptional at speed, data processing, and pattern recognition—strengths that echo the analytical and practical modes. But this makes the relational and experimental modes even more valuable, because empathy, creative risk-taking, and big-picture meaning-making remain uniquely human.

We can be freed to focus on human judgment, innovation, and collaboration.

Iain McGilchrist argues that “Whole Brain Thinking” is the necessary integration of these two complementary, and often conflicting, ways of perceiving the world to navigate and thrive in complex situations. 

Specifically, he calls out the risk of the “divided mind”, where an over-reliance on the left hemisphere leads to a more errors because it ignores the broader context and the insights from the right hemisphere. 

That sounds like academic’s descritpion of my own experiences above!

It makes sense that “Whole Brain Thinking” can aid holistic problem solving, very necessary in today’s business environment. A purely left-brained approach might analyze numbers, but a “whole brain” approach would also integrate the right hemisphere’s ability to detect contextual shifts and use intuition. 

Why does all this matter?

We need to be prepared to encourage and reinforce “Whole Brain Thinking” when it is very easy to accept “left brain responses” from an LLM. This may become one of the most critical skills in hiring.

How do we create that habit?

You can read Chris Surdak’s post here . . .

You can read an introduction to Iain McGilchrist’s work here . . . 

You can read about Whole Brain Thinking by Ned Hermann here . . . 

Thank for reading . . .