Home featured Expert Featured Expert The power of ‘brain theft’: Why you should copy others if you want to be a great leader Anthony Mitchell November 2, 2017 We are relentlessly told that we should be ‘authentic’ and find our own approach to leading. The idea of emulation is almost frowned upon. But while many people will say that you need to create your own style, not copy others, the neuroscience of performance has produced some very different answers. In any domain where excellence is achieved, the habits, behaviours, and most importantly brain patterns, of those who are world-class look more like each other than they look like others selected at random from the same field. That’s why they are world class. You might think that Serena Williams or Roger Federer have different ways of playing tennis, but those differences are actually very superficial. In the ways that actually make them successful, their brain patterns are much more like each other’s than they are like those who’ve never cracked the top 100. The question is more complex if you are looking at the nebulous concept of ‘leadership’ rather than the simpler one of ‘tennis’. It becomes much easier though, if we are clear on what capabilities are of importance. The massive advances in neuroscience in the last decade show us that for the capabilities most pivotal for business success (such as empathy, creativity and resilience), common neural pathways can be mapped. The mapping is improving every year – or in