The Advantages of Being Left-Handed

Only about 10% of the population are left handed, making left-handed people a major minority. With left handedness being so rare people were, and still are in some cases, discriminated against for being left handed. Actually, back in the 18th and 19th century people were often beaten for being left handed and forced to use their right hand. Even today, although it doesn't happen as often as it used to, some children who are left-handed are forced to use their right hand. More often than not when you research facts about left-handed people many blogs and articles list negative statistical facts about left handed people. But what about the advantages of being left-handed? Believe it or not there are a lot of interesting and factual advantages of being left-handed.

    Being left handed gives you an advantage in many sports. It's been proven that people who are left handed have the better chance of succeeding in sports than right handed people. Baseball is one of the biggest sports where being left handed is a major advantage. When at bat, southpaws have the advantage of already facing first base and when pitching can easily keep an eye on first base. Left handed player, when playing in the outfield, can also cover a large amount of the field by having their glove in their right hand. Lefties also have the advantage in sports like fencing, boxing and tennis.

    Lefties have a greater chance of being a genius, or having a high IQ. It isn't known why this is true but it seems that people who favor their left hand make up an extremely large portion of those with high intelligence. Actually, 20 percent of all Mensa members are lefties. Although it is not exactly known why being left handed increases chances of having a high IQ, some people think that genius has a lot to do with being forced to use both sides of the brain more often, allowing the individual to process large amounts of information much easier.
    
Left handed men make more money. Studies show that left handed men who have gone to college make about 13% more than their right handed counterparts. For some reason this does not work the same way with women, because these same studies show that left handed women actually make 5% less than right handed women.
 
    Lefties adjust more easily to seeing under water. Random, yes. Cool, definitely! It's not really known why, but being left handed allows an individual to see more easily under water. Beneficial to those who live by the water or like to swim, scientists believe this ability has something to do with a different part of the brain being dominant in left handed people.
 
    Lefties are better at multitasking. Being left handed forces the brain to think more quickly, allowing lefties to find it easier to multi-task and deal with large, sometimes unorganized streams of information. In left handed people conversations between the left and right sides of the brain happens more quickly, and the stronger the left handedness is the better these abilities.
 
    Some lefties have better memories. Although not applicable to all left handed people, research shows that people who come from families of lefties  tend to have better memories, though only of the episodic kind. But what's really interesting about this fact is that studies show that the individuals don't necessarily have to be left handed themselves, but just comes from a family of lefties. This shows that traits related to handedness may actually be passed down separately.
 
    Left handed people are better at playing video games. Some of the traits that contribute to lefties being better thinkers and multitaskers also contribute to making them better video game players. Since lefties are better at handling large amounts of stimuli, this naturally makes them better at video games, which have large amounts of stimuli in the first place.
 
    Left handed people recover faster from strokes than right handed people. Although not certain, many people believe this is due to left handed people having a stronger left and right brain as a result of functioning in a right handed world. Lefties are better at using than non-dominant hand than right handed people, making it easier for them to recover from a stroke that damages one part of their brain.
 
    Left-handed people are more likely to be more visual-based than language-based. This fact makes lefties more ideal for artistic pursuits. Research shows that university students who are left handed are more likely to major in visually based subjects rather than language based subjects. Another study done showed that out of all the subjects, 47% of art students were left or mixed-handed. For those who are unaware Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Rembrandt, four of the greatest artists in history were either left handed or ambidextrous.
 
    Lefties are better at learning to drive than righties. Oddly enough, even though most cars are designed with right handed drivers in mind, driving normally comes easier to left handed people than right handed people. A poll done at a driving school discovered that 57% of lefties passed their driving test the first time while only 47% of right handed people did.

Despite the fact that being left handed in a right handed world can be a little disadvantage, there are definitely plenty of advantages of being a lefty. As you can tell by reading the list, there are many things about why left handedness has these advantages, but this applies to handedness in general. Understanding handedness would also mean understanding deeper, yet explored parts of the brain that science isn't fully capable of doing yet. Although not all of the advantages listed could be fully determined as to why they occur, everything listed is in fact true. Being left handed is often treated as something wrong and abnormal because it is rare and not fully understood, but as you can see being left handed does have its advantages, very cool ones at that!

   

Thornton's 3-C Leadership Model

Numerous theories have been put forth about the many aspects of leadership such as motivation, alignment, and empowerment. However, it is not obvious how these pieces fit together into a coherent model, if they do at all. As such, leadership has a reputation of being an art that is practiced by the lucky few who possess certain talents.

In his 1999 book, Be The Leader, Make The Difference, consultant Paul B. Thornton proposed an integrating framework that takes these various leadership ideas and transforms them into a model that quickly can be studied, understood, and implemented by managers in order to develop an effective leadership style and better lead their organizations. The model is based on the premise that leaders exist because individuals need guidance, without which they do not always know what they can accomplish, what they should accomplish, or how to accomplish it. To this end, leaders can provide challenge, confidence, and coaching. Thornton calls this framework the 3-C Leadership Model and depicted it as shown below.

This three vertex diagram illustrates the balanced relationship among the three 3-Cs of leadership: presenting a challenge, building confidence, and providing coaching.

Present a Challenge

Of the 3 aspects of leadership, challenge is the one that is practiced most widely by managers as they ask their employee's to set increasingly higher goals. Human nature is such that most people do not want to leave their comfort zone and therefore are inclined to suggest small, incremental improvements in their objectives. In today's competitive environment, such small improvements often are insufficient. Improvements of 30%, 50%, or even several hundred percent sometimes are required. There are many ways in which leaders can challenge their employees. They can:

• Share their vision, inspiring them to believe that more is possible.
• Set very high goals, forcing people to leave their comfort zones to find ways to achieve them.
• Ask challenging questions that lead people to reconsider their assumptions about what is possible.
• Use benchmarking to reveal the best practices of others and use these as a challenge.
• Provide a wide variety of assignments. Many firms make it a policy to expose their employees to a wide range of aspects of the firm. Each new position is a new challenge that develops the employee further.

Once success is achieved, it is important continue raising the bar in order to fight the temptation to rest on one's laurels.

Build Confidence

A challenge brings people out of their comfort zones, often resulting in a drop in their confidence level. Without confidence, the challenging goals that caused the drop in confidence in the first place become even more difficult to reach. Therefore, a major responsibility of a leader is to build confidence in his or her employees so that they will believe in their ability to reach their objectives.

Many motivation experts make the case for positive thinking and self-affirmation as a means of building confidence. Paul Thornton argues that simply thinking something does not make it reality, and that a person achieves genuine self-confidence not by repeating affirmations but by actually working and achieving something. In the process of achievement we expand our abilities, and these expanded abilities create a more genuine, lasting confidence.

With this philosophy in mind, leaders can instill real confidence in their employees by:

• Recognizing and rewarding positive accomplishments rather than focusing on deficiencies.
• Providing professional development in order to build confidence through competence.
• Empowering them by providing both responsibility and authority, thereby expressing confidence in them.
• Verbally expressing confidence in them.
• Reminding them of past successes that may have faded from their consciousness in the face of new challenges.

Provide Coaching

Coaching is the process of advising people in a way that facilitates their success. It may take various forms, from training to offering a broader perspective. Coaching can help employees to better understand how their efforts fit into the larger strategy, thereby allowing them to make better decisions.

Leaders may coach employees by:

• Providing feedback immediately after the employee performs some important task such as meeting with a client or delivering a presentation.
• Showing them the best practices of others as examples of how tasks can be accomplished.
• Posing carefully formulated questions designed to improve their understanding by leading them to think through the situation.
• Setting an example, especially one of continual self-improvement.

Overcoaching should be avoided as it can create dependent employees, reduce their initiative, and cause them to feel micro-managed.

Relationship Among the 3-Cs

The triangle diagram is particularly appropriate for depicting the 3-C Leadership Model because there is no single "correct" order and because balance among the three vertices is important.

The 3-Cs do not need to occur in any specific order. For example, the leader may choose first to present a challenge, then to build the confidence needed to meet the challenge, followed by coaching. Alternatively, the leader first may build the team's confidence, then present the grand challenge.

A proper balance among the 3-Cs is important. Consider the balance between confidence and challenge. A significant challenge without enough confidence likely would result in failure. Conversely, high confidence with little challenge would result in under-utilization of one's abilities and boredom. In the case of insufficient confidence, coaching can be used to improve the employee's skills and thus build confidence. In the case of insufficient challenge, the employee may need to be offered an assignment that better utilizes his or her capabilities.

When the right balance is achieved, employees will experience a higher degree of effectiveness and satisfaction in their work.