单选题 Ten years ago, I got a call from a reporter at a big-city daily paper. "I'm writing a story on communication skills," she said. "Are communication skills important in business?" I assumed I had misheard her question, and after she repeated it for me I still didn't know how to respond. Are communication skills important? "Er, they are very important," I managed to squeak out. My brain said: Are breathing skills important? The reporter explained: "The people I've spoken with so far have been mixed on the subject." Ten years ago, we were trapped even deeper in the Age of Left-Brain Business. We were way into Six Sigma and ISO 9000 and spreadsheets and regulations and policies. We thought we could line-item budget our way to greatness, create shareholder value by tracking our employees' every keystroke, and employ a dress-code policy to win in the marketplace. And lots of us believed that order and uniformity could save the world—the business world, anyway. We had to go pretty far down that path before we caught onto the limits of process, technology, and linear thinking. The right brain is coming back into style in the business world, and not a moment too soon. Smart salespeople say, "We've got compelling story that accords with our customer's values and history." Strong leaders say, "We're creating a context for our team members that weaves their passions into ours." Consultants get big money for providing perspective on the "user experience." That's not a linear, analytical process. These days, we're talking about emotion again, and context and meaning. Thank goodness we are. I was about to choke on the death-by-spreadsheet diet, and I wasn't the only one. Job seekers get great jobs today by avoiding the Black Hole of Keyword-Searching and going straight to a human decision-maker to share a story that links the job seeker's powerful history with the decisionmaker's present pain. Leadership teams spend their off-site weekends talking about not the next 400 strategic initiatives on somebody's list but rather a story-type road map to keep the troops philosophically on board while they take the next hill. The right brain's return is coming just at the right time, when employees are sick of not only their jobs but also the cynical, hypocritical, and obsessively left-brain behaviors they see all around them in corporate life. Smart employers will grab this opportunity to lose the three-inch-thick policy manuals and enforcement mentality. There's no leverage in those, no spark, and no aha. We've seen where the left-brain mentality has gotten us: to the land of spreadsheets, with PowerPoints and burned-out shells where our workforce used to be.

单选题 The author believes that communication skills are _____.

单选题 The Age of Left-Brain Business valued_____.

单选题 By saying "not a moment too soon" (Para. 3), the author indicates the return of the right brain is _____.

单选题 Under the influence of right-brain thinking, the leadership strives to_____.

单选题 The author's attitude toward the return of the right brain is _____.