Would you take the leadership pill?

What fundamentally distinguishes humans from other mammals, from a biological point of view, is our brain. Specifically, the evolution of the cerebral cortex, the upper part divided into two hemispheres with its familiar bulges and furrows. Relative to our size, our cortex is much larger than that of other mammals, with an average of 86 billion neurons compared to a chimpanzee’s 6.5 billion. If we had more neurons, our capabilities would increase exponentially. Since each neuron makes 10,000 connections or synapses, if we had ten times more neurons, our intellectual and reasoning abilities would be increased by 10 to the power of 10.?

By the way, every billion neurons need an average consumption of six calories a day to be able to perform properly, which adds up to 516 calories a day, which explains why we don’t perform so well when we’re hungry or tired.?

We humans use our neuronal capacity throughout our lives, producing synapses as a result of learning, experience or the association of ideas and knowledge. Other mammals use their neuronal capacity for finding food, defending themselves and reproducing. That explains why mammals such as bison walk from birth and soon learn to feed themselves. As we know, human babies are dependent on their parents up to relatively advanced ages compared to other species, during which time they develop greater intellectual capacity.

In light of this marvel of evolution, we can only wonder if the brains of those who succeed us over the centuries will develop an intellectual capacity we can only imagine. But as things stand,?it seems more likely that artificial intelligence and machine learning will evolve much faster than the human brain?and perhaps develop into a more skilled species than human beings themselves.

Is it possible to increase our neuronal capacity and therefore human intelligence??

In her 2019 book,?Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition, American neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland discusses several aspects of typical mammal behavior. For example, the behavior of prairie and montane voles after giving birth. Prairie voles, which are more sociable, secrete two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, which encouraged protective and caring behavior toward their young. Montane voles, which abandon their young after giving birth, do not secrete oxytocin or vasopressin. When scientists injected these hormones into several female montane voles, they found that they began to behave like their prairie peers, showing more care and protection toward their young. They also did the same with male prairie and montane voles, both of which normally ignored their offspring, producing greater attachment to their young.??

Experiments such as these may proof of the?direct relationship between hormones, neuroreceptors and behavior. Similar experiments on humans have produced similar results. In short, it seems there is a neurobiological reality of consciousness whereby different hormones secrete substances that make us feel pain when rejected, joy in belonging to a group or the ability to feel shame and the meaning of reputation, along with self-restraint.?Our conscience and sense of morality has a biological basis.

Also, our sense of attachment to a family or community has a biological basis in neuroreceptor hormones, such as oxytocin and vasopressin.?

There are many possible applications for this in business and social life. For example,?think of the use of psychopharmacology to enhance management skills and emotional intelligence, basic for leadership.?

Will it become part of the value proposal for the business schools, corporate developers and coaches in the future??Or they may be also used to enhance the feeling of belonging and attachment to a particular organization. Think, for example, about pills that may potentiate your leadership skills or enhance the engagement with your company.??

• One reason for using psychopharmacology in this way is that attracting and retaining the best talent is a main concern of human resource managers and increasingly of the CEO, particularly as we experience the so-called Big Resignation phenomenon. Cultivating this biological sense of belonging to an organization may encourage the best talent to continue being part of it.?
• ?Another is because, as in other smaller communities such as the family, the sense of belonging to a company arouses a defensive instinct to protect the values and products of the organization. For example, Pepsi Co. executives do not drink Coca Cola (at least in public), and vice versa. In addition, as anthropology teaches us, a sense of belonging also awakens a killer instinct toward competitors, particularly in highly competitive sectors and even more now that trade wars across continents is back in fashion.?
• Also, the same sense of belonging encourages members of the organization to attract talent. The sense of identification with an organization often has a proselytizing effect, helping to attract those we consider best, as happens within families: we want the best partners for our children.

If there is a biological basis to the sense of identification and belonging explained by Churchland and other neurobiologists, what initiatives are open to senior management to foster this feeling among the workforce, or does this sounds too orwellian?

Another reason is what we might call bio-improvement through the use of psychopharmacology. We might usefully ask if taking hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin would necessarily make us more ethical. Imagine that within a few years, these hormones were available with no side effects. Would you take them? Presumably, only if you already felt a strong sense of identification with your company. At the same time, if this medication were available to everyone, it would cease to offer a competitive advantage, but at least we would all go to work happier -drastically changing Gallup polls’ results.?

Now imagine that instead of a popular and affordable drug, a reputed company offers a unique, one-year treatment at a high price to cultivate these hormones in the body, developing sociability, empathy and a sense of belonging, and of course without any side effects. Your company, a leader in its sector and with a consolidated reputation, wants to provide its managers with the best preparation for professional success, in addition to keeping them motivated, and so decides to provide you all with this treatment. Would you accept this generous offer of self-improvement??

If there were no health risks, why would you refuse? The end is good, as are the means. That said, some people might object on the basis that the treatment might alter their personality. Yet we know that hormone treatment is widespread. Many of us take melatonin, a hormone that helps us relax and sleep better. Many women take estrogen during and after menopause, and there are testosterone treatments to strengthen hair growth. There are any number of drugs that impact on our hormones.??

The potential of psychopharmacology is fascinating and could have transformative effects on our body and our mind. If, as we saw earlier, our brain is not going to evolve organically to keep up with technological and social change, why not resort to chemistry to make us more sociable and experience greater happiness? As has happened before, reality will likely outdo fiction. Any number of science fiction novels are set in future worlds where the advancement of biology, medicine and pharmacology allow us to live forever, as well as creating the conditions for a fairer, more empathic, happier society.

Until this effective pills or medical treatments arrive, the most obvious way to enhance workers’ engagement, is to create an organizational culture based on shared values and led by a management team with strong leadership. Neurobiology teaches us that the families and tribes able to attract and retain members are the winners, the most proactive, those that develop the strongest bonds between their members. In contrast, the losers, the isolated, those excluded from the group usually generate rejection, and this too has a biological basis.?

Finally, offering education and lifelong learning consolidates the loyalty to an organization. As we have seen, the bad news is that our brain has many physical and biological limitations; the good news is that it is also amazingly flexible and can generate new neurons over time. Some experiments have shown that study, intensive exercise of our intellectual faculties can facilitate the growth of neurons.

In addition, learning, acquiring new knowledge and developing new skills keep our brains active and generate many more connections between our neurons. Studying is like going to a brain gym. We all need to do it from time to time if we want to keep our mind in shape, in the same way we do with our bodies.

A teaching method that has highly effective results, precisely because of how our brains are configured, is the case method, typically used in business and law schools. As Churchland explains:?“In human choice generally, behavioral and brain-imaging studies indicate that similar neural operations are involved. For example, humans, like other mammals, recognize a relevant similarity between the case at hand and other cases encountered sometime earlier in life. Psychologists call this case-based reasoning. Since we use case-based reasoning for many problems in the physical world, it is highly probable that we use it in the social world, and this conclusion is confirmed by behavioral research.”?

Indeed, the best is yet to come.

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