Your Brain, Leadership and Empathy

Recently, I had the privilege of hearing @Jennifer McCusker, Ph.D., V.P., Global Talent & Organizational Development for Activision Blizzard and Blizzard Entertainment, present her research findings on the brain and leadership. She and her colleagues, Dan Radecki, Ph.D., Leonie Hull and Christopher Ancona, have written a fascinating book entitled, Psychological Safety: The key to happy, higher-performing people and teams. Unlike many books on leadership, this one is based on neuroscientific research, leveraging research with FMRI, a functional MRI machine, to examine the brain.

Why, McCusker, opens in her talk, have we seen exponential advances in technology over the past 100 years, but not as many leaps in our notions of leadership? Now, we have some solid evidence about how the brain works that will help leaders become better at managing people and teams. Obviously, to get the full scoop, read the book, but here are some of the areas I find most compelling.

First of all, fear-based leadership is ineffective. Why? Fear triggers the amygdala, or the lizard brain, the oldest part of the brain that signals fight or flight. Most of us learned this in Psych 101 at college. But what some may not know is that when the lizard brain ‘lights up,’ the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) dims down. The PFC is the part of the brain associated with rational thinking. So when the amygdala lights up, the PFC is temporarily decreased in function. What this means for leadership is that when leaders use scare tactics or trigger a team member’s fears or insecurities, the leader is disabling that person’s ability to reason at 100%, making the situation worse. Is that what we want as leaders? Team members functioning at less than their full potential? I’d say no.

Google researched high performing teams in 2015 under the name The Aristotle Project. Were the high performing teams the ones that had the best education, background, experience? No, they found that the highest performing teams had ‘psychological safety.’ What does that mean? The team members felt free to express their opinions, be creative and innovative without fear of reproach or criticism. They were teams with a collaborative approach, rather than top-down hierarchical, command and control environments.

The S.A.F.E.T.Y. model is an acronym for:

S – Security – the need for consistency, commitment and certainty.

A – Autonomy – the need for some control over our environment.

F- Fairness – the need to engage in fair exchanges with others.

E – Esteem – the need to be regarded highly.

T – Trust – the need to belong to and protect our ‘tribe.’

Y – You – the unique experiences you have that make up your ‘context’ or framing of the world.

The authors demonstrate in their research how the brain is programmed for all of these needs, though they do point out individuals can have a need for more of one aspect than another. Take fairness for example, they show how the brain lights up in ‘disgust’ when experiencing or viewing an unfair situation. It’s the same area of the brain that lights up when tasting a bitter or poisonous plant that saved us in the past from ingesting harmful substances.

Because I’m a sales leader, I’d say many sales representatives have a high need for esteem, that is they get a ‘high’ from winning a deal, getting recognition from their peers, managers, or simply the number in the paycheck. They can often have a high need for autonomy as well, so if the leader micro manages them, they get ‘triggered’ and their brains will light up in negative response. Whereas, take an executive assistant, for example, who may have a high need for trust, being a part of a tribe, being supportive helpful. They want the human connections.

The best leaders take the time to get to know their team members, their personality styles and their triggers. They work with each one in a customized manner. If one has a high need for autonomy, then asking that person to send 5 emails or texts a day would signal distrust and ignore the person’s need for independence. Or, if a team member likes to feel connected, then having only one 30-minute meeting per week might not be sufficient.

Another key take away is to be aware of one’s confirmation bias. What does that mean? The brain is programmed to scan the environment for evidence to support its own claims or ideas. So, if you are a leader and have made one or multiple assumptions about a team member, then your brain will look for and identify only bits of evidence to support the initial claim.

In fact, in a leadership seminar by Rice University, we were presented with research that the brain makes judgements about new people we meet in less than 700 milliseconds! How long does it take to change one’s opinion about someone? It depends. But research has found that it does not occur in a linear fashion. Changing an opinion about someone occurs only after sufficient evidence has been gathered by the brain to create the ‘catastrophic’ moment. With this information, we as leaders, need to be very conscious about creating our ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups.’ We need to challenge ourselves to examine our behavior and modify it with any team member of the out group, giving them more opportunities to shift our minds.

Microsoft, at the recent Digital Transformation Academy conference for its partners, offered a keynote speaker and writer, Bryan Stevenson, on the subject of diversity, inclusion and empathy. In order to build collaborative teams that are diverse and inclusive, we need to approach everyone with empathy, do our best to understand their background and where they are coming from. As leaders, we need to be attentive to our words. Words matter. Be attentive to the language we use and the actions we take. Be willing to listen, take and understand feedback. We want to build the highest performing teams, filled with people who feel valued, accomplished and trusted.