The Neuroscience of Leadership in 2024
NeuroTips #10 | February 2024
Robin is in a position of influence. She is known to her team as a leader whom her team trust, fostering innovation and autonomy.
Robin, along with the others in the organisational development group that I facilitate, has been considering and discussing what leadership actually means, especially why are there still so many Zombie leadership ideas living on!
As a leader being responsible for significant pieces of revenue comes with the pressure to meet targets, lead people without being too commanding, balanced with the continued pressure to grow and retain valuable talent.
Most of the group have been on various leadership courses, read some interesting books exploring leadership theories, keep up to date on trends and attend talks with some of today’s popular leaders.
The problem that keeps coming up is how do you take this information in the current turbulent and uncertain business landscape, and practically use the knowledge to match the experiences their organisation is facing? How can they leverage this information to give some certainty to the uncertainty, encompassing the impact of new tech, changing roles and global turmoil?
In our February monthly group coaching session, we used the 5 top leadership trends and explored them through the lens of the 100+ identified leadership styles, how this dove-tailed with evidenced neuroscience practices on performance and productivity, and the effect on harnessing human diversity to drive change.
As leaders this raised their personal attributes and styles; how they became more resilient to consciously avoid defaulting to stereotypical behaviour of blame that would damage the culture of psychosocial safety that has created trust and wellbeing, de-escalation of any fight, flight or freeze moments?
Here are the 4 areas the group identified to focus on in the first quarter, aligning with the brain’s perceptions and limited energy resources – we know you are all too busy so no neuroscience explanations - simplicity is key here!
1. Situational Leadership: As a leader being aware of your blind spots, and the buttons that push your triggers is a must if you want to regulate and focus on your emotional intelligence. This makes you cognisant of the needs and health of the people you are responsible for. No one has time for choosing which leadership style they want to use and anyway there is really not enough evidence to back them up. The business and current people landscape needs to be agile, flexible, and attuned to human variables preserving the energy and health of those around you.
2. Culture: Develop a shared, blame free culture of continuous learning that is mirroring exactly what is happening on the world’s business stage. Use all the brains in your business, listen to what people need to bring the best of themselves to work especially the neurodiversity as there is no neuro-typical, every brain’s connectivity differs hence the richness of thought.
3. Microcultures: Embrace healthier, smaller, agile teams that can take a more nuanced perspective of individual contribution, autonomy and experience. Burnout and lack of trust create an imagination deficit and right now ideation is one of the most important human traits we need.
4. Bullying: 9 out of 10 people have experienced bullying and we’ve seen a lot of this recently in the news. The damage it does across the board from the individual to the aggressors, the teams and the organisation are untold. It is a complex area. It costs the UK economy yearly £106 billion. More importantly it costs people’s lives and mental and physical health, reputation of industries and is misery for those touched by it including families! The rules of curtesy and behaviour should be 2nd nature across companies and bad behaviours addressed immediately.
If you want a partner to explore any of the future success topics identified, visit our new website https://www.soraya-shaw.com/ to find out how we can support you with our new 2024 Trail Blazing topics:
· Building a Brain Friendly Psychosocial Safety Culture
· Leadership for Influencers
· “What’s Next?” Your Brand and Succession Development
· “Say Hello to Your Brian© series”.
· GrowWell® Executive Coaching
Neuro Myth of the Month
“We’re pretty sure we know all that we need to about our brains and the nervous system so less of the Neuro’ fashion! “
Definitely not!
Our understanding of the brain and how we use it to interact with our world is continually evolving. Peer-validated studies and repeatable results are on-going with studies raising further and additional questions making it one of the fastest progressing fields in science and one of the most diverse.
From the use of new technologies in brain health, to a better understanding of how we store and retrieve memories, to new treatments for brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and Neuro Diversity in all its differences and richness it couldn’t be more exciting.
Keep an eye out for the Neuro Myths; ensure you verify the qualifications of the information source, just as you wouldn’t take your laptop to a bicycle repair shop!
Want to establish an Evidenced Resilient and Engaged Organisation then read Chapter 2!
“Brains Inspiring Businesses looks at behaviours and leadership practices from the lens of applied neuroscience. Dr Paul Brown and 13 authors share their best knowledge and lived experience with practical examples, cases and deep research.”
Follow this link to order: https://ideasforleaders.com/product/brains-inspiring-businesses-for-leaders-and-executives.
Take a Listen: https://www.brainycasts.com/
Absolutely hooked on ‘Brainy Podcasts’! The brilliant fusion of neuroscience, business and creativity is pure genius! Simply put, each episode is absolutely fascinating, and the hosts effortlessly simplify complex topics. Incredibly insightful - highly recommend tuning in!”.
Get in touch for a free Scope Out Session to explore your needs and inspire growth by leveraging all the creative diversity in your organisation soraya@soraya-shaw.com & mailto:tracy@tracyfiller.com
NEWS SPOT
🚀 A new study suggests that to debunk false beliefs, it may be more effective to target a person’s system of beliefs rather than trying to change the false belief itself. The study found that people have a system of interrelated beliefs that depend on each other and may anchor their system, making it difficult to change beliefs even with evidence against them.
“A belief systems analysis of fraud beliefs following the 2020 US election” by Rotem Botvinik-Nezer et al. Nature Human Behavior
🚀 Researchers have discovered that deadlines may not be as stressful as previously believed. The study found that high sympathetic activation, which indicates how much people are “on the tips of their toes” and leads to stress, remains about the same with or without deadlines. The study also discovered that factors such as extensive smartphone use and prolific reading and writing can exacerbate sympathetic activation.
“Sympathetic Activation in Deadlines of Deskbound Research – A Study in the Wild” by Ioannis Pavlidis et al. Proceedings of the ACM Human Factors in Computing
