My work as a mind reader: the story of three brains
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"I WISH I could get more |ideas from my managers." "Why didn't they think that project through? Now I have to clean it up." "Why do I have to make all the decisions?"
As an executive, have any of these thoughts (or similar) crossed your mind or lips? If you work in Thailand or Asean, most likely they have.
This article will let you in on a little secret on how to change that. That’s the good news. The bad news is that change is mostly about you.
Yes, we can blame culture, hierarchy, education – that’s easy (and conveniently beyond our control).
Let’s focus on what is in our control, every day, every moment.
But first, a short course on your brain from the rapidly developing field of brain science.
We all have three brains. They have very scientific names, but for now let’s call them the “survival brain”, “emotional brain” and “visual brain”.
Basically the survival brain is our oldest part and comes from the reptiles.
It is the first brain to react and it focuses on our safety and survival. When this brain is triggered, we typically want to fight, freeze, or run away from the danger.
At work, you will notice this brain working when you are giving feedback or a strong negative message.
The employee will typically sit there, not saying anything and thinking that he or she will do anything to get this moment over and leave the room.
Foreigners often trigger this brain in Thais without even knowing it. I used to do this daily with my team. Now it’s probably every other day.
Your goal here is to make your people feel safe when they are with you. Low risk … this means calm, soft tones, and open body language (including maybe even a smile).
If the survival brain feels safe, you can access the emotional brain.
This newer brain (found in mammals) is the social brain. Connection, family, social behaviour (belonging, rejection, collaboration) are all here.
At work this is where motivation and engagement reside. It’s about how employees “feel” about a situation or person.
Do they belong? Do they want to be part of that organisation or team?
As a leader, it is of great benefit to create a sense of belonging, family and community. The emotional brain, satisfied, learns better, will stay longer and is more productive.
A recent study by author James Zenger shows that leaders who were mostly focused on results (not people) were likely to be seen as great leaders just 12 per cent of the time.
Leaders who were both results-focused and great in social skills were likely to be seen as great leaders 72 per cent of the time.
As a great leader, your capability to connect, collaborate and create belonging is critical to getting your people to higher levels of thinking, especially “Gen Y” (younger) staff.
Now that you have your people’s survival brain feeling safe and the emotional brain socially happy, you will open the gates to the uniquely human visual brain. Here you unlock creativity, imagination, critical thinking, planning, innovation – this is the empowerment and execution brain.
Look around you right now, wherever you are; everything you see was created in the visual brain. It didn’t exist before, someone visualised it and it got made.
Humans are the only animals on Earth that can visualise something that doesn’t exist yet. Just look at the new Apple Watch.
This is the place you want to keep your people as often as you can. This is the brain that asks questions, generates ideas, sees multiple ways of doing thing, innovates and improvises.
Of course, there is a problem. To get to this brain you have to go through the other two, and they will not open that door unless they are satisfied.
In fact, new research shows that in the moment you are strongly suggesting to your employees that they may not have been thinking properly and that they need to get focused, blood will actually flow away from their visual brain and into their emotional and survival brain to protect them.
Starting today, your new goal is to be a mind reader and mind shifter.
Starting today, when you walk into a meeting or see someone in the hallway go through these steps.
lWhat brain am I in right now? And how do I shift myself to be in the positive emotional and visual brain to move myself and my people forward?
lWhat brain is the person I am talking to in right now? If it is survival or negative emotional, how do I move her to a more positive, productive part of the brain? Be calm, make her safe, connect, listen, and understand.
lKeep your conversation and questions focused on the future, not the past … What are we doing? What can we do? What are our options? What else?
lFinally, what can I do to connect better with and build my social skills to create an ongoing safe community of people who work, learn, grow and produce together?
I promise if you do a good job of “mind reading and shifting”, you will be seeing better results and asking fewer of the questions you saw at the beginning of this article. Thus everyone will call you my (kind of) leader.
James Engel is the head of APM Group’s Leadership and Culture Business Unit. He can be reached at [email protected].
