Have Difficult Conversations and Achieve Positive Results

Why should you learn about the brain?

Here are 3 main reasons:

1. Work requires people to think, to innovate, to problem-solve and to focus (among other important cognitive activities).
2. When asked where they do their best thinking, most people do not say “at work”. Rather, they indicate their best thinking happens in places like the shower, while driving, during exercise, and outdoors.
3. Everyone brings their brain to work. ​

Understanding some basic brain dynamics will allow you to optimize thinking while AT work and leverage the thinking of your people. Tap into what is likely to be your organization’s greatest asset - the brain power of your people!

Here is what you need to know to start translating neuroscience into practical skills and behaviors.

1. The brain’s number one job is to keep you alive - therefore, it is highly oriented towards detecting threat and keeping you safe. The brain typically responds before it thinks - emotions grab our attention. Our “threat detector” lies in the amygdala, a structure in the brain that is located in the limbic system - a relatively primitive part of our brains. The more threat we perceive, the more our amygdala is activated, which impacts another part of our brains - the prefrontal cortex (affectionately known as the PFC). The PFC is the newest part of our brains, evolutionary speaking - and is responsible for more complex cognitive processes such as planning, organizing, innovating, focusing, solving problems, and setting goals. Located in the PFC is a structure that helps avoid committing CLM’s (career limiting moves)! In other words, it is a structure that puts the brakes on our emotional responses so that we avoid saying and doing things that we regret. But here is the problem: The more our limbic system is activated (i.e., the more threat we experience), the more our PFC gets compromised. It can get so compromised that the breaking system stops working for us and we experience an “amygdala highjack”. Examples of this might be yelling at people, throwing an inanimate object, storming out of a room….you get the picture and it’s not pretty. Because of this inverse relationships between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, finding ways to mitigate threat at work becomes paramount if we want people to do their best thinking at work.
2. Social “pain” is real. There are many many structures in the brain that are geared towards social connections. Indeed, infants cannot survive unless they are able to bond with their caregivers. Recent research has discovered that when we experience social “pain”, such as not being included in an important meeting, or feeling that our boss is not being fair with us, our amygdala gets triggered. And so does the neural pathway that registers physical pain. Social pain is very real - at least it is in our brains - and we will react to it in a very similar way to physical pain. This means we will try to avoid situations and people that cause us pain and when we get triggered, our PFC starts to get compromised. Understanding some of the basic social needs that are common to all people is very useful when developing strategies to promote a more “brain-friendly” work culture. These needs, when met, create a reward state in the brain and when not met, trigger a threat response. I have created the CONNECT™ model as a convenient way to remember those basics. (See my CONNECT blog). Remember, work is a highly social environment, which means it has the potential to cause threat (think a compromising of our higher cognitive functions) and to create reward (think drive, motivation and engagement). There are strategies to mitigate threat (lessen the avoid response) and create a toward state where people feel engaged and motivated to be at work.
3. An interesting factoid about the PFC - it is an energy hog. Relative to its size, it requires more glucose (more fuel) than any other part of our body! And it gets tired pretty quickly. Ever notice that after a certain period of time of heavy concentration (somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 minutes), you start feeling mental fatigue and/or you get hungry. Well that’s your PFC telling you that it is working hard and needs a break. So in order to preserve energy, our brains like to be in auto-pilot mode as much as possible, so it does not have to use up the limited energy resources of the pre-frontal cortex. ​It might surprise you to learn that much of the brain’s functioning occurs automatically and unconsciously. And that is actually often a good thing. Imagine if you had to think about which muscles to fire and which ones to relax just to take one step! We like think that we are in control and the master of our thinking and decision-making, but it is an illusion. The fact is that the brain uses lots of cognitive short-cuts or thinking errors…and most of the time we don’t even know it’s happening. There are numerous cognitive biases (mental heuristics) such as the confirmation bias (the tendency to seek and pay attention to information that confirms our believes and to discount or negate information that is contrary to what we believe). There are over 175 identified biases that the human brain uses to be efficient - this can cause us to make decisions without considering enough of the relevant facts and information. The implications of these biases is that, unless we employ strategies to minimize their impact, our decision-making may not be the most effective. Fortunately, there are some tactics that facilitate this, such as slowing down the decision-making process, including a diversity of people (and opinions) in the room, challenging assumptions, and asking questions to uncover potential thinking errors. (See my blog on cognitive biases). ​
4. The final brain dynamic, and perhaps the most exciting one, is that our brains continue to learn and grow throughout our lives, There is this concept, “neural plasticity”, that basically means that if we practice new behaviors or patterns of thinking and responding, the neurons in our brains can form new connections. We literally create new wiring! Rather than stopping a habit, it is much more efficient to change or form new habits to facilitate this process of developing new wiring. So, you can teach an old dog new tricks - all it takes is repetition, or as neuroscientists like to say, “neurons that fire together wire together”. Not only do we form new neural connections, but we can also practice behaviors that enhance our brain’s resiliency, making us less prone to the ill effects of stress. But that’s for another blog - stay tuned.​

Catherine Hambley, PhD, is a consulting psychologist who offers brain-based strategies to organizations, leaders and teams to improve their effectiveness and promote greater success. She can be reached at [email protected].

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