Interview With Adaptas CEO, Dr. Celine Mullins

Updated August 3rd 2023

Dr. Celine Mullins has over 15 years’ experience as a Psychologist, Coach and Training Consultant working across Multinationals, SME’s, Governmental and Educational agencies. Dr. Mullins is the CEO and Founder of Adaptas, a Leadership Development Training organisation, developing managers and leaders and teams, in Ireland and Internationally. She founded adaptas to put a gigantic spin on more traditional approaches to learning, which she believes often fall short of making real and lasting change happen.

With a focus on narrowing the gap between the training room and the real world, and using what we know about the brain and behaviour from psychology and neuroscience, Celine’s specialities include; leadership communication, eradicating behaviours and limiting beliefs that restrict performance and relationships, while improving team communication and collaboration.

Q & A

Q1. What led you to pursue a professional interest in business psychology?

I initially thought I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. But at the same time, I wanted to be an actress and director! I always had a curiosity around business psychology, but it wasn’t until soon after completing my PhD whilst I was working as a research psychologist, and also acting, that a conversation at a friend’s dinner party resulted in me going home and writing a business plan that lead me into business psychology. It soon became an obsession.

Q.2 You’ve written and spoken widely about the fact that many problems in organisations are due to poor communication. In your experience, what is the major reason for poor workplace communication?

I would say that 70-80% of problems are caused by communication or lack thereof. We all make assumptions in our communication. We all think we are communicating in a way that everyone will understand. But often the people around us hear things differently to the way we meant it. Many of us are not listening to the people around us, and therefore we miss really great ideas and we also dis-empower others by not being present to them in our listening. All of us learnt to communicate from the people we grew up with; our friends, families and teachers. Very few of us had role models who were excellent communicators and we do very little in school and college to get the basics of communication really working well for us.

In the workplace, when people attend development programmes which include a communication module or they work with a coach, it is often the first time they have really thought about their listening skills and how they are communicating. At this stage it’s very challenging to break the communication habits that are in place.

In most cases, we will only change our communication habits if we believe it will benefit us personally. Changing communication habits are some of the toughest ones to change. It takes real commitment and often requires shattering some deeply held beliefs we are holding on to about ourselves.

Q3. In addition to poor communication, as a psychologist working in organisations worldwide with individuals, groups and teams, what would you say are the most common issues you have to address?

At the moment, aside from communication, there are three main things we regularly find ourselves helping people with:

Educating people on stress management and resilience skills. There is a lot of ‘busyness’ and expectation for us always to be on (digital communication etc).

Supporting individuals, teams and organisations to clarify and maintain the types of behaviours that enable that team and organisation to be a place where people want to be i.e culture. There are a lot of toxic organisations where blame and fear is rife.

Developing Emotional Intelligence. It may not appear to be the case sometimes, but many of the people who are rising to the top of organisations are those who not only communicate really well, but also understand their own emotions and can manage the emotions of other people.

Underlying all of this is helping people to really understand the psychology and neuroscience of how they can make habit change and embed it long-term.

Q4. You’re renowned for employing new technologies such as Virtual Reality as part of your organisational learning and development work. What are the major benefits of these new technologies as far as employee training is concerned?

Going back to my passions in acting and directing, for many years we have written and produced training and educational videos for our clients. So in ways VR was a natural step for me as it brought together theatre, film and psychology – VR has been dubbed the empathy making machine. When my friend and colleague Camille Donegan called me up after experiencing her first ‘hit’ in VR, I knew we had found a way to create training experiences that were more true to life and immersive than many other approaches.

VR is when the viewers audio and visual senses are taken-over by a VR headset display and headphones. This enables the viewer to be transported anywhere, even into the perspective of another human being (known as embodiment).

Training and Learning is one of the best use cases for VR. When using VR headsets, the brain is tricked into thinking that the input being received by the visual and auditory senses is real. This is thought to be due to the spatial nature of the medium. The only other dimension where our brain has experienced 360 degree, 3-dimensional content before was in Real Reality (RR)! So, providing the content is created adhering to design principles to prevent motion sickness, and designed to make the viewer feel ‘present’ in this alternate reality, the brain believes the simulation to be real.

VR is being used for training in pretty much any sector or industry you can think of – healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, military, and of course corporate training. Since we started using VR at Adaptas, we have created VR training tools with the insurance industry, healthcare, and currently progressing tools in the legal sector.

One of the benefits of VR is consistency across all learners. And recently released research shows that training in VR is 40% faster than traditional training, which can result in a real and tangible cost savings for an organisation.

Compare the cost of a VR simulation and some headsets to the cost of video production, textbooks, and trainer/ facilitators and VR will be cheaper in the long run.

Our VR training tools for FBD Insurance was shortlisted for an IITD (Irish Institute for Training & Development) ‘Excellence in Digital Learning’ award in 2018 and again in 2019 when it WON the award. The judges commented that it was important that the tool was proven to be useful and sustainable for the organisation, which it had by year 2.

I’m excited to see what happens in Augmented reality (AR) in the coming years also. AR is when the viewer can still see the real world (their physical environment) but some extra information, such as video, imagery or audio is overlayed into that view. AR content is primarily experienced via mobile phones or tablets, but in the not too distant future, it will all happen via AR glasses. I believe AR is going to be a real winner for training as it becomes less glitchy in coming years.

Q5. What is neuroplasticity and why do you think it’s so important in relation to adult learning?

Neuroplasticity is the ability of neurons to change their structure and relationships to one another in an experience-dependent manner according to environmental demands. This means that everything you think you know and feel now can change, depending on what you focus on. This capacity for learning and change is available to us throughout our entire lives.

As children, we learned by playing, making up stories, creating games together and actively using our imagination. This is how we best learn as adults; when learning is engaging, fun, and full of “imagining the possibilities”. But as adults many of us stop imagining the possibilities and are very stuck in our habits and our beliefs and biases, many of which are unconscious.

Q6. What can readers expect from your book ‘Our Learning Brain’?

The idea with Our Learning Brain is that reading the book will help you to see learning from a new perspective and enable you to fully engage your brain for learning & habit Change.

The feedback I have received to date is that the content is clear, accessible and covers salient points about habits and learning; that it is grounded in research and well laid out, while being easy to read. Readers from all types of backgrounds, from engineers, to therapists, psychologists and coaches, to auctioneers, (the list goes on) tell me that they are learning a lot, that there’s good practical strategies in it, which they can implement quickly, and that it makes them look at things in a different way and raises questions and thoughts they hadn’t considered. Many people are saying that it should be available in secondary school and for all adults in the workplace. Many of them agree that we are not acting on the learning science that is available to us, whether we are the teacher or the learner. And this book now makes this accessible.

Q. 7 If you had to pick just one defining characteristic of a great leader, what would it be?

Curiosity. If we can live from a place of curiosity, we ask more questions, we live from a growth mindset and we can overcome obstacles easier. The best leaders I have met are naturally curious or they have worked on creating a more curious approach, with both themselves, the people around them and the challenges they face. This is why I have been writing another book, currently titled “The Ignited Leader’, which help people to understand, explore and embed a mindset of curiosity.

Q.8 What advice would you give to someone considering a career in workplace psychology?

Go for it. When you get to work with people, helping them to grow, with teams helping them to work together better and with organisations looking to change their ways, everyday flies by. I get to the end of every day wondering where the day went. I can’t imagine working in a role where I was clock-watching. If you are looking to get into the area just do it, even if it means interning for a few months. If you are waiting until you have a masters in organisational psychology, stop waiting. You’ll learn so much by ‘doing’.

Q.9 What projects are you currently working on?

Where do I start. On my list this and coming weeks: VR training tool pre-production with a new insurance client; 2-D Video shoot with a healthcare client; design and start delivering a year-long programme for managers in a technology company; write a report on sales teams progress and development needs in a tech client; coaching client meetings; supervise 3 masters theses who are moving to completion; prepare an outline for a programme with a healthcare client; finalise workshop outline for managers with an insurance company client re. culture; deliver sessions with a law firm client; finish edits on Book 2 ‘Developing Learning Addicts’ in the Maximising Brain Potential series and send to publisher; finish edits on ‘The Ignited Leader’ and send to publisher; Finish bringing the Maximising Brain Potential series online so that people can progress through the information and make real change from anywhere in the world. And that’s all just a quarter of where my time is spent.

Leadership Is A Way Of Thinking!

Update August 3rd 2023

“Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting and, most importantly, a way of communicating”

Simon Sinek

Business Solver’s 2018 State of the Workplace Empathy report states that 87% of CEO’s agree that a company’s financial performance is tied to empathy.

Further solidifying the focus on right-brain development, LinkedIn’s 2018 workplace report headlines that talent developers, executives and people managers agree that the development of soft skills is the top priority for talent development teams. Training in leadership, communication and collaboration are each rated as more important than role-specific skills.

As recently as ten years ago, an article on empathy in the workplace would have been too touchy-feely for most CEOs to take seriously. But it is now universally recognised as a vital workplace value that is at the heart of a strong company culture. It encourages collaboration and innovation and increases retention, productivity and profit. According to LinkedIn, 96% of employees believe it is important for their leaders to show empathy.

“Power will reside with those who have strong right-brained, interpersonal qualities”

As technology and globalisation have levelled the playing field in many sectors, more and more top companies are realising that their competitive advantage lies in the personal qualities of their talent. When Daniel Goleman published his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, in 1995, this concept was new. It has since been widely accepted that the so-called softer skills lead to tangible results and are now seen as a priority for executives—often the defining mark of a true leader.

Dublin’s annual Pendulum Summit, whose motivational speakers promote self-empowerment and mindfulness, has grown from 600 attendees in 2013 to 7,000 in 2019, testament to how many executives recognise the place personal and interpersonal skills take in a successful career.

Bestselling author, Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age) predicts that power will reside with those who have strong right-brained, interpersonal qualities such as inventiveness, empathy, and meaning.

Leadership development has gone soft

This trend is palpable among my clients and training course participants. There have always been people who were naturally inclined to create positive working environments and in improving emotional intelligence. The current mindset shift is reverberating with leaders who would previously have charged full steam ahead in the pursuit of productivity and business objectives, despite fallout around them. They now realise that there are bigger rewards in firstly, stopping to think of the human effect at all points in the productivity chain. Where the leading edge is leaning is in recognising that the people they work with will align and perform better if they feel they are trusted, that their opinion counts and that their manager or organisation cares about them.

Putting new approaches into practice can be challenging for many of the leaders I work with. It means role-modelling ideal behaviours themselves so they can expect others to manage and lead differently. Building self-awareness and introducing new ways of operating can be hard work for some. It means letting go of long-held habits, some of which have worked well in certain ways.

The impetus to seek coaching for behaviour change often comes from a lull in performance, or a recognition that teams could be more productive. But, an initial focus on business improvements, sooner or later, turns to self-reflection. A 360-feedback exercise on their own emotional intelligence and communication style from those around them, shines a light on where they could improve. Once they believe in and feel the benefits of positive behaviour change, there’s no going back. Everyone wins.

Peter Drucker said, “The leader of the past knew how to tell; the leader of the future will know how to ask.”

The ability to analyse, think critically and take decisive action are of the utmost importance for a leader and an organisation to be successful. Being an effective leader is equally about getting the right people to work and collaborate with to build and sustain a vision and a plan. Finding and keeping good talent depends on building strong relationships; on understanding people’s needs.

We are in a time of unprecedented change in every aspect of life and especially in the working world. Companies are embracing technological disruption at a pace that’s challenging to keep up with. A more diverse workforce wants to shape career paths according to individual ambitions and needs, not structured, traditional hierarchical routes. Team collaboration is a new driving force in productivity. The leaders of the future need to develop new skills to inspire a more complex and ever-evolving working environment. They need to have well developed emotional intelligence.

A central element to emotional intelligence is empathy; the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives; the capacity to recognise the concerns other people have. It allows us to create bonds of trust and helps to understand how or why others are reacting to situations, informing decisions.

When teams are not communication or collaborating well, work doesn’t flow. Progress is slowed or impeded. The lack of ability to experience empathy is behind much organisational bullying, employee distress and failure to sell to and retain clients. This doesn’t always mean that leaders, managers and team members are devoid of soft skills or the ability to show empathy. It can simply be that they are not versed in how to apply them effectively with colleagues and reports when there are so many goals, objectives, processes and personalities.

When communication is free-flowing, productivity is free-flowing

It may seem obvious, but an employee’s well-being and happiness plays an important role in the

performance of an organisation. The results of numerous studies prove a relationship between employee happiness and workplace engagement. Happy and engaged workers are more likely to have positive relationships with their managers and are better able to handle new challenges and changes. They also feel valued by their employer, can deal with stress more effectively and are more satisfied with their lives overall.

Instead of having open and honest conversations, many managers skirt around issues that should be discussed, allow others to ‘tell’ people what to do and miss an opportunity to let individuals take ownership of a solution. We don’t have to be perfect communicators. Listening, asking questions to gain more understanding and avoiding assumptions and planning ahead in conversations give clear signals that open communication is important. With the number of distractions in the working environment, it takes decided focus to be present in direct interactions and to current conversations, but it pays dividends.

Steps for developing empathy and retaining key people

The ability to be emphatic is a cornerstone of successful relationships. To understand an individual’s, a group’s or a market’s needs depends on an ability to put ourselves in their shoes; to understand their perspective of the world, regardless of our differing experience, beliefs, attitudes and values.

There are now numerous studies that link empathy with increased sales and with the performance of the best managers of product development teams. When it comes to staff training and client retention, an understanding and development of empathy is imperative.

Dr. Daniel Goleman isolates three reasons why empathy is so important in business today:

the increasing use of teams, which he refers to as “cauldrons of bubbling emotions”
the rapid pace of globalisation (with cross cultural communication easily leading to misunderstandings)
the growing need to retain talent.

“Leaders with empathy,” states Goleman, “do more than sympathise with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways.” This doesn’t mean that they agree with everyone’s view or try to please everybody. Rather, they “thoughtfully consider employees’ feelings, along with other factors, in the process of making intelligent decisions

For some people, forging positive, trustful connections with others comes naturally. For those who find it uncomfortable, it’s a practice that can be cultivated under the guidance of a skilled coach. Developing empathy has its own rewards: the more it’s practised, the more relationships in every area of life improve and instances of conflict dissipate. A few basic tips:

Be fully present when you are with people. Don’t check your email, look at your watch or take phone calls when a direct report drops into your office to talk to you. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel if someone did that to you?
Don’t interrupt or dismiss concerns offhand. Don’t change the subject.
Don’t rush to give advice. It’s much more empowering to support people to realise the answers that suit them best.
Use people’s names. Remember the names of spouses and children so you can refer to them.
Smile at people. As well as improving relations with those around you, a bonus is a boost your own self-esteem and immune system.
Encourage people, particularly the quiet ones, when they speak up at meetings. A simple thing like an attentive nod can boost confidence.
Give genuine recognition and praise. Pay attention to what people are doing and catch them doing the right things. When you give praise, put a little effort into making your genuine words memorable: “You are an asset to this team because…”; “I would have missed this if you hadn’t picked it up.”; You made some very useful suggestions at the meeting, thank you for that”
Take a personal interest in people. Show people that you care, and express genuine curiosity about their lives. Ask questions about their hobbies, their challenges, their families, their aspirations.
Listen with full attention; note the tone of voice, body language, the context and any hidden emotions behind what’s being said.

A famous study by Professor Emeritus, Albert Mehrabian of UCLA, showed that when communicating about feelings and attitudes, words account for just 7% of the total message. The other 93% is in tone of voice, body language and more. It’s important to allow time to understand all aspects of a person’s communication.

Spirit at Work; inspiring leadership

The term Spirit at Work was coined by Kinjerski and Skrypnek in 2006 to explain feelings of well-being, meaning, fulfilment and connection while working. The most important factor that influences this spirit is inspiring leadership. Positive working environments help people to feel good during their working day, be happy with their organisations and enjoy better focus on tasks required.

Some standout leaders have a natural charisma that’s undeniably alluring. But any leader can develop an ability to inspire and engage colleagues by:

creating a caring culture
prioritising the welfare of their staff and working relationships
embodying behaviours that match those of the organisations’ philosophy and intentions
encouraging and helping staff to reach their goals
communicating tasks clearly
involving people in the decision-making process
delegating responsibility so people can make their own decisions about their work.

Culture trickles down from the top. Leading by example sets the tone for positive teamwork, support for colleagues and recognition of sincere application and good performance. Pamela Quinn (MD of Kuehne + Nagel Ireland, one of the world’s largest logistic companies) says: “I believe that people mirror behaviours and they tend to naturally follow the behaviours they see around them.”

US workplace research company Gallup have been looking at employee engagement for years.

They describe an engaged employee as one who is involved in, committed to and enthusiastic about her/his work and workplace. A 2016 article by Mann & Harter illustrated that, worldwide, only 13% of employees in organisations are considered to be engaged workers.

According to a study by Arakawa & Greenberg, managers who are optimistic are more engaged and more likely to manage teams that produce better results: “…managers who currently embody positive leadership are contributing to the effectiveness of not only their employees, but also the organisation as a whole.” It also showed that managers who valued their employees’ strengths, who had a positive perspective and regularly provided recognition of accomplishments had employees who were themselves optimistic and engaged. Positive leadership and optimism lead to a company culture that benefits everyone and increase the chances of success.

There is much hard evidence to show that leaders with highly developed soft skills build organisations with the strength and flexibility to meet the challenges of the most fiercely competitive environment we’ve ever seen. It pays to invest in the less tangible attributes of leaders and their teams.

Future-proof your people. Encourage life-long learning

The only thing we can be sure of as regards the future of work is that it will be very different to what we’ve been used to. Many would argue that more changes have taken place in the past 5—10 years than had in the previous 100. There are more new technologies, new approaches to management and new roles in the workplace than ever could have been imagined.

I’ve worked with Bob Savage, MD and Vice President of DELL EMC Ireland, who is a truly inspiring leader. The Cork plant is Dell’s largest manufacturing site outside the US, spanning 600,000 square feet, with 28 business functions and 44 nationalities on site speaking 26 languages. In 2017, this centre of excellence that serves a global market was voted best place to work in Ireland based on thousands of employee reviews compiled by Indeed.

Bob says “The ability to build relationships with customers, to relate to others, is one of the differentiators for employees and companies of the future. Another differentiator is a culture which encourages people to have an openness and ability to transform their skills, with a compulsion towards life-long learning”.

When asked what he looks for in employees, he says it’s a team of dynamic players and career minded people with integrity and passion who think outside the box. “The ICT area is a fast-moving environment and people need to be able to handle and embrace change.”

Creating a company culture where continual learning and development is encouraged, valued and supported by a leader promotes a self-feeding environment of positive interaction, collaboration and idea generation. People become interested and enthusiastic about bettering themselves and buying into their company vision in unison.

John Henry Newman once said, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Not many people like rats, but they tell us much about brains and behaviour. When rats are raised in a complex and challenging environment, their brains grow new matter. The cortex, the length of neurons, the number of synapses, and the level of neurotransmitters and growth hormones all increase.

The benefits of stimulating environments are not just reserved for the young. When adult rats are

exposed to training and enriched environments, the effects of earlier nervous system damage and

genetically based learning deficits can be ameliorated.

Although it is not possible to do such invasive research with humans, there is much evidence to

suggest that our brains react in the same manner. The brain has been shaped by evolution to adapt and readapt to an ever-changing world. The ability to learn is dependent on modification of the brain’s chemistry and architecture, in a process called “neural plasticity”. Neural plasticity reflects the ability of neurons to change their structure and relationships to one another in an experience-dependent manner according to environmental demands.

The good news for learning and development in the workplace is that current knowledge and beliefs can be changed for better or worse depending on what is focused on. Science has discovered ingenious ways to use the brain’s natural pathways and traits to instil new thinking and make it long term.

How curious are you? Leadership development can accelerate by being curious.

Children ask ‘why?’ all the time. As adults, we largely lose the habit of asking questions and the instinct to be truly curious. Do we lose our curiosity once we are embedded in formal education? Or is it too important as adults to appear like we know everything?

Many people draw conclusions easily and make assumptions about other people and about themselves. They tend to make statements when people come with problems, rather than ask questions. When we consider how the brain works there is a very good reason why, as adults, we become less curious. But it doesn’t mean it serves us well.

The prefrontal cortex, PFC, is the area that juts out of the skull at the forehead and has evolved most recently. It’s the region of the brain that filters our actions. Cognitive processes including reasoning, problem-solving, planning, carrying out new and goal-directed patterns of behaviour, inhibitory control, sustained attention and decision-making all take place here. It performs the cognitive functions that allow us to read and react to social cues in everyday interactions, to use language fluently and to regulate, or manage, our emotions.

The PFC occupies one-third of the entire human cerebral cortex and is one of the last cortical regions

to undergo full myelination, during adolescence. Before it’s fully developed, we are full of questions. Once it’s formed, delivering answers, the questions diminish. But, even when it is fully formed, as adults, it’s not a given that our decisions are the best-serving ones, for ourselves or for others.

The PFC is connected to our limbic system, where emotions and memories are housed. The processing of the interaction between the PFC and the limbic system happens unconsciously, leaving us unaware how memories and emotions are at play in decision making and problem solving.

As so much information floods our awareness every second, a brain makes shortcuts, relying on what it already knows instead of working things through. Our entire nervous system is focused on keeping us safe and does whatever it needs to do to fulfil that job, without our direct awareness, a bit like on autopilot.

Well-researched training and processes can reignite the kind of creative curiosity we knew as children. Developing a habit of looking at things with an open, curious mindset can lead to more creative decisions and engages colleagues in a way that is conducive to innovation and high performance.

Winning ‘Excellence in Digital Learning’ Award: Our Immersive Sales Star VR Video

Updated August 3rd 2023

‘Immersive Sales Star’ is an IITD Training Award winner.

Institute of Training & Development, National Training Awards is recognised as the premier Learning & Development event for industry. The purpose of the IITD National Training Awards is to promote excellence, best practice and innovation in Training and Learning & Development, and to highlight the importance of this area in today’s business climate.

Excellence in Digital Learning Award.

We are delighted to announce that ‘Immersive Sales Star’ won the ‘Excellence in Digital Learning’ award from the Institute of Training & Development Awards 2019. Adaptas created ‘Immersive Sales Star’ with the Learning and Development Team at FBD Insurance. ‘Immersive Sales Star’ is a number of Virtual Reality simulations of Sales Call conversations being utilised for motor and home insurance customer contact centre training. It is being used to scale best-in-class behaviours and competencies and replace the need for the shadow sessions.

What do FBD say about this VR training solution?

“Great solutions in business are never created by a single individual; they are done by a talented and committed group. This is why we chose to partner with Adaptas Training. Adaptas have been early adopters of using Virtual Reality technology, a medium which enables more immersive staff training. The Adaptas team helped us create an innovative, practical and results orientated training solution to overcome a real business challenge. The ‘Immersive Sales Star’ tool has improved product knowledge which in turn is improving Sales Performance and has eliminated the cost associated with employing a full time Sales Coach”

-John Mulreid, Learning and Development Manager, FBD Insurance

What are the learners saying after using ‘Immersive Sales Star’?

“When I made my first real call, I felt like I had done it before”

“It brought all the jigsaw pieces of the training together for me”

”It makes you feel like you have done a call and achieved the sale”

“It made me feel like I stepped into an expert seller’s shoes”

“It trains you in the exact environment that you’re working in rather than a meeting or training room”

“Rather that skating around the question, I now go straight in and ask directly for the sale”

You can check out the Immersive Sales Star FBD case study here.

Dr. Celine Mullins With Project Management Paradise Podcast

Updated August 3rd 2023

GUEST PODCAST

Adaptas CEO, Dr. Celine Mullins was guest speaker on the Project Management Podcast PARADISE recently and we wanted to share it with you.

Richard from Cora Systems commented:

“Thanks again for a fantastic chat. I’ve been raving to everyone about it. It’s one of the most engaging chats from our library of 100+ episodes.”

Learning and Habit Change

Celine answers questions about communication in organisations, how you can manage limiting beliefs and how you can maximise you brain’s potential to create new habits and do things differently.

Have a listen! We would love to hear your feedback.

http://projectmanagementparadise.com/episode-102-maximizing-brain-potential-for-learning-and-change-with-dr-celine-mullins/

Listening Is The Greatest Sign Of Respect You Can Give Someone.

Updated August 3rd 2023

Good communication skills benefit workers, CEOs and companies’ performance.

Every organisation has its own culture. This is largely determined by how its people interact, communicate and make decisions. The tone of communication is set by leadership, ripples throughout all areas within a company and extends to its customers and target audience via its brand.

A positive and uplifting spirit of communication is the fabric of a strong organisational culture that influences job satisfaction, productivity and well-being at work. It goes even further; it improves retention of talented people and cuts down on absenteeism by creating a welcoming and open ethos where workers are happy to engage.

What is good communication?

Good communication is about much more than the practical sharing of information between individuals, teams, groups or departments. The way information is structured and shared, the tone of messages and personal communication styles have a big impact on how information is received and acted on.

As management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker said: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”

Unfortunately, much of the communication that occurs at work is just the transmission of data. Many people don’t have the skill or don’t believe they have the time to make sure that their communication is understood by the receiver. This lack of clarity or misunderstanding is at the basis of most problems in organisations.

Employees and colleagues feel empowered when there are good communication lines between management and other levels. It builds confidence when truthful, transparent and current information is offered by superiors. It encourages the sharing of new ideas and creates safety for concerns to be expressed.

In reality, many employees resist sharing their opinions and ideas, because they don’t feel psychologically safe. Psychologically safety can be defined as the degree to which people view the environment as conducive to inter-personally risky behaviors like speaking up or asking for help. It also plays a vital role in helping people overcome barriers to learning and change in inter-personally challenging work environments.

Although the concept of psychological safety was introduced as a critical factor in helping people to learn new behaviors and overcome defensive routines 50 years ago, there has been a large body of further research on the impact of psychological safety over the past two decades, popularised by Amy Edmundson.

I love this quote from John H. Bryan, former chairman and CEO of Sara Lee Corporation

“You have to be willing sometimes to listen to some remarkably bad opinions. Because if you say to someone, ‘That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard; get on out of here!’—then you’ll never get anything out of that person again, and you might as well have a puppet on a string or a robot.”

Effective communication has a major impact on psychological safety. Distorted channels of communication or poorly structured information can lead to distrust, poor collaboration and a secretive, “them versus us” mentality, leading to interdepartmental friction or conflict. It can leave people filling in the blanks themselves, possibly incorrectly, and straying from the core values of the organisation.

Through inclusivity and collaboration, businesses thrive.

Leaders and managers can mistakenly believe that employees lack understanding of difficult issues or aren’t interested, so don’t share them. The same goes for bad news; sharing only the good puts working relationships in parent/child mode instead of those of trusted colleagues.

What do we mean by parent/ child mode? The psychologist Eric Berne developed the idea that people switch between different states of mind on a moment-by-moment basis, depending on what is happening around them. When we are in adult mode, we are rational and assertive, neither trying to control nor reacting aggressively towards others. When we are in parent, we either seek to control or we nurture (to the point where we often dis-empower other people) and when we are in child we shirk responsibility or let our emotions takeover. For example, when a manager takes a parent approach (controlling), the team member might react in child mode. And as mentioned above, when a manager is not transparent with colleagues this often sends them into parent or child mode, either looking to control or retreating from their responsibilities in their role.

Most employees, at every level, are more tuned in than some superiors give them credit for. Just as a customer who isn’t listened to may be lost, a colleague who isn’t heard or included in relevant issues can be alienated. Positive outcomes stem from being inclusive, knowing what needs to be shared, when and which methods of communication best convey it.

Encouraging a healthy communication culture between colleagues is equally important. Now, more than ever, cross-cultural teams with vastly differing perspectives need practices that build understanding, open and honest relationships for effective collaboration. It’s a strategic imperative in such a global, diverse and technologically dominated environment. One negative action, without a consistent culture of positive interaction, can have a domino effect throughout a team or department. A team member that ls left feeling dis-empowered is likely to pass this on and it begins a cycle of negativity, affecting collaboration and productivity.

I see where you’re coming from.

Interpersonal communications skills training is perhaps the most important investment an organisation must consider if it wants its people and its customers to avoid many mistakes that are made in seemingly simple interactions. It builds a foundation for the principles of good organisational communication.

Maintaining consistently positive interaction in the workplace is inherently difficult as there are many intricate aspects to how we interact which are not universally taught. Without even considering the non-verbal elements of communication, speaking alone requires the speaker to perform two cognitively demanding tasks simultaneously: conceptualising the information to be conveyed and formulating a verbal message capable of conveying it. It also involves a third cognitively demanding aspect; listening.

The meaning of even the most banal utterance is grounded in a set of fixed assumptions about what the communicator knows, believes, feels and thinks. Every individual views the world from different vantage points, like background, experience, knowledge, education and gender, creating a unique perspective. To accommodate variation in perspective, communicators must take each other’s perspectives into account. As the social psychologist Roger Brown put it, effective communication “… requires that the point of view of the auditor (listener) be realistically imagined.” However, the other’s perspective is not always obvious.

As children, we assume everyone experiences the world in the same way we do. But even though we know better as adults, our judgement of others’ perspectives can be biased by our own points of view (egocentricity). Many interactions fail to achieve the objective in hand due to lack of understanding of another’s perspective and without the feedback which could give the opportunity to correct this. It can lead to poor comprehension of tasks among colleagues and clients can walk away feeling frustrated.

Listening doesn’t always come naturally

Most people speak at a rate of 2.5 words per second, often in a noisy environment with less than clear diction. We are usually unaware how unclear our communication can be. One of the vital skills necessary to be a good communicator is to be a good listener. When colleagues or those who report to you feel listened to and heard, it builds trust and respect, setting the scene for receptivity to what you communicate on an ongoing basis.

Being an active listener means paying close attention to others, including to non-verbal cues, withholding judgement and having a willingness to understand another’s perspective. Emotion expressed non-verbally can be more telling than the words people speak. Focus on tone of voice, pace of speech, facial expressions and gestures. Listen to hear the meaning behind what’s being said.

It helps to paraphrase or summarise what you’re hearing and reflect the feelings expressed. “What I hear you saying is…” When you’re not clear what’s being communicated, make this obvious. “I don’t quite understand what you are saying, could you repeat that?” When giving feedback, make it seem like it’s coming from an ally rather than an adversary.

This is easier the more relaxed you are. When stressed, communication can be abrupt, hurried or rambling, will be difficult to understand and messages may not be absorbed and applied. Your unease may transfer onto your colleague who could act this out by passing it on. Beginning with the idea that you want to help constructively will allow your colleague to pick up the value in your feedback and go away feeling supported. Many people, while listening, are evaluating or judging what’s being said or mentally multitasking and may miss important nuances.

Kevin Sharer of Harvard Business School learned the importance of effective listening while CEO of biotech giant, Amgen:

“For most of my career, I was an awful listener in almost every possible way. I was arrogant throughout my 30s for sure—maybe into my early 40s. My conversations were all about some concept of intellectual winning and ‘I’m going to prove I’m smarter than you.’ The best advice I ever heard about listening… (was) having only one objective: comprehension … only trying to understand what the person was trying to convey to me. I wasn’t listening to critique or object or convince. … as you become a senior leader, it’s a lot less about convincing people and more about benefiting from complex information and getting the best out of the people you work with. Listening … is … the greatest sign of respect you can give someone.”

How does communications training offer benefit?

As result of such a fast-paced and pressurised modern work environment, many leaders and managers are falling short of the type of communication skills that build productive working cultures. Busy people can have blind spots. A leader could be immensely talented but unaware of how he or she may be blocking personal potential with the wrong style of communication or impeding the trajectory of others in a team.

Habitual behaviour can be the most difficult to change as it becomes automatic. It’s not easy to step outside of ourselves and view our actions, and the impact of them, objectively. It can take focus on direct feedback or specialised communication training to clearly see how interpersonal relationships play out.

Well-designed processes challenge participants to complete tasks which reflect typical workplace and life situations. They focus on specific elements of communication to illuminate both positive and negative aspects of interactions. It’s an impartial and safe environment in which to explore the effect of new styles and approaches.

A good communications trainer will lead by example and emulate the traits of a great communicator by:

knowing how to listen to participants’ opinions and needs
waiting until the right moment to interject
encouraging awareness
guiding role play that clearly demonstrates common pitfalls
allowing time for reflection and assessment of how problems can arise
adding professional and personal experience and knowing when appropriate
creating a place of safety so everyone feels free to express
offering challenge when it’s constructive
recognising differences and being open to new opinions
being genuine, authentic and human
bringing participants to a clear understanding of communication that works.

Training is an ideal environment to explore a tendency to jump to incorrect assumptions. Instead of adopting a victim mentality unnecessarily, the habit of looking for another viewpoint can be introduced. Taking time to think and assess before making rash judgments and drawing unhelpful conclusions can avoid needless tension.

Flowers and chocolates at work?

Many companies are aware that good relationships are central to a collaborative, engaged and productive workforce. The cognitive culture is often healthily maintained. HR departments look for shared intellectual values; for traits in thinking and behaviour that fit company culture and a build harmonious team.

But we are still learning how important the emotional culture is to success. In 2014, Barsade & O’Neill conducted research which found that ‘companionate love’— “feelings of affection, compassion, caring, and tenderness for others” at work significantly influences job satisfaction, teamwork, burnout and a company’s financial performance.

The research showed that simply taking a moment to say “thank you” or ask how someone is doing has a positive impact enough to translate into measurable customer/client benefit. It illustrated across a variety of organisations and industries that it was the strength of an organisations companionate love culture that determined employee engagement. Where people felt comfortable to express affection, tenderness and caring, there were higher levels of job fulfilment, more commitment to the organisation and accountability for their work.

In workplaces that don’t experience or promote companionate love there are minimal displays of affection, caring and compassion among workers. People tend to be more indifferent towards each other and are less equipped to deal with situations that are going badly. “It is the small moments between co-workers—a warm smile, a kind note, a sympathetic ear—day after day, month after month, that help create and maintain a strong culture of companionate love and the employee satisfaction, productivity, and client satisfaction that comes with it.” It isn’t enough that people get paid. Feeling appreciated and loved at work is necessary too.

Good team leaders don’t tell, they ask.

Clear and consistent communication is one of the main ingredients central to high employee engagement. But when communication is too controlling, and is a guise for micromanaging colleagues, it can be counter-productive.

BIAC is a thinking, behavioural and adjustment profiling tool created in Ireland and now being used worldwide. One of its most useful aspects is in measuring levels of controlling thinking. The best score in this trait is neither at the top nor bottom, but right in the middle.

To score highly means that a manager, boss or team leader tends to tell his or her people how to operate, instead of supporting and empowering them to creatively come up with strategies and solutions themselves. This approach can block the development of talented people and stifle inspiration. High controlling thinking impacts on psychological safety, mentioned earlier, in a negative way.

Remaining firmly in charge without trusting others to do a good job and use their own initiative doesn’t just affect others. The leader who is overly controlling also suffers by carrying too much personal responsibility and becoming stressed. Their high expectations create habitual and unconscious controlling behaviour and they often cannot see the lost opportunities to allow others to rise to a challenge or the negative impact on themselves and others.

Having a low score in controlling thinking and behaviour also has its disadvantages. It translates into weak decision-making which can allow others to take charge inappropriately, leading to a feeling of dis-empowerment and low self-esteem.

People who are centered in controlling thinking and behaviour, as measured by BIAC, have no difficulty in empowering others but are fully capable of being in charge, when required. They ask open-ended questions, genuinely consider opinions of others and remain calmer and more effective in their roles. They are particularly good team leaders and tend to build dynamic and productive departments.

The benefits of great communication skills can’t be over-emphasised. They improve all aspects of working life, contribute to better well-being for everyone and positively effect results.

A final few words from Kevin Sharer (Harvard Business School & former CEO of Amgen).

“The cultural environment, of course, is going to define every aspect of communication. If you’re in a fear-driven, toxic environment, listening is going to be almost impossible, and I’ve been in places like that. Being the CEO, however, means that you can define the culture by whom you pick for positions under you and by the standards you enforce. I’ve always tried to emphasize an environment of partnership, teamwork, trust, and respect—and anyone with a bullying tendency, we fire. Of course, it’s not perfect; we’re human beings. But we try hard to have every aspect of our culture and of the way we operate encourage the sharing of information—to listen to the facts, listen to the logic, and draw well-formed conclusions.”

“…organizations that don’t listen will fail, because they won’t sense a changing environment or requirements or know whether their customers or employees are happy. In an incredibly information-intensive, dynamic environment, you have to listen or else—to mix metaphors—you’re blind.”

Creating and Maintaining Culture: Leadership of Self and Others.

Updated August 3rd 2023

Understanding Personal Values: Responsibility To Ourselves And Others

Since recently writing a blog about why it is important to understand our own personal values before we can live an organisation’s values, I’ve received a lot of comments, both on LinkedIn and in private messages and conversations.

It’s great to hear from so many people who are really thinking about what their values mean to them and are more aware of considering how their own values drive their behavior, decisions and their choices. It’s also super to see that more people are thinking about how important it is to understand ourselves before we can understand or have expectations of other people, teams and organisations. Additionally great to hear and see people considering where their own personal responsibility to their values and the values of the organisation they decide to work with are, rather than looking to blame. It is clear that we still have a way to go on this. People might be less disappointed when they settle into a role if they know how to look for evidence that an organisation and the people in it are really actively looking to live to the espoused values and holding each other accountable to same

Why Have Values Become So Important to Business?

Research shows that when an organisation creates a strong culture by focusing on values and the day-to-day behaviours that align with these values, the result is an increase in employee engagement. This is at least in part because these values are guiding principles for how everyone in the organisation makes decisions, and what they hold each other accountable to in their actions. An organisation cannot implement its stated values if the values and the ensuing behaviours are not fully understood, and supported by the people within the organisation.

As I think I have made clear at this point, many leaders and organisations are ‘missing a trick’ by not helping people understand their own personal values, before they ask them to live the organisation’s values and behaviours, in line with the culture they want to create or maintain.

The call to “bring one’s self to work” with one’s interior value set aligned with the work-place has been found to enhance individual engagement and organisational success. Yet, organisations are comprised of people from a variety of different personal and professional backgrounds, with different personalities. Therefore it cannot be taken for granted that personal and organisational values will fully align. Awareness is the key, as with all success and contentment in life. With awareness comes choice around the decisions we make and the actions we take.

Why Are Values So Important In Leadership?

A huge obstacle to creating and maintaining a culture that works well for all stakeholders is when senior management fail to consistently role-model the values and behaviours that have been agreed upon. I have seen so many examples of this, some of them quite hilarious in an ‘are you serious?!’ kind of way. Like when the head of training at one organisation expected his staff to be customer focused, friendly and proactive but yet he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you?’ to any one of his direct reports, and indeed only did so in the company of his senior peers.

How can we possibly ask other people to live a certain way when we are not willing to ‘walk the talk’?

The 21st century has been plagued with extensive, and disheartening leadership failures. For example, Enron, AIB, Fanny Mae, Northern Rock, FIFA just to name a few. Of course the stories could be told from many different angles but many charismatic, dynamic and seemingly transformational leaders who rose to prominence in both the public and private sectors have shown evidence of moral and ethical deficiencies.

In response and in reaction to ego, corruption and ethical blunders, people have been looking for something else. Leadership and management theorists have more recently placed an emphasis on the importance of ethics and morality in leaders. What has emerged is values based leadership theories.

The key qualities of a values-based leader have been described as;

self-reflection
balance
self-confidence
humility

Values-based leaders align their own values with those of the organisation in which they work. Self-reflection is a discipline in itself and communicating that through behaviour is a skill. Reflection on the self is not always accurate, because as individuals, we have so many blindspots and unconscious bias.

Leaders Must Model Values To Create A Culture

Values based leadership requires leaders to model values. Ciulla (1999) described different leadership styles and their relationship to values and commented on transforming and servant leadership where the leader demonstrates values but also ‘help followers develop their own values’ which fit with those of the organisation in which they work.

It’s up to leaders and managers to live the values and to help their people understand these values. Where many organisations have made mistakes with this, is where a senior team decides the values, stick them up on the walls around the offices and buildings, send an email out, rather than asking for people’s opinion, and then not living the espoused values themselves. Because, the opinion of the employees is not asked for, there is no buy-in and it becomes a wasted exercise and the leadership teams lose the trust of their colleagues, teams and customers.

One considerable difficulty in developing and maintaining a culture where people hold each other accountable to the Values and Behaviours is that there is a presumption that managers have the skills to implement and share them. As stated previously, this requires self awareness. With the levels of stress, mental health issues, and levels of bullying that exists in modern organisations, we have a way to go when it comes to self awareness in our own behavior; what drives us, what blocks us and the personal impact we have on our working relationships.

What one thing can you do to create and maintain an organisational culture that is values based?

Creating And Maintaining Culture: Living The Values And Behaviours.

Updated August 3rd 2023

Why Are Values Important at Work?

I’ve been having many ongoing conversations with clients recently about Culture; the Values and Behaviours that create a culture.

Working with individuals, teams and organisations to help people understand their own values and then exploring what the behaviours are that enable us to live the organisational values is something that consistently enthuses me.

The ah-ha moments that people have when they start to recognise the decisions they are making in their own lives based on the values that they either took for granted, or had never named is often mind-blowing.

The clarity that teams and organisations get from understanding how our values drive the decisions we make; and from naming the behaviours we can hold each other accountable to can be quite enlightening.

What Have Personal Values Got To Do With Work?

Too often, however, I see organisations trying to encourage their employees to live the organisations values without ever having invited the individuals to firstly get clear on what their own personal values are, and secondly investigating whether their personal values align with the organisations values.

Posner (1979, 2012) defines a value as being something that an individual will make a sacrifice to obtain; or a belief upon which a person acts by preference or an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct is personally or socially preferable.

Examples of values (of which there are hundreds at least) are accomplishment, agility, boldness, calmness, health, honesty, integrity, learning, love, playfulness, passion, purposefulness, respect, reliability, rigor….the list goes on and on.

Do We Really Know Our Values and What is Driving Us?

Generally, we take our values for granted and don’t really think about them.

I remember the first time I did a coaching exercise to work out my own personal values, approximately 10 years ago. Listing out the values that were important to me, I realised my top value was ‘freedom’. Suddenly all the decisions I had been making in my life up to that point made sense. I was being driven by my value of freedom, but it wasn’t necessarily bringing me to where I wanted to be in life. I had to become more conscious of the decisions I was making around this top value.

Our values arise from our beliefs. Many of our beliefs come from our society, our parents, our peers. And therefore some of our values might not consciously have been chosen by us personally. It’s therefore important to get clarity on our own values and ask ourselves if we have chosen them, or if they have been passed on to us by others. If we are living our parents’ values, which many of us are, unbeknownst to ourselves, we are potentially going to make decisions, consciously and unconsciously that are not what we actually want for ourselves in life.

How Can I Clarify My Personal Values

I recommend writing a list of your top 10 values in no particular order. Then re-organise the list in order of importance to you, from most important to least important. Identify your top 3 from this ordered list of 10 and ask yourself: “If I lived in an alternative universe, and I could only take these top 3 with me, would they definitely be the ones I would take (knowing I have to leave the other 7 behind)?”. If you are happy that they are the top 3 values that are most important to you, ask yourself: “Am I truly living to these top 3 values, in how I spend my time, and the decisions I make in life and work?”. You might be surprised!

Coming back to what personal values have got to do with work; Gleeson (2017) and Branson(2008) argue that the failure to align staff and organisational values removes the bedrock, the very foundation upon which all truly successful organisational operate and on which organisational change depends. This can cause a wide range of staff disengagement behaviours, most noticeably when there is a failure of the necessary two-way relationship between employee and employer. So, let’s look at this in more detail next time!

Change Is All Around Us!

Update August 3rd 2023

Change is all around us!

In a world where things seem to be changing faster than ever before, you may find yourself, like me, struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of developments in technology, global politics, and more. However, you should take comfort in knowing that our brains have evolved to adapt and re-adapt to this ever-changing environment we live in.

When we focus on learning new things or new ways of doing things, our brains grow. The size of the cortex, the length of neurons, the number of synapses, and the level of neurotransmitters and growth hormones increases. So we can make ourselves brainier, as such!

The ability to learn is dependent on modification of the brain’s chemistry and architecture, in a process called “neural plasticity”.

What is “neural plasticity” or “neuroplasticity”.?

Neural plasticity reflects the ability of neurons to change their structure and relationships to one another in an experience-dependent manner according to environmental demands. It means that everything you think you know and feel now, can change for better or worse depending on what you focus on.

How can we make it attractive to learn?

There are many ways to make it attractive to learn. Here are two suggestions:

1) Recognize the importance of learning for the longevity of your memory: Reading Norman Doidge’s book “The Brain That Changes Itself ” will inspire you.

2) Think back to when you were a child. Many of us liked making up stories and playing games together and generally using your imagination. This is how we learned as children, and believe it or not, this is how we learn as adults. Learning needs to be engaging, fun and full of “imagining the possibilities”. Experts and researchers (e.g. Caine and Caine, 1990) all over the world have found that brains grow best in the context of interactive discovery and through the co-creation of stories, that shape and support memories of what is being learned. Learning together in teams and groups therefore has a lot of benefits and long-term impact.

As adults it’s easy to get stuck thinking, “you can’t teach and old dog new tricks’. Actually we can learn new things; it just takes a more concerted effort than when we were children. What can you do today to help your brain learn and adapt and have some fun doing it?

The Power Of Mental Practice In developing Your Communication Skills

Updated 3rd August 2023

Want to hear something that I have always found intriguing?

You can grow your brain by simply imagining yourself practicing a skill, without ACTUALLY physically practicing that skill. Many studies have found mental practice to be nearly as effective as physical practice for skills from types of shots taken in basketball and golf, to movement accuracy and velocity in pianists, to technical skills in novice surgeons.

For example, Pascual-Leone et al (1995a) conducted transcranial magnetic stimulation study (TMS – used clinically to measure activity and function of specific brain circuits), which showed that imagined practice (in this case of a piano sequence) led to comparable expansion of cortical premotor areas responsible for controlling the fingers as actual physical practice.

So you don’t even have to actually move a finger to get the neurons communicating and neural pathways forming!

Athletes have known for years that visualization techniques (otherwise known as mental practice or mental imagery) improve performance, motivation and focus. Many athletes also use visualization to manage and reduce anxiety. This has now filtered into the business and the corporate world. Many highly successful people attribute their achievements to integrating this kind of neural influence with appropriate action. For example, research has shown that self-efficacy is significantly higher and communication skills improved in supervisors, when mental practice is used in combination with goal setting as a post-training intervention.

In case these terms are new to you, visualization refers to creating a picture in your mind of what you want to happen in reality. It can also be a ‘stepping into’ the feeling you would feel both during the unfolding of the goal and at its culmination. While imagining a scenario, you imagine the detail of the actions and the way it feels to perform in the desired way. This mental rehearsal helps minds and bodies to become trained to actually perform the skill imagined.

Beware though, the feeling throughout the process has to be as much as possible conducive to what is desired, otherwise it can hinder the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome. Focus on what you do want, rather than what you don’t want!

When It Comes To Leadership, Your Development Can Accelerate Through Curiosity

Updated August 2nd 2023

How Curious are you about things?

A conversation I often find myself having in my work with people and teams, is around questions and general curiosity. Have you ever noticed how you make assumptions about other people and about yourself and that you make statements when people come to you with problems, rather than asking questions?

When we were children we asked open-ended questions all the time. For example; ‘Why?’, ‘What’s that?’, ‘When are we going?’ As adults, we largely lose the ability to ask questions and to be truly curious. I used to wonder if this was because of the experiences the world provided us with, including the impact of being embedded in formal education! I also wondered if we used our curiosity less, because it is too important for our survival in the workplace and other areas to appear like we know more than we do.

I have since learned that there is more than meets the eye with curiosity!

When we consider how the brain works there is a very good reason why, as adults, we become less curious.

The area of the brain (prefrontal cortex: PFC), that is the most recent to evolve and is the area that is jutting out in our skull at our forehead, is the region of the brain that filters our actions. Cognitive processes – including reasoning, problem-solving, planning, carrying out new and goal-directed patterns of behaviour, inhibitory control, sustained attention and decision-making – takes place here. And it is the area of the brain that allows us to read and react to social cues in everyday interactions, to use language fluently and to regulate, or manage, our emotions (Siddiqui et al., 2008).

The PFC occupies one-third of the entire human cerebral cortex and is one of the final cortical regions to undergo full myelination (The myelin sheath is a protective membrane that wraps around part of certain nerve cells, and affects how fast signals travel through those nerve cells) during adolescence and young adulthood in the human (Fuster, 1997; Anderson, et al., 2001). The PFC also interacts with our limbic system. The limbic system is where our emotions and memories are housed. During adolescence significant changes occur in the limbic system, which may impact self-control, decision making, emotions, and risk-taking behaviours.

For those of us who were risk-takers when we were younger, or who currently have teenage children who are taking risks and making decisions that we don’t understand, the above piece of science will not be a surprise.

If the area of the brain that enables us to perform diverse cognitive processes, for example, to inhibit our behaviours is only fully developed late into adolescence/early adulthood, then it makes sense that we stop asking so many questions and being curious in adulthood compared to when we are children, because we are in ways more “rational” as adults and expected to be more “rational”.

But that doesn’t mean that it serves us well to be less curious as adults. Just because our brain is fully formed, does not mean that all the assumptions that we make about situations and people are useful, or that the decisions we make are the best ones for ourselves or others. The processing of the interaction between the PFC and the limbic system is happening unconsciously, and therefore we are not aware of how our memories and our emotions are ruling the assumptions we make, and how we make decisions and how we are problem-solving in situations and with other people.

As there is so much information coming towards us every second of the day, a brain must make shortcuts, and so it relies on what it already knows instead of expending energy and attempting to look at things in a different way. Our entire nervous system is focused on keeping us safe and so it will do whatever it needs to do to fulfil that job; to keep us safe is a better bet for the brain and body, than to be actively curious, which means taking risks.

Learning triggers neuronal changes in the brain that contribute to information acquisition and memory formation, including the activity and strength of existing synapses, the formation of new synapses, and possibly the birth of new neurons. Being curious, for example, asking ourselves and others questions gives us a moment of reflection time that enables learning.

What if we could start asking questions and getting curious again more regularly, like we did when we were children?

If we focus on asking a colleague more open-ended questions rather than providing them with the solution, we open the opportunity for them to reflect. While reflecting they will use more areas of their brain and they are more likely to have insight. In turn their brain becomes more focused and motivated to solve the problem, or to carry through on their own insight to the problem. By asking more open-ended questions we help that person’s brain to create more connections between neurons, and therefore we are influencing their learning just very simply through asking the question rather than providing the solution,

In becoming more curious and asking more open-ended questions, we engage the people we work with in a way that is conducive to high performance. They will likely come up with a better solution to the challenge than we had thought of. Through genuine curiosity, which is supported in our communication through open-ended questions, we can together become more creative in our approaches and make more effective decisions.

I don’t like to prescribe open-ended questions, as every situation and person is different. Just focus on questions that begin with words such as ‘What…?’, ‘How…?’, ‘Which…?, ‘When…?

Here are a few examples:

‘What do we already know about this?’
‘How does… affect…?’
‘What alternative ways of looking at this are there?’
‘Who benefits from this?’
‘What could we assume?’
‘How did you choose those assumptions?’
‘What do you think causes…?’
‘Which implications are important to consider…?’

In my experience with individuals, teams and organisations, one of the hallmarks of a true leader, is having the COURAGE to be CURIOUS! It takes practice for most of us. I have seen the fruits of it over and over again. See if you can ask more open-ended questions this week, and see where it takes you?

Changing Your Habits? Focus On The Gains, Visualise The Outcomes.

Updated August 2nd 2023

It’s difficult to change old ingrained habits, isn’t it? To create a hunger for change, we need to be clear on what the benefits of changing our behaviour will be.

Kahneman and Tversky, two of the most famous of modern psychologists are well known for the theory of “loss aversion”. This refers to people’s strong preference for minimising losses over acquiring gains. People in fact prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. For example, it’s better to not lose 5 euro than to find 5 euro. We feel almost twice the emotion over a loss as opposed to a gain.

Changing how we do things in life and work can be challenging in three ways; firstly, the loss of the familiar is immediate and significant (this is usually experienced as a negative effect); secondly, the gain is distant in both time and in relation to self; and thirdly the so-called gain is really more abstract than real, meaning that incentive to pursue the change is not optimum.

This dynamic plays out in all changes we attempt to make and at all levels in a business setting. (e.g. reducing a behaviour that saves the business money in the long-term) because doing things a different way can often be associated with loss.

This means that to help us make change, we often need to be supported in thinking bigger or differently for ourselves. And as we know, in our busy lives, there isn’t always time to think about this.

Imagined outcomes are really important. It’s been shown that the brain makes connections between things that happen in real time and predictions of possible outcomes. The neural wiring blends together what is currently happening with the imagined predictions. In this way, the brain weaves its own explanation, or interpretation, of reality and this can be used as the basis of new habit and skills formation. Fundamentally, belief in the outcome significantly raises the likely hood of that outcome or behaviour associated occurring, be that outcome/behaviour positive or negative.

What are you afraid of losing? Could you practice visualising the outcomes you desire to get your brain focused on the wins? Hopefully just being more conscious of our brain and body’s strong preference for minimising losses over acquiring gains can help you to get back on the change train!

The Importance Of Sleep For Staff Development & Healthy Aging.

Updated August 2nd 2023

Many of us are bringing our work home with us, whether actively working at home or just thinking about it.

As mentioned in our piece last week, Norman Doidge’s book ‘The brain that changes itself’ (2007) is a truly inspiring collection of studies, real life examples and conclusions on the mould-ability of the brain.

It turns the traditional thinking that the capacity of the brain is fixed on its head and shows how the brain can reorganize itself and make new neural connections throughout life. Rather than being hardwired and wearing out with age, the brain is at your disposal to use and grow to YOUR benefit, and to promote mental longevity.

The only thing is, many of us are living lives that cause our brains to age quickly. For example, many people boast that they don’t need much sleep and many other people I know do not prioritize it because many work late into the evenings and therefore find it difficult to get the brain to shut off once they get into bed. Of course, having young children and many other things can get in the way of sleep, and often cannot be avoided. But long-term it’s imperative you don’t let the brief hours of sleep continue.

During sleep we discharge toxins from the brain include flushing out amyloid proteins in the brain (bad sleep increases levels of some proteins, such as amyloid that have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease). During sleep, we also regulate hormones that are responsible for satiety and hunger. Anyone who’s ever had a flu or a bad cold, knows how sleep helps recover our immune system, and this recovery is taking place either way, daily as our system is met with so many germs. Sleep also consolidates our memories and enhances our creativity. Are you getting enough sleep?

If you are not sleeping enough each night, which includes relaxing the brain well before you actually get into bed, then you are going to be less alert the next day, impacting your productivity, your relationships and your long-term health.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Over the coming weeks, we are releasing little snippets and tips from our upcoming Habit Change book and sending them out to you. We would love to hear your thoughts on these, if any of them resonate with you or make you think differently about your current actions, we would love to hear from you about it.

Interview With Adaptas CEO, Dr. Celine Mullins