The past year and a half has truly changed the landscape of modern working culture forever. What we have come to learn is that coming into the office is no longer necessary, as people can efficiently and effectively complete their work from home. Productivity increases with a new work-life balance that eliminates wasted time commuting and enabling more efficient self-organisation – these are both great drivers for higher quality performance. Many organisations have implemented hybrid working on account of this realisation.
Knowing that hybrid working is here to stay, it is important that we successfully navigate this unchartered territory. There is a salient need for leaders to deploy their soft skills rather than hard skills, as studies have shown they boost employee retention, engagement and job satisfaction (Zamolo, 2020). Here are three ways you can effectively manage a hybrid workforce by using your soft skills.
Communication
One of the biggest challenges to hybrid work is communication. Poor communication results in lack of productivity and inefficiency due to people not having the knowledge they need to carry out tasks. On account of the introduction to hybrid working, there will be a natural disconnect between those working from home and those who work in the office. Furthermore, those who work remotely may feel like they do not have the same resources at their disposal in comparison to their in-office counterparts.
How can we bridge this disconnect?
1) Make sure everyone is included and visible – The onus is on the manager to ensure that tasks are delegated evenly and appropriately between all staff, regardless of work location. It is also crucial to have regular check-ins with remote staff, as naturally you won’t have as much access to them as you would in-office staff.
2) Lead with Empathy – Actively listen to your team in check-ins, look out for signs that they may be struggling with their mental health and offer to support them in any way you can.
3) In ambiguous times that lack clarity, make sure you are being clear – say what you mean and mean what you say. Be concise with the message you are trying to convey.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is paramount when managing a hybrid workforce. One upside of the pandemic is that organisations have become more invested in the wellbeing of their staff. Developing your EQ will help you in understanding how yourself and your team are feeling.
There are a number of ways you can develop your EQ at work:
1) Collaborate and delegate
2) Do regular EQ assessments
3) Practice acceptance
4) Journal
5) Schedule time for learning
6) Explore your ‘Why’
Build Trust and Psychological Safety
Because team members are working in dissimilar situations, with differing levels of autonomy, ability to socialise and access to the team leader, it is imperative to ensure that all team members are treated equally and fairly, regardless of their work location.
Here are three ways we can build trust and psychological safety within the parameters of a hybrid work environment.
1) Level the playing field – It is important to make sure there is a sense of cohesion within the hybrid work environment and not an ‘us versus them’ mentality amongst the in-office and remote staff. Make sure an even distribution of time and resources are allocated to everyone regardless of work location.
2) Discover their preferred working styles – Find out what is working for your team and what is not. This is not solely about preferences for remote or in-office work. It can pertain to things like preferred level of autonomy, ways to communicate with you (email, phone, chat or video) to something as simple as what times of the day they are most effective and/or most creative, so you can schedule meetings and calls accordingly. Set up regular one-on-ones and check-ins around their schedule and preferences, rather than yours.
3) Discover new team rituals – To cultivate trust and psychological safety, team norms and rituals must be put in place. These can help to reinforce the team identity and cohesion, so that each team member feels included regardless of whether they work remotely or in-office. This may look like a zoom drinks or quiz, or an employee of the month award ceremony.
Key takeaways
1) Employees can work effectively from home – so hybrid working will be a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future
2) Soft skills are crucial when managing a team
3) Effectively communicate – inclusion and visibility of all employees, lead with empathy and be clear and concise
4) Work on your EQ by collaborating and delegating, taking regular EQ tests, journaling and scheduling time for learning
5) Build Psychological safety and trust by making sure all team members get equal opportunity regardless of location, discover your team’s preferred working styles and implement new team rituals
I’ve been having a lot of conversations about leadership and vulnerability recently.
The word ‘vulnerability’ raises so many objections. Many people who are leading others are terrified that if they show any vulnerability it will make them seem weak.
What is Vulnerability?
Brené Brown defines vulnerability as ‘uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure’.
And leadership is all about uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.
Leadership and vulnerability have a lot in common!
The Link Between Vulnerability & Leadership
Just like vulnerability, leadership requires us to step up, step forward, constantly stepping out of our comfort zones.
“Vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage.” —Brene Brown
Most of us were brought up to believe it’s not okay to admit weakness. However, we can see everywhere the most authentic leaders are the ones we admire. Authenticity requires developing true self-awareness.
This takes courage and can be challenging, and sometimes painful. In developing self-awareness, we have to admit all sorts of things to ourselves. Transformation cannot exist without courage. Courage, in turn, requires vulnerability. That is, an openness to uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. Much of the literature and research relating to creativity and innovation in organisations shows successful results from cultures where ‘risk taking (within safe boundaries) is encouraged and where there is an acceptance that not all innovation will be successful.’
This type of culture enables ‘psychological safety, such that staff feel confident speaking out about errors, problems and
uncertainties and feel empowered and supported to develop and implement ideas for new and improved ways of delivering services.’ Psychological safety evolves when leaders display vulnerability. Otherwise it will never feel okay for others to make mistakes and admit uncertainties.
When we talk about vulnerability in leadership, the objection is often the fear of having to expose our deepest and darkest fears. However, this is not the expectation.
For example, vulnerability can simply be any and all of the following three:
1. Admit you don’t have all the answers. This encourage others to share their ideas.
2. Share that you have struggled with something in the past and what you did to rectify that struggle. This encourages growth mindset and openness to learning in others.
3. Discuss what is important to you – your values. This will help others to share their values and recognise you all have more in common than it may seem.
Is doing any of the above weak? I don’t think so.
Try ‘vulnerability’ on and let us know how it goes for you…
Imagine if I proposed that the absence of a vital element could render all the investments your company makes in employee learning and development futile, both in terms of time and money.
A recent conversation with a friend got me thinking about this problem.
During a zoom lunch date (one of the things I am doing to give myself some work-life balance while working from home),
I asked her what she had going on at work that afternoon.
Her face shifted to irritation and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, she said:
“Ugh, we have another training workshop… this time on motivation during Covid-19. I could not be bothered.”
As a performance psychologist I am fascinated by motivation and so this statement made me laugh. I was immediately reminded that we should never assume people are interested in the same things as us!
Further questioning clarified that my friend had been subjected to lecture-style training sessions with little interaction and no opportunity to apply what she was being taught. These sessions felt like a waste of time to her, and in fact they were, because afterwards she never felt able to implement the knowledge.
The Power of Habits
We now know that at least 40% of our daily actions are habits. Habits are a combination of automatic
thoughts, sub-conscious reactions and established routines. The longer we have been following these
routines, the harder they are to change. Even when we have the desire and the best intentions to
change, the sheer strength of our established neural pathways pull us back to our old ways of doing
things. When we don’t understand the processes behind this, we are left feeling powerless to make our
desired changes a reality. This feeling of powerlessness feeds a fixed mindset, which whispers to us
there is no point in trying hard to change as it won’t make any difference.
But why is learning such a struggle?
Implementing new learning is, at its essence, a struggle against our established habits. It requires a
strong clarity of what you are looking to change and the sheer discipline of repeatedly choosing a new
way of acting or thinking until it becomes your new habit or way of being. Contrary to previous research
which suggested it takes 21 days to form a new habit, we know now that this process can take anything from 3 weeks to
to six months, depending on our focus, determination and how our individual brain works.
So, the problem is this: learning and development training can be waste of time and money if we do not
give people the tools to understand their own learning, take control of their behaviour and implement
what they have learned.
Figuring out how to do exactly that is a priority at Adaptas. As a team, we teach learning and habit
change as a core element in all our training, from presentation skills to higher business performance. We
have seen the benefits of this approach, with clients often reporting back to us that through
understanding their own learning and habit change challenges they were able to take control of their
choices and behaviours and make long-term, impactful changes in work and in life.
The crucial ingredient, as we see it, is habit change.
Anyone who has set, worked towards, and eventually gave up on a new year’s resolution knows that behaviour change is not easy.
We set out with the best of intentions and yet the drag of our established habits inevitably pulls us back into our old way of doing things. Habits sit at the foundation of our daily behaviour. When you look at this process closely, you see that successful behaviour change and learning comes down to successful habit change.
At Adaptas, we incorporate habit change education into all our workshops so that our clients can learn how to create long-term lasting changes and experience the benefits of positive, constructive thoughts and behaviours at work and in life. Through this work we notice that by learning how to effectively change their habits, our clients experience a host of often unexpected, exciting side effects.
Positive Thought. The way we think about ourselves comes down to habit, just like the time we wake up in the morning. Through habit change education, our clients learn to recognise and disrupt negative thought patterns. They often report to us that they feel lighter, are more content and experience enhanced enjoyment of work and general life.
Supportive Beliefs. Our beliefs about ourselves and the world are formed through habitual thought and behaviour. Challenging and changing habits around unsupportive beliefs can completely change someone’s life. Building supportive beliefs allows our clients to move away from fear-based decision making and this can have a hugely positive impact on happiness and performance.
Increased Confidence. Clients often tell us they experience a sensation of increased control over their choices, environment and emotions as a result of understanding habit change. This has a positive impact on their self-confidence as they feel better equipped to deal with challenging situations at work and in their personal lives.
Increased curiosity. Habit change work conditions us to continuously ask ourselves questions about our thoughts and behaviours. This results in enhanced self-awareness and a sense of curiosity about our own learning and potential. Approaching problems from a state of curiosity, rather than fear increases creative problem solving for our clients.
Reduced stress and anxiety. Habit change teaches us about how fear and anxiety is hard-wired in our brains as a form of self-protection. Understanding this process, recognising triggers and learning how to move our thoughts away from our flight or fight response gives our clients the power to reduce their anxious responses with time and practice.
In short, habit change is about so much more than performance. At Adaptas we believe that understanding habit change is a key ingredient to building a happier, healthier life at work and at home. Let’s get started!
Values are a buzz word these days, but what are they, really? They are identified with single words like honesty, integrity and loyalty. But even with those words to hand, we can struggle to get a handle on what a value is and what it means to us.
Often the serious ones come to mind first. These are sometimes the values we are taught to hold by our families, communities and jobs, values that are heralded in films, love stories and fairy tales. These values are valid, but do they truly represent what is most important to us? What about adventure or enthusiasm? What about stability or calmness, compassion, brilliance or wonder?
Let’s take a quick look inside an Adaptas workshop on values.
A group of coaches-in-training sit with pen and paper in hand. You can feel the pensive nature of everyone’s thoughts as they sift through the layers of words representing the many values they have heard of, taken on board or dismissed over the years. Which ones are mine? Which are the most important to me?
When they are done, each list is as unique as the individual themselves. The next step is to get to know their chosen values a little more personally. Choosing one of their top three values, everyone goes through a short interview process that allows them to dig into what that value is for them. What does it look like? Feel like? What does that value like and dislike? How does that value help? How does it hinder? Thirty minutes later our trainee coaches are deep in conversation. Someone had a burst of realisation at the end of her interview: she wasn’t living to her chosen value as closely as she thought. Another individual reflects on the contradictory nature of two of his values and shares that understanding this has illuminated the contradictions in some of his decision making.
“I find that the ‘ah-ha’ moments that people have, come in when they start to recognise the decisions they are making in their own lives based on values that they either took for granted, or had never named. And it is often a mind-blowing moment. This is because, generally, we take our values for granted and don’t really think about them.”
Dr. Celine Mullins
Orienting to our values can be a powerful source of motivation and clarity. Conflicts are often based in opposing values and by understanding our own values we can find more empathy for the other person’s values and perspective. Difficult decisions can be made clearer by following the guiding light of what is truly important to us. Here at Adaptas, we think and talk about values a lot and we encourage you to do the same!
You never know, there could be some interesting self-discovery waiting just around the corner.
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.
‘Immersive Sales Star’ is an IITD Training Award winner.
Institute of Training & Development, National Training Awardsis 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”
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!
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?
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.
Every January, it seems the world at large, puts themselves under huge pressure to force habit change and adopt unrealistic RESOLUTIONS. By middle to late January, the feeling of disappointment is epidemic.
This series of short and simple blogs hopes to tap into a few key tips to help you understand how your brain actually works in creating habit change in your life.
Understanding the Power of your Brain.
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 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 for better or worse depending on what you focus on.
It’s easy to think of the brain as being responsible for processing information and problem solving but not always as obvious how much it controls our habits and behaviour too. In all areas of its capacity, it is not a static quantity. It can be grown and shaped deliberately.
How Can We Engage Our Minds to Make the Best Use of Our Brain?
Here are a few tips for you.
Concentrate on what is working and the motivation will naturally follow.
Set bite-sized goals (chunking down). When we break goals or jobs into bite-sized pieces, the memory of the ‘job’ is not so bad and we are happier to take on the task again and again.
Keep doing it until it becomes habit. If you are having fun and chunking things down, new habits (e.g. going to the gym) will become easier to repeat.
Keep self-judgement to a minimum. If you do fall off the wagon with a change or a new habit, don’t give yourself a hard time. Negative self-chat imprisons you in your own fear and makes it difficult to take action to get back on track again.
I had an interesting encounter recently with a Managing Director, let’s call him Dom. I wanted to find out how he manages difficult conversations and communicates with his staff.
“Having difficult conversations? Listening to people? Why do I need to?” asks Dom.
“How have you survived this long without having these conversations, with a business that is 12 years old and has grown to over 100 people?” I ask.
“I delegate all difficult conversations” he says.
“Wow, that is some expertise in delegation!” I respond.
If this ‘delegating conversations’ was unusual, it would not be all that useful for me to write about and for you to read. At least he is being honest. It is often only when I ask people to give me examples of difficult conversations they have had or need to have, that it transpires they have been avoiding having many, many, many conversations they should have been having all along. My experience, as well as research, shows that not having these conversations results in lack of clarity, lack of follow through and a general disengagement by employees.
Did you know, that 1 in 2 people leave their job to get away from their manager?
Did you know that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores?
Did you know that employees whose managers excel at performance management activities are more engaged than employees whose managers struggle with these same tasks.?
And did you know that, clear & consistent communication — whether it occurs in person, over the phone or electronically – is 1 of the main ingredients connected to higher engagement?
Dom and I engaged in a role-play exercise, simulating a conversation that Dom had been avoiding for quite some time. Having already practiced various scenarios with his colleagues, Dom understood the importance of being an attentive listener in this particular conversation. However, during our role-play, I noticed that he appeared to be listening while only pretending to do so. Although he asked relevant questions (which is often half the battle), it was evident to me, and therefore would most likely be evident to others, that his attention was not fully engaged. Perhaps his position as the MD and the support he receives from his senior team allowed him to get away with it so far, but the consequences are becoming apparent. Dom realizes that he must address this issue promptly to prevent potential problems. He can no longer delegate important conversations; his colleagues have reached their limit.
Of course, it is everyone’s responsibility to have conversations. If you would like to consider whether you are asking questions and actually listening, see some more blogs on this topic below:
