Optimism And Acceptance Mindset Series: Blog 2

Welcome to Blog 2 in the 2-part Optimism and Acceptance Mindset Blog Series. My name is Quincy McNamara, I work with Adaptas and I’m currently undertaking a Master’s Degree in Organisational Psychology. Blog 1 in this series focused on introducing the ‘Optimism and Acceptance Mindset’ (If you missed it, you can find it here). The current blog includes actionable tips in adopting this Mindset successfully.

Meditate

If you do a ten-minute meditation, spend five minutes practicing gratitude for who and what you are thankful for in your life, and five minutes acknowledging how you are feeling, without labelling it as good or bad.

As for the benefits of gratitude meditation specifically, one study (O’Leary & Dockray, 2015) found that practicing gratitude meditation four times a week for three weeks (along with keeping a gratitude diary) led to reduced levels of stress and depression, as well as increased levels of happiness and optimism.

Noting how you feel during meditation will help to build acceptance. Learning to accept your thoughts or feelings in the moment without labelling them as good or bad increases resilience, which is imperative to have when life may take a turn for the worst.

Practice Acceptance

Practice acceptance next time a difficult situation that is beyond your control presents itself. Instead of labelling the situation as good or bad, simply acknowledge what happened and move on. Your energy and time are your most valuable reserves, don’t waste either trying to change that of which you can’t control. As previously mentioned, acceptance will build your resilience to life’s difficult circumstances and challenges.

Keep a humour journal

A review of the literature around laughter has indicated that laughing increases optimism and life satisfaction whilst decreasing stress.

To this end, write down three things everyday that made you laugh. This will change the way you perceive the world around you, allowing you to be more upbeat and not take life so seriously.

Take risks

Optimists are known to be big risk takers; we can’t expect quality results unless we take risks. Becoming less risk-averse will open your mind to the world of opportunity that is right in front of you.

Understandably, risk-taking is a frightening concept to some. To clarify, we aren’t advising you to go skydiving or cliff jumping, but we are advising you to take baby steps when it comes to taking risks. It can be something as simple as taking a different route to work, or cooking a new dish.

You may ask yourself where to start when taking risks – here are three things you can do to help you along the way:

1) Assess the risk. We can do this by writing out a list of pros and cons. This will determine whether or not the risk is worth taking.

2) Move past the fear of failure. This fear will stunt us from ever making the move to take a risk in the first place, and will ultimately hinder our potential growth.

3) Think about the upside: If we are successful, we reap the rewards, if we are not, we learn.

If you are struggling with your mindset, you may think bridging the gap between where you are currently and adopting an optimism and acceptance mindset is no easy feat. However, if you do these three things consistently you will most definitely be on your way to experiencing a tangible shift in the way you perceive the world around you.

Work Engagement: Your Organisation’s Superpower

What is it?

According to Psychologists Bakker and Schaufelli, work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind characterized by vigour, dedication and absorption. What does this mean?

1) Vigour – People are energetic and have the capacity and will to fully invest and immerse themselves in their work.

2) Dedication – People are passionate and enthused about their work.

3) Absorption – People are completely engrossed in their work activities.

Why it matters

The results are in – there is a salient need for engagement within organisations. A recent Gallup study found that organisations who have engaged employees are four times more profitable than those who do not. How is this so? Engagement brings higher ownership, which can foster entrepreneurial thinking to drive innovation, continuous improvement and increased customer satisfaction. Highly engaged employees also think of novel ways to improve how we work and service customers. A further benefit of employee engagement is higher job satisfaction, which in turn keeps attrition rates low.

Given the value of employee engagement, how can we engage our team?

Two effective ways of engaging our team is through self-determination theory and job crafting.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT)

Renowned and revered Psychologists, Deci and Ryan, coined the theory of motivation known as SDT. This is a theory that claims people will become self-motivated if their needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness are met.

Let’s break this down:

As a leader, we can raise employee engagement by means of ensuring our employees’ needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness are met. Here are three examples:

1) Competence – Provide extensive training for your team so that they feel fully confident in their competence. Cultivating a culture of learning has been shown to boost employee engagement.

2) Autonomy – Allow your team a certain amount of freedom and space to make decisions around how they complete their work. Ask them what medium of communication they prefer – email, Whatsapp or phone calls?

3) Relatedness – You can make sure your teams’ need for relatedness is met by creating regular opportunities for feedback and encouraging employees to speak candidly. You may also organise team activities to boost social connections such as a zoom quiz or meal out.

Job Crafting

The second way in which we can boost engagement is through job crafting. This is a concept whereby we alter (or add to) certain elements of our role when we feel we need a change.

To increase work engagement within your team, you can speak to them about the possibility of crafting their job. There are three different types of job crafting: task crafting, relationship crafting and cognitive crafting.

1) Task crafting – This can involve adding or dropping certain responsibilities outlined in the job description in order to shape or mold the role to fit the employees’ needs. For example, an employee could offer to take over the organisation’s social media accounts.

2) Relationship crafting – This involves the employee altering the people they interact with within their role. This may look like creating interdepartmental relationships or task forces.

3) Cognitive crafting – The employee changes the way they look at or interpret the tasks they’re responsible for, such as focusing on appreciating their contribution to the big picture of the organisation’s mission.

Key takeaways

1) Work engagement is a positive work-related state of mind characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption.

2) It’s important because it boosts productivity, revenue and job satisfaction whilst lowering attrition rates.

3) Engagement can be achieved through implementing Self-Determination Theory and allowing your team to job craft.

4) Engage your team by ensuring their needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness are met.

5) Allow your team to job craft if they feel they need a change.

6) Explore with your team the three different types of job crafting – task crafting, relationship crafting and cognitive crafting.

How Soft Skills Can Help Us Manage A Hybrid Workforce

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

Embedding Learning When Change and Adaptation Is More Important Than Ever!

Updated August 17th 2023

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.

See more about learning and habit change in Celine’s book ‘Our Learning Brain’.

The Unexpected Side Effects of 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!

Are Your Beliefs Stifling Your Confidence at Work?

In our careers, success and confidence often seem inextricably linked. This can be stressful as confidence is a tricky thing to hold on to. Too often we allow our confidence to be dictated by the events and people around us.

Here at Adaptas, we believe the missing piece is the understanding that confidence is something we control for ourselves.

At its essence, confidence is a sense of “sureness.” Feeling sure that we are equal to the task at hand. This sureness comes from preparation and deep-seated beliefs about ourselves. Confidence is not the complete absence of fear, worry or self-doubt. When we are trying to feel more confident, we often focus on technical preparation, failing to tackle the core beliefs that are fuelling our feelings of self-doubt in the first place. Why? Because they are big, intimidating things to tackle, and because sometimes we aren’t aware of them. Here is the problem: if we don’t tackle the beliefs, we can get stuck in a long game of bluffing ourselves and playing a part, all the time feeling like an impostor.

Our core beliefs act as a life blueprint. Forming the foundations of how we interpret the world, core beliefs shape how we react to success and struggle and the way that we see and understand our thoughts and actions within the context of our lives. Sound a little complicated? Well, it is! It can be tricky to identify our core beliefs and understand how they are influencing us. The best place to start is by analysing the thoughts that pop into your head un-invited.

“I won’t be able to answer the questions they ask me at the end of the presentation.”

“I don’t know enough about ________ to be in this meeting.”

“I am terrible at speaking in front of people.”

These unhelpful thoughts are little clues to the core beliefs that are creating them. Identify a negative thought and ask yourself: why do I think this? Follow the thought back into your mind. You’ll know when you stumble across a core belief because it will feel 100% true, even if you wish it didn’t.

I am stupid.

I am not good enough.

I don’t deserve success.

We call these types of negative core beliefs ‘Limiting Beliefs’ because they prevent you from reaching your full potential and they are not true. They feel true but they are not. These beliefs are a habitual way of thinking about yourself, built on faulty information. Like all habits, they can be changed. Our workshops build confidence by guiding participants through the process of confronting and changing their limiting beliefs around important work-related behaviours, while also teaching the tricks and tools of long-term habit change. This empowers our clients to continue the process of developing their confidence long after the workshop is over.

A Look Inside An Adaptas Workshop On VALUES

Updated August 3rd 2023

Values

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.

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/

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!

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?

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.

Optimism And Acceptance Mindset Series: Blog 2