Connect 2017: Brain Hacks www.totem-consulting.com hello@totem-consulting.com 0345 548 6836 Studio 36 88-90 Hatton Garden London EC1N 8PG
Connect 2017: Brain Hacks How does your brain work? And what if knowing how it works meant that you could make it work better for you? Research published in 2016 shows that teaching people about how their brains work results in better personal effectiveness and people management. When we understand how to use our brains and how to make the best of the brains in our teams, we have better conversations, structure work in a more brain-friendly way and achieve more. Let’s spend some time getting to know our brains and making the best use of them. Starting with something positive, what are you really pleased about? What has happened in your life over the past week or so that you feel good about? Someone you feel proud of? An achievement you’re happy with? That’s the first insight about our brains – that when we use them to remember and reflect over things that make us feel good, well, big surprise, we feel good. But this is worth much more to you than just some ‘ warm and fuzzies. ’ Feeling good leads to the brain also feeling safe – and that is critical. When we feel safe our thinking and creativity is far higher, enabling better problem solving and more effective working. Let’s go back to basics – there are two critical things you need to know about the brain in order to make the most of it: The number one priority for our brains is survival The brain is like plastic, it is mouldable, we can change, we can learn, we can grow totem-consulting.com 0345 54 86836 hello@totem-consulting.com
Connect 2017: Brain Hacks The number one priority for our brains is survival Our brain’s fight flight or freeze reaction is not limited to physical threats. In fact, the brain cannot tell the difference between Argh!! – lion running at me, looking like it’s going to kill me! And Argh!! – I’ve got to have a difficult conversation that I feel really uncomfortable about!! So what happens during that ‘under threat’ reaction – whether it is a physical threat to our safety of the less severe concern about difficult conversations, deadlines, change at work or something else we feel really uncomfortable with? There are lots of changes in our brain and body chemicals and muscle readiness, but the main thing we need to know for do ing a half decent job at work is that our IQ, that’s our intelligence and rea soning ability, drops by 10- 20%. There is a crisis in the business and we need our people to do their best thinking so that we can get out of this mess in the best way possible, so we book meetings to tell people about the disaster and ask them to solve problems and create solutions. Only because we started with the threat and the bad news, we have just lost 10-20% of their creative genius. We need instead to create a safe, positive environment for our brains to do their best thinking. What could you do, to make your meetings, offices and 1:1 conversations more conducive to effective thinking? You could start a meeting with “what’s gone well this week?” or “what are we most prou d of in our team? ” Starting on a positive is not just some soft and fluffy exercise, it puts the brain into a good state for good quality thinking. totem-consulting.com 0345 54 86836 hello@totem-consulting.com
Connect 2017: Brain Hacks But the negative effects of pressure on our brains needs exploring further. Did you know your brain experiences social rejection in the same way as physical pain? That means that the various socially awkward moments at work, from being blanked or talked over in a meeting to a leader clearly having favourites, being passed over for promotion and hearing someone has said something negative about us behind our backs – all are experienced like pain. We would never allow physical harm to be caused in our workplaces, yet for the brain, that is exactly what is happening on a daily basis. Look at the brain scan of someone experiencing rejection or loss and it will look very similar to the brain scan of someone experiencing physical pain. And what happens following that experience? The brain perceives a threat (related to our pack mentality, it’s important to be part of the in- crowd for safety), so we’re right back into reduc ed IQ: general intelligence and reasoning ability dropping by 10-20%. We also see in people experiencing social rejection, a tendency towards more aggressive behaviour and less staying power with difficult tasks. This could mean that if you have people in your business who are feeling cast out by their team, if the boss picks favourites or there is so much competitive drive that someone feels like a loser, then the cost of that culture could be that you are draining your talent. totem-consulting.com 0345 54 86836 hello@totem-consulting.com
Connect 2017: Brain Hacks If you think this is sounding a bit bleak you’re right – much of the accepted working environment of today – high pressure, no time, high ambiguity, high complexity – is creating a space where the brain perceives threat and is therefore not doing its best work. But there is good news! Of the two critical things you need to know about the brain in order to make the most of it, we have only looked at the first one so far: The number one priority for our brains is survival The brain is like plastic, it is mouldable, we can change, we can learn, we can grow It is this second insight that is our saving grace. We can learn, we can adapt, we can change. If our working environment is too much pressure, we can choose to change that environment and/or we can choose to change the way we react to that environment. Carol Dweck’s work on the growth mindset is critical for our children’s education, our parenting and our adult working life. This has been widely published about and is already being talked about thankfully in loads of schools, parenting courses and workplaces. The best summary of this work (which is only about ten years old) was actually quoted by Henry Ford 100 years ago: “ Whether you think you can or you th ink you can’t you’re right.” What Dweck and her team at Stanford University have found is that our beliefs about our ability to learn, grow and change can be the greatest predictor of our success. totem-consulting.com 0345 54 86836 hello@totem-consulting.com
Connect 2017: Brain Hacks And we all, every single one of us have experienced this. Can you think of a time when you were faced with something impossible? Something you thought you could never do, but then somehow, and maybe after a long time, you managed it? How did you do it? The fact is that you could have just stopped, said “this is impossible!” and given up, but you didn’t. In that example, you showed a growth mindset, a belief that you could get there, you just needed to make a start. And what led to you being able to do something impossible? Practice Effort Hard work That is the growth mindset in action. And we all have it w hen we’re born – we all found tying shoelaces at one point to be impossible. Riding a bike? Reading a book? We all learned to do these things that we might have thought impossible. So the great news about the growth mindset is this: We can change, our brains are plastic (you might have come across the term neuroplasticity), our brains can be re- moulded, if we choose to re-mould them. And this is where our belief comes in. If we believe we can change and we choose to change, we can do it. It will probably be hard work and we’ll need to be invested in making it work – but we can do it. These are the statements that indicate a fixed or growth mindset. To what extent do you agree with each statement? If you agree more with the top two, this indicates a fixed mindset. If you agree more with the bottom two, this indicates a growth mindset. And the great news is, you can have a growth mindset about your mindset! Don’t worry if it’s fixed now, you can change it to growth. totem-consulting.com 0345 54 86836 hello@totem-consulting.com
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