The Leading Brain

How insights from brain research can be used in advanced training and why experienced leaders should trust their intuition:

Friederike Fabritius from Munich Leadership Group about Leadership, Performance and Olympics. Ms. Fabritius, you refer to the concept of “Neuroleadership” for the qualification of leaders. What does this term mean Neuroleadership is using the insights gained from brain research to lead employees. In this regard, a key success factor is to reliably interpret perceptions and then translate them into pragmatic actions useful for everyday business life. Leaders can effectively apply and use this knowledge.

What exactly are you addressing in your trainings?

Three topics are in focus in these trainings:

• Learning and Behavior Change;
• Peak Performance;
• Leadership and Cooperation.

In all three areas we use knowledge about the brain to individually develop people and to help them to be better leaders. It is remarkable that the brain can continue to change itself at a much older age than was previously assumed. This capability is called “Neuroplasticity”. It can help leaders process information faster and enable them to change old habits. With the support of this method one can for example learn a new language fluently within six months. 

And what do you mean by “Peak Performance”?

This is about demonstrating under what conditions the brain is most productive. Rational-analytical problem solving utilizes different areas of the brain and levels of consciousness than are required for socalled “Aha” moments or creative problem solving. Often companies believe that the productivity of employees can be increased with long working hours and always being on duty. On the contrary, a brilliant idea that comes to an employee in a quiet moment can be much more valuable for an enterprise than mediocre performance from overworked and exhausted employees. Hence leaders should think about how they can create an environment in which they and their employees can sustain their productivity.

Of course, within this context it is still important to recognize the individual differences of employees. What current changes in the work environment have a particularly high impact on the performance of our brain? One change is that today we are always ‘switched on’ – thanks to Blackberry’s and iPhones. If you are constantly switched on, you are also constantly distracted; the consequence is a measurable decrease of IQ of up to 10 points. We see a similar pattern with multi-tasking. And particularly for leaders, extensive travelling is also a factor. Business trips are often tightly scheduled giving the leader little time for sports or restful sleep. This means that stress hormones remain at a high level. This in turn leads to increased Cortisol release, which damages the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that is responsible for decision-making and rational information processing. One can really say:

The brain shrivels, if we do not de-stress.

Are more video conferences the solution?

Video conferences are no replacement for personal contact, because with personal contact more Oxytocin is being released. This hormone - that could be called the social bonding hormone - serves as a messenger substance to the brain. The hormone leads to an increase of trust, empathy and cooperation between people who are involved with each other. It is better to shorten meetings so that leaders can use the gained time for themselves. Also, studies show that shorter meetings lead to better decisions and ideas. Why should older and younger employees be offered different training programs? 

One essential reason for this is that seasoned experts make decisions much more intuitively, while younger employees need more facts and time to process information. While with age the capability to process information is slightly reduced – this is also dependent on whether you train your brain – performance remains unchanged. Hence it is a myth that with advancing years the learning process is more difficult. Older employees can access behavior patterns that are saved in the basal ganglia. The fact is that older people make better decisions when they have less time and information and make decisions based on their gut feeling. If however, experienced leaders know in advance that they are forced to justify their decisions, the quality of the decision deteriorates. That’s why it is so important that enterprises trust their employees. This knowledge leads to shorter practice sessions and avoids boredom in trainings with groups of experienced leaders.

In what way does brain research play a role in recruitment?

It is important to identify a person’s distinctive strengths. We often work with high performance teams. In these cases, it is clear that the one or two significant strengths that characterize a person and are crucial for the advertised job, are much more important than an averaged assessment of all criteria. Since today most people work in teams, it is better to look for a strength that complements the colleagues in the team and accept the one or other individual weakness of a job candidate. Also in recruitment, it is OK to use gut feeling. More and more often experienced HR experts, in particular, are asked to justify their decisions with elaborate test results. At first glance this may sound logical, but from a Neuropsychologist’s viewpoint it is questionable if the quality of the decision-making really improves for such a complex process as assessing a human being.

Particularly in recent years social neuroscience became a talking point – even phenomena such as trust are now part of the neuroscience research. What influence does this have on your training programs? The influence is tremendous. We now understand why some people are more empathetic than others and under what conditions employees build trust among each other. We pass this knowledge on to the leaders in our training programs. Trust reduces complexity and thus cost. Within this context the Oxytocin hormone is particularly interesting. We have results from experiments in which peoples’ level of Oxytocin was artificially increased via a nose spray. In a negotiation situation those people were more willing to give money to others. However, particularly under stress, the Oxytocin level decreases significantly. Leaders have to develop sensitivity for the right amount of trust.

Are enterprises using this knowledge already?

Yes. We advise, for example, a number of businesses that are changing their incentive systems because they realized they are not functioning properly. This is because most incentive systems follow the approach of a ‘homo economicus’, for whom maximizing profit is most important. They don’t bear in mind that people are particularly sensitive when social fairness or comparability is at stake. What is most important to people is how much they get (in rewards and compensation) in comparison to others. An examination of subjective contentment of Olympic medal winners showed the gold medalist is not the most content winner, but rather the bronze medalist. This is because the latter compares himself or herself with the many other Olympic participants who did not receive a medal. The silver medalist is the least content winner because he or she missed the Gold medal by only a fraction. Many leaders experience this same reaction when they receive a smaller bonus than the year before or a smaller bonus than their colleagues. Moreover, employees most often complain about their salary when they are unhappy about other things in the company.

How many enterprises in Germany are already integrating insights from neuroscience in their trainings?

This development started about four or five years ago. The reason is the effectiveness of such trainings: Enterprises increasingly monitor the return on their investment in people development and are finding great value in these programs. We are working with several DAX and MDAX companies that are using these insights very successfully. The demand is very high. However, there are only very few serious experts who have a scientifically based education in this field and can translate this into useful application. This means, even if someone is a very good scientist, he or she is not necessarily the best trainer. On the other hand, it is rather costly for good trainers and coaches to gain sufficient enough insight into this complex topic of brain research to be able to use.

For whom is Neuroleadership most useful?

We work especially with enterprises that have a strong scientific or technical background. Leaders with a scientific education appreciate this approach very much. They like to understand why particular approaches work and therefore are highly motivated to try out new methods. If they realize that it works for them they retain and use the new approaches. Moreover, we’ve learned that this topic is applicable for everyone and is received very well.

Thank you for the discussion.

The interview was conducted by Alexander Schneider.

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