The Neuroscience of Adaptability

White Paper Draft May 20, 2020

As organizations try and grow and adapt, one of the questions that I hear time and time again, especially from change management professionals, is: What can we learn from neuroscience? We have this fascination with science, and neuroscience in particular, as if it will offer some cure for the “problem” of change or adaptability. But is change a problem that needs to be addressed, or a new opportunity to think about how we manage and lead?

Much of management and leadership today is about using fear to motivate. You may be familiar with some of these approaches, like mental toughness, command-and-control, or the carrot and the stick (the stick part, anyway). There is even a model based on neuroscience, called neuroleadership. Yet there is a different way to use neuroscience — one that could fundamentally shift your thinking about management and leadership.

A growing body of research being published in both academic journals and mainstream books upends some fundamental assumptions and assertions that people have made about the brain by looking across studies and, in some cases, across disciplines like psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Put together the findings of those authors, like Lisa Feldman Barrett’s “How Emotions Are Made,” Robert Sapolsky’s “Behave,” Paul Zak’s “Trust Factor,” and Gina Rippon’s “Gender and Our Brains,” to name a few, and a very different picture emerges. We are complicated beings. There is no “cure” for resistance. We are shaped by the world around us. Our brains are as different as our faces. And we can use that to become more empathetic managers and adaptive leaders, with better-performing teams.

Neuroscience tells us that we are adaptable beings

While there are dozens of discoveries in neuroscience and other related disciplines, like evolutionary biology, that are worth sharing, here are six insights that challenge traditional thinking about management and leadership in times of stability or change (if there are any more times of stability).

1.    Neuroplasticity. Our brains change throughout our lives; they do not stop “growing” when we reach a certain age. Instead, the brain is relentlessly reorganizing itself Marie Kondo-style, tidying up unnecessary pathways in a process called pruning. In an effort to conserve energy (an essential survival mechanism before markets and stores), the brain also likes to strengthen the pathways we use most often, like the ones we use to drive a car. This makes some of the things we do seem automatic, even though we once had to learn them. (Charles Duhigg covers this phenomenon well in “The Power of Habit,” pointing out that the basal ganglia, a structure deep within our brains, takes responsibility for running our “automatic” behaviors by learning and performing stimulus-response activities.)

As the work we do changes or as we start new hobbies, for example, different parts of the brain begin to be used, and the brain continues to realign its tiny little pieces. If you’re an executive, are your Excel skills as good as they once were when you were a financial analyst? Probably not. You can still remember or figure out how to do the things that you did a decade before, but I bet it takes a little longer. That’s not because you are getting old; it’s because you haven’t used those pathways in a while. You stopped paving them, or strengthening them, and now there are cracks and potholes that make it a slower, bumpier road to travel down. Your phone offers another example. When it updates its operating system, certain applications may look different or be repositioned on the screen. For the first day or so after the update, it might take you an extra moment to get accustomed to the changes. A week later, you won’t have to stop and think about what’s different anymore. Your thinking will be automatic.

2.    Neurochemistry. Our neurochemical systems help us learn about the world around us. There are positive neurochemicals that make us feel happy, accepted and cared for. There are also neurochemicals that help us survive; they give us that boost when we feel the need to fight or flee. Understanding these systems, as managers and leaders, helps us see if the actions we take with our associates, colleagues and team members are likely to help or hurt.

a.    Dopamine is generally thought to be the way we reward ourselves: that lift of positivity you feel when something good happens. As people cross things off their to-do lists, they get a little boost. The joy we feel when we learn something new or accomplish something that was difficult — that’s believed to be dopamine at work. It’s like our built-in carrot, and managers can use that by coaching people positively — encouraging them, while also giving them help and direction. Make them feel good about their progress.

b.    Oxytocin is the neurochemical responsible for that feeling you have when you like being around someone. That’s called social bonding. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has shown how trust boosts oxytocin, which helps explain why we feel better when we are around people that we like. People that accept us. People that make us feel comfortable to speak up, to be validated, to be understood, to be heard. Having your associates trust you (instead of fear you) works to your benefit!

c.    Serotonin is thought to be what makes us “feel good.” That’s why a lot of anti-depressants aim to increase the amount of serotonin in the brain; with more serotonin, we (should) feel better. It is believed that remembering positive past experiences, for example, is a natural way to boost serotonin. So, serotonin is also likely at work when we are doing things that create those positive experiences. The takeaway: giving people the ability to work on things that they enjoy, or that interest them, may help you get more productivity out of them.

d.    Adrenaline and Cortisol are our stress hormones. They are what our adrenal system releases when our stress response system is activated. Adrenaline (also called norepinephrine) spikes in the short term to get us going; then cortisol takes over to keep us moving. The more cortisol builds up in your system, the harder it becomes to relax. And if you regularly are “running on adrenaline,” your cortisol levels never have a chance to come down, leaving you in a near constant state of agitation. When we use fear, we flood our systems with these hormones. So, while they can motivate people to act (especially in the short term), they also erode relationships over time, creating more negative associations than positive ones. Criticizing an associate, especially if it occurs regularly, builds resentment. The stick works against you: cortisol destroys it all!  

3.    Prediction. Microseconds matter to survival. For our brains to respond to environmental stimuli without a “processing” delay, we’ve developed an incredible ability to not only process information as it comes in, but also to predict what we think is going to happen. That’s part of how we feel safe in the world: if what we think is going to happen happens, then all of the constructs we’ve built to help us make sense of the world work. We predict that our fellow drivers will obey the traffic laws and stop at stop signs, so we risk pulling through the intersection before they’ve actually stopped their cars.

We also predict what someone says before they say it, so that we can respond without a long pause to fully process it first. The amygdala tries to determine if what we predicted is what actually happened or if there are variations or threats that would require a different response. It can then engage the appropriate system in the nervous system and in the body to manage that response. The process happens so quickly that we sometimes respond to what we predicted we would hear rather than what was said, which can lead to miscommunications and misunderstandings.

Prediction is also what makes change so hard, for two reasons. First, as information is processed by the amygdala, a separate part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), which is responsible for decision-making, has to interfere. Otherwise, the automatic processing networks will run that information through the old routines, which are managed by the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that facilitates those stimulus-response (if/then) activities that we can do on autopilot. Second, when we decide to change, we are leveraging neuroplasticity to build new roads in our brains, knowing that current drivers prefer the predictability of the old road and drive using their existing, automatic routines. Individuals who support change but struggle with changing are getting stuck here: they lack the awareness needed to switch their thinking and therefore struggle to perform in new ways.

4.    Constructs. Our entire world is made up of psychological constructs, those clusters of little pieces of information that we use to help our brains make sense of how things work. We develop them initially as children, through observation, learning and play, and they get refined and adjusted over time as we learn new information and gain new insights. The theory of gravity, for example, is a construct in science that we all tend to agree on: it explains why the apple falls from the tree. Whether or not Pluto is a planet is one that we may not agree on: scientists seems to go back and forth on that recently.

What meta-analyses of large bodies of research are starting to suggest is that constructs play a greater role in our lives than we thought. But these constructs can also be flawed and are, as you might expect, hugely influenced by social pressures and norms. That appears to be the case with two of our most sacred constructs: emotions and gender, at least according to recent research.

Emotions.

Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work on emotions has made one thing clear: Emotions are not universal, they are constructs. As we saw with the stress response system, our brains predict and then process information very quickly. So quickly, that the emotion we express seems to be automatic. Yet as Barrett explains and other research supports, we process before we respond. Cognition comes before emotions or actions. So, our emotions are the result of the choices we make in how to respond, based on all of our strengthened pathways. Since those pathways are slightly different for each of us, we experience our emotions a little differently as well. What I experience as joy and label as happy, you might experience as contentment and label as happy. But our experiences of those emotions we just called happy may be very different, depending on our constructs.

As both managers and leaders, we can’t possibly know how any of our colleagues feel, exactly, so we make assumptions. We think, based on their expressions (and even their words), that they feel the way we do based on our experiences. But they might not. Which means that we not only may not understand what our colleagues feel or need, but we also may be miscommunicating with each other. Our words, while they have a generally understood meaning, sometimes convey slightly different things, based on those constructs and experiences. So we can be misunderstood. Our emotions can feel invalidated. Really, all we need is to be able to talk about them with one another, to start understanding where there are differences in needs and perceptions, and bring ourselves closer together. Again, that helps with bonding, acceptance and oxytocin. Yet too often we are trained to keep these emotions out of the workplace.

Gender.

As humans, we love to categorize things to help us make sense of the world. We do this, as we’ve discussed, because our brains like to conserve energy, so the simpler we can make things, the more we like them. While there continues to be a lot of discussion about gender, regardless of whether it’s binary and what pronouns to use, as managers and leaders only one thing really matters. According to Gina Rippon, gender is irrelevant. It too is a construct and tells us nothing about innate capabilities or talents. The message here is simple and clear: The only thing women can’t do (at least cognitively) is whatever they tell themselves they can’t do.  

As we’ve discussed, neuroplasticity makes each one of us capable of learning and doing whatever we set our minds too. Brain imaging studies have not produced any evidence that cognitive capabilities vary based on gender; the variations that exist are likely only due to how people of different genders have spent their time. So, it’s the experiences that an individual has had up to that point that constrain what they believe (and possibly what their managers believe) they can do. It’s not biological, and it can change. We just need to give everyone an equal chance, guidance and support.

If you read between the lines here, the same logic applies to race, ethnicity and any other construct we use to categorize people. While individuals will have different talents and abilities, in large part due to natural selection and the evolution of our unique bloodlines, sweeping generalizations about the capabilities of groups of people generally do not hold true. From what neuroscience has to say, I’m not convinced any human construct is.

5.    Pain. Pain is pain, at least according to research conducted by Professors Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman of UCLA. The authors oft-cited study, discussed in “Does Rejection Hurt?,” published in Science magazine in 2003, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to measure changes in blood flow in the brain under three test conditions: (1) individuals were told they were playing a video ball game with two other virtual players, also in scanning equipment, (2) individuals were told they could watch, but that they couldn’t play due to a technical issue, and (3) individuals were told they were playing the game with the two other players, but, at a point, the other two players stopped throwing the ball to that player. The goal of the third condition was to see how the pain of social rejection registered in the brain. According to the results, the emotional pain of rejection engaged the brain in ways that were “analogous” to physical pain.

While this and related studies have been used by some to argue that we can use the body’s threat response system to motivate, I have a different takeaway: How we treat each other matters. As a former coach of mine taught me, relationships come before tasks. If we use fear and constantly criticize our associates and team members instead of helping them, we cause pain. They release cortisol, building resentment and anger along the way. Since rejection is the opposite of acceptance, it lowers our oxytocin levels too, as we saw from Paul Zak’s work. Perhaps that is something to keep that in mind the next time you have a difficult conversation with an employee.

 

6.    Motivation. Intrinsic motivation generally is more effective than extrinsic motivation when it comes to change. Richard Boyatzis is well known in the field of organizational psychology for his work on Intentional Change Theory (ICT), which asserts that creating a personal vision and engaging the idealized version of oneself are crucial for lasting individual change. Teaming up with Anthony Jack (also a professor at Case Western Reserve University), he examined how the brain responds when someone is “coached for compassion” versus being “coached for compliance.” To be clear, the key distinction between compassion and compliance boils down to intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations. Coaching for compassion, as Boyatzis and Jack call it, engages individuals in expressing their own personal desires. Coaching for compliance focuses instead of problem-solving based on external desires (e.g., your manager’s) or constraints.

 

Think about how that shows up in many work environments. When you have an individual meeting with an associate, often now called a one-on-one, what are you talking about? Are you talking about developmental needs or are you talking about the work that needs to be done and problem-solving together? Both activities may seem productive. Both may encourage action. What Boyatzis and Jack have found, however, is that engaging the individual about needs and desires was more motivating. The regions of the brain that engage during those coaching conversations are the areas associated with strategic and critical thinking, stress reduction and openness. These conversations help associates feel empowered. In contrast, coaching for compliance, or coaching to address the problem, engages the parts of the brain that are associated with stress, particularly feelings of judgment and obligation. They create negative experiences. And, while the authors did not measure or discuss this, it likely results in more cortisol, whereas the positive, we have seen from Zak’s work, likely boosts oxytocin. As managers, leaders and change agents, the more we focus on how the broader needs of the organization relate to the needs of the individual and dedicate time to showing them we are invested in their development and helping them change, the more likely it is that they will.

 

Adaptable beings can change!

Neuroscience in and of itself isn’t a quick fix, and, I would argue, there isn’t so much a problem associated with organizational change as there is a constant need for adaptation in organizations. The deep thinking of some of the leading researchers who are looking across disciplines to create a more nuanced understanding of how we as humans tick really can help us, as leaders, managers and as change agents, as long as we ourselves are open to change. Change and adaptation require us to shift how we think. As we’ve seen, it’s about redesigning neural pathways; and, as the research shows, the more we focus on positive change over fear-based motivations, the more successful we can be.

Using this research and my own experience driving change in my organizations, there are five things that leaders and managers can do to help their own teams change and become more adaptable.

1.    Get to know your team members. Whether they report to you, are your colleagues, or are people you work with one time as part of a cross-functional effort, everyone wants to feel valued, heard and invested in. There is value in treating people as individuals, getting to understand what makes them happy, and showing them respect. Using skills often associated with emotional intelligence, like empathy and active listening, managers and leaders can show their associates that they do care, they are willing to spend the time, they are invested. It builds trust, and, as we saw, knowing what motivates them may just help you help them change.

 

2.    Challenge them to develop. Our brains like the status quo because it conserves energy, but neuroplasticity proves that we can change, we never stop learning, and we are constantly re-aligning our neurons in response to the changing world around us and new insights we gain. Forcing someone to work on a skill isn’t as effective as figuring out what they like to do and designing work in chunks that allow them to do it. If they aren’t the right person for the job and don’t have the internal drive to learn how to do it, it’s going to take more time and effort to make them. So, you can either find a way to use what does motivate them in their work and through that help them improve, or encourage them to find work that they enjoy and find the person for your team who wants to do that work.

 

3.    Help them build self-awareness. As we saw with prediction, if we can’t catch ourselves doing the thing we want to change, we won’t be able to change them. We’re not built to assess ourselves in the same way we assess the threats in our environment unless we try to. The tools are there – you are using them every day. You just have to redirect them to what you want to focus on. Mindfulness is increasingly talked about in workplaces as people recognize the need to become more self-aware and more empathetic towards others. The sooner your associates start recognizing their own missteps, the sooner they can start to change them.

 

4.    Get rid of your biases. Investment firms always warn us about one thing: past performance is not a predictor of future gains. It doesn’t just apply to equities, ETFs and mutual funds. Our resumes and past experiences are often limited by what we have been exposed to and, more importantly, the constructs that define our environment. Girls who were taught that math was for boys never try to become engineers; that doesn’t mean they can’t be. It only means that they believed what they were told. When we define the world for someone else, we constrain them. Gender, race or any other classification only reflect the biases we’ve developed and the constructs we’ve agreed to as a society. They don’t reflect what an individual is capable of, especially with the right leader, manager or coach by their side.

 

5.    Create compassionate cultures. The more we can learn about one another and the more we accept one another, the better we all feel and the more productive we all are. The environments we work in – and whether or not they support our personal goals or whether or not they are more focused on the needs of the firm – have huge impacts on performance at the individual and organizational levels. That’s not news, but what neuroscience has taught us is that cultures built on trust, integrity, transparency and acceptance create higher performing teams. Individuals thrive when all of the positive neurochemicals are at play and when they are learning to master what interests or gratifies them. If the environment is supportive and they are accepted, they are much more likely to be engaged and to want to change and adapt with the changing the needs of their organizations and team members.

 

Be Positive!

Change is work. It’s harder to be adaptive or we wouldn’t look at it as a challenge. The reality is we are always changing. That is what evolution is all about: each generation learning more, adapting to the changing environment, becoming better able to survive. Neuroscience just confirms that. It also teaches us how we do it, so that we can lean in to the mechanisms that allow us to change and lean away from the mechanisms that are likely to encourage resistance. Leaders, managers and change agents who take the time to get to know associates, who respect their individual needs and treat them as people, and who provide help and support along the way are much more successful at driving change. They also create teams that are more effective and want to work together, resulting in higher productivity, lower turnover, and greater adaptability. Everything organizations want them to be.

 

References

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