How to release the emergency brake in the head of your employee

First published in HR Today, Switzerland

Author: Sebastian Purps-Pardigol

Neurobiology for Managers: Modern brain research shows us how people can optimally develop their potential and grow beyond themselves. Thanks to this knowledge, managers can define their role more clearly.

Let’s start with an experiment: Imagine that you use your signature repeatedly, drawing it on a sheet of paper over and over again. In your imagination, pay attention to how you swing the pen and what noises your signature makes. Now in your mind repeat the same process—only this time use the other hand.

You will notice that it is hard to sign with the unfamiliar hand, even in your imagination. The reason: You lack the necessary neural networks for this action. Before you even can think about succeeding, you have to practice mentally.

Your employees go through the same process when facing new challenges. For example, when the economic conditions in the company change, the business goals become more ambitious, tasks expand or new sales channels have to be found. In the beginning, the brain’s networks to find solutions are not permanently established.

What, then, is the difference that makes it quite easy to integrate new challenges for some employees and rather cumbersome for others?

Neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change right into old age

Until the 1980s, many scientists were convinced that the brain—like a hand or foot— is finished developing when a person reaches adulthood. Research changed this conviction through the use of imaging techniques. With magnetic resonance imaging, researchers were able to look into the living brain just before the turn of the millennium.

The single most important new piece of knowledge, according to brain researchers, is encouraging: The brain can change as long as you live. The magic word for this ability is “neuroplasticity.” Adults, even at an advanced age, are able to connect new nerve cells and, therefore, establish new and independent networks.

A study undertaken among taxi drivers in London shows this neuroplasticity very impressively. To obtain a taxi license, each driver must be able to drive through the 25,000 streets in London and name the most famous sights. Scientists traced the brain activities of some of those drivers and found that the investigated brains showed a larger-than-average hippocampus. This is the part of the brain that plays a central role in the storage of information.

Where do creativity, impulse control, and action planning come from?

What the Londoner taxi drivers succeeded in, you and your employees can do as well. Our brains consist of 100 billion neurons, which in turn enter into 100 trillion connections with each other. For your work as a manager, the part of the brain right behind the forehead is of particular importance. This is the prefrontal cortex, the place where all the good traits you would wish in your employees—empathy, creativity, impulse control, differentiation between relevant and irrelevant, forward-looking action planning, and even a sense of justice—are formed Maybe just off the top of your head you can recall one or another employee you wish had more of the abilities mentioned above.

For employees to optimally utilize the networks in the prefrontal cortex and to improve their brains, they need neuroplastic messengers. These neurotransmitters are released in the midbrain and pour into the prefrontal cortex. There, two things happen. First, the communication between the nerve cells becomes more active. Second, new relationships are established and existing connections solidify. As a result, the unused potential of the brain starts to develop.

The framework to develop potential

How can you, as an employer, create the optimal conditions for those neuroplastic messengers to be released in your staff’s brains? The keys to this are connectedness, growth, and creativity.

The brain of a child releases neuroplastic messengers several times daily. These messengers ensure that the brain continuously forms new networks like a watering can, giving the brain fertilizer for growth. Therefore, a child grows a little more beyond itself every day.

For most adults, this “watering can” is significantly less active. Accordingly, the forming of new viable networks is slow. Subsequently, adults often use old networks which they have already used for years. You can see that in some employees who are always doing the same thing even if a new action would be required.

Current scientific studies show how the “watering can” of neuroplastic messengers can once again be activated in adults:

1. Connectedness

Every human being carries a deep need for closeness. Beginning in the womb we experience connectedness. For the months and years to follow, there is almost always someone close by. Those first life experiences anchor themselves deep into our neural networks and consequently become a basic need themselves. If one simulates the social exclusion of test persons—and, therefore, the experienced loss of connectedness—you can see how the same neural centers in the brain—which, in other circumstances, handle physical pain—become active.

At the same time, scientists can prove that an overstimulated, anxious brain changes rapidly into a calmer state when the subject perceives closeness. In the state of closeness the messenger substance oxytocin is secreted. This messenger comforts the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. In other words, closeness releases the emergency brake in the head—the one thing denying you successful change and blocking your ability to learn anew.

2. Growth and Creativity

A young person experiences—before and after birth—growth for many years, both physically and in terms of his abilities. This experience of growth and creativity subsequently anchors itself in the neural network, becoming a lifelong basic need. In an experimental setup with young children, the kids were given the option to play with wooden blocks or to eat chocolate. Most of the children chose the blocks. The “hunger” to create is greater than the supposedly attractive chocolate.

When a person starts to make something “his,” he gives his actions much more significance. Subsequently, the midbrain distributes neuroplastic messengers and the prefrontal cortex becomes more active and forms new networks. This is the condition for people to develop their potential.

For you as an executive, this means that if you give your staff the option of co-designing, you facilitate the development of their potential considerably. You are providing a basis for neural growth—and, thus, the basis for mastering new challenges.

A significant “side effect” of creativity: the person should be healthier. An investigation in a retirement home showed that the mortality rate decreased by up to 50 percent if the residents were given the possibility of having just a bit more influence on their daily lives.

A true “Feedback Culture” leads to flying high

In our work with companies, we continue discovering new patterns of success. Businesses usually have a good feedback culture. This is not an annual, nor even a quarterly, feedback meeting, but a culture in which employees immediately inform each other about what they perceive, both positive as well as in terms of what improvement is required.

Through a real feedback culture, employees learn connectedness, creativity, and growth. From a neurobiological perspective, that’s impressive. Retained messages—especially if they are highly emotionally charged—result in an overstimulation of the prefrontal cortex. This in turn interferes with the function and formation of neural networks. Feedback prompts the employee’s brain to go back to a balanced state, immediately creating his own feelings.

The receiver of feedback has the possibility to change according to what he has heard. The feedback provider can help shape his environment with what he says. Through this intensive exchange, both can correct possible restrictive assumptions about one another; this clearly creates more connectedness. In turn, both brains are secreting more neuroplastic messengers.

The introduction of a practiced feedback culture can be a first tangible step towards an authentic “Potential Unfolding Culture” —an environment in which individuals, entire teams and ultimately the entire company (again) have the chance to grow beyond themselves.