Handbook of Your Brain in Business: 1. Introduction 1.2 Why Neuroleadership? Why Focus on the Brain?
Handbook of the Brain in Business
Introduction
Why Neuroleadership? Why Focus on the Brain?
Previous: Introduction - Background
Many years ago, at the start of my journey into neuroleadership, I was sitting at a dinner table with a senior legal executive of a large industrial company. I had just given a keynote at the management conference, and he noted that this brain stuff is interesting but added, “Do we really need this neuroleadership stuff. What’s the point?”
I then in my confidence gave a succinct explanation of what happens in the brain during fear as a relevant example that can easily be applied to business scenarios:
the amygdala ramps up in activity, your rational decision-making areas in your prefrontal cortex shut down (I allowed myself some exaggeration), your motor centre, i.e. the part that controls movement either ramps up or shuts down, areas responsible for attention shift to a negativity bias, not to mention the communication with your liver and subsequent release of stress hormones, etc., etc.
“This shows us” I confidentially explained “why fear is such a bad thing in the workplace!” I was expecting my counterparty to be impressed by my knowledge and awed by the importance of applying brain science to leadership scenarios.
He thought for a second and then said “But do we need brain science for that? Smart people can work that out by themselves”.
I was a bit taken aback and miffed – it seemed so obvious to me that brain science could give us clearer answers to many business and leadership scenarios and was incredibly useful. But this senior executive was unimpressed – basically his logic was that we don’t need neuroscience or even psychological science at that, to tell use fear is bad. Duh! Basic intelligence will suffice.
This does indeed raise an important question - or two, or three, or four:
Does neuroscience bring anything to the business and leadership space?
Does it provide more than psychology and behavioural research can?
Does basic intelligence and common sense suffice?
Indeed, why focus on the brain at all?
For some of us who have been in the field of neuroleadership for years, and others who are attracted to the field, the answers may seem obvious: everything that happens in human behaviour in the world is result of brain processing of some sort – so understanding that, enables you to understand everything. But as my interaction with that senior executive many years ago highlights, this is not so obvious to everybody.
Similarly, another interaction more recently also raised another question.
I was asked to provide some material for a leadership app. The app was focused on giving simple tips for first level leaders i.e. team leaders, mostly in large organisations. This organisation had already made a good and pretty comprehensive list of scenarios that team leaders may face and for each scenario gave five to ten tips on dealing with the situation.
When I reviewed this and added what I would add from the neuroleadership models that I, and my research colleagues, have developed over the years – we saw that most of the tips were the same or similar. The comment was “So neuroleadership seems the same as what we have already developed”
And the answer was, yes, of course. But this also raises the valid question of do we therefore need neuroleadership, using brain science in leadership or business scenarios?
In the above situation I commented: “Well, all interventions end up being behaviours by human beings – we can or could zap people’s brains, but that is not the answer in your average business and won’t be for the near future.”
So, what are the answers? Does focusing on the brain really bring anything new?
The answer is yes, a lot:
1. Deeper
The first is it brings a deeper, and importantly, a more correct understanding of human processes. In the example of fear that I outlined above we can see multiple processes in the brain that are influenced by fear and therefore this gives us a much better and more accurate description of fear and how it precisely impacts behaviour.
This is true in many other contexts such as innovation, decision-making, and learning, many of which I will outline later in this Handbook.
2. Concrete
Secondly it brings concreteness. This is not to be underestimated.
Some argue, correctly, that psychology often has many answers to those “solved” by neuroscience. But research shows that we value a concrete explanation. In one study of child delinquents, it showed that when their behaviour was described in terms of a “traumatic childhood”, juries were unforgiving. Kind of like “Life’s tough, so what!”. But when the damaged brain networks were outlined – juries were more forgiving. This is linked to point one and this also leads to point three.
Though some people claim this is just a seductive effect i.e. makes descriptions more attractive without adding substance – this may be true, but this may still increase the value and weight of this information [1]–[3]. I must also stress that it is important to differentiate between a positive seductive effect and negative one (where neuroscience seduces and leads to worse decisions - discussed in next section). This Handbook will help clarify the difference and point you in the right direction.
3. Better interventions, quicker
Psychology may have already identified many effective interventions for various conditions, consider fear as previously briefly outlined. However, neuroscience knowledge with its deeper understanding, and concreteness, gives us access to much more clarity on interventions. What will work, what won’t work and what the differences are.
The example with fear can give us multiple targeted interventions. We can target the activity in the amygdala, the attention network, or the processing aspects. Or all together.
Neuroscience can therefore increase the effectiveness and speed of interventions.
4. Importance
Similar to point 2, neuroscience can, and often does, raise the value and importance of these interventions and hence we are more likely to do them.
For example, during the pandemic some work by Microsoft came out that showed brain activity during back-to-back online meetings.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/brain-research
By measuring and visualising this we can see and feel the importance of taking breaks between meetings – something we probably all know.
Knowing and seeing this with a deeper understanding, concreteness, and an effective intervention, raises the importance and hence our likelihood, and the likelihood of businesses, implementing them. And that is good for the brain, performance, and the business.
5. Counters bad intuition
We may all trust our gut feeling – it is after all a feeling, in our gut, which is designed by nature to pull us and our brains along certain simple pathways.
However, we know that often gut feeling, intuition, is completely wrong, or sub-optimal. Consider the simple example of fear. As I have outlined above, fear has a dramatic and generally negative effect on the brain and our cognitive and processing abilities. Yet, sometimes, often, the gut feeling is to increase pressure and induce fear: “If we don’t finish this, we might lose the contract”, or “…lose your job”, etc. But this bad intuition often, mostly, leads to worse performance.
Using neuroscience, and psychology, we can counter this and hence make better decisions, but also lead to better outcomes. In a situation where we need high performance, we need to reduce fear. This is what neuroscience tells us - and gives us clear interventions.
Some may still argue that fear can be good, and I will discuss the ins and outs of this later in this handbook (spoiler: fear is only positive if it is not processed as fear but as pressure).
But the main point is that countering bad intuition leads to better outcomes and that is clearer and easier to understand with knowledge of the brain.
All this therefore means, simply, that by using brain science you are more likely to get the best, more often, in whatever context. And this is because it provides more clarity, more correctness, is more accurate, and points to more effective interventions. These interventions may not be so special, they normally involve human beings doing human things in the real world which in turn impacts our, and others’ brains.
But the knowledge and clarity this brings will impress you I am sure – as will the effectiveness.
This all comes with the caveat that not everything couched in neuroscience terms is good – in fact there is a lot of junk out there as well – often called neurobollocks (up necx)! Indeed, by reading this Handbook you will also be able to cut through some of this junk and have some solid scientific, and evidence-based tools to help you in business.
Next up: Neurobollocks
References
[1] D. S. Weisberg, F. C. Keil, J. Goodstein, E. Rawson, and J. R. Gray, “The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations.,” J. Cogn. Neurosci., vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 470–477, 2008.
[2] S. H. Im, K. Varma, and S. Varma, “Extending the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations effect to popular articles about educational topics,” Br. J. Educ. Psychol., vol. 87, no. 4, 2017.
[3] E. M. Bennett and P. J. McLaughlin, “Neuroscience explanations really do satisfy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the seductive allure of neuroscience,” Public Underst. Sci., vol. 33, no. 3, 2024.