Getting Employees and Teams to Succeed. A White Paper

Getting Employees and Teams to Succeed. A Neurologist’s View

What is the best way to get employees and teams to succeed?  Some executives and managers praise, encourage, let people work at their own pace and time, let them work in their own ways, and from time to time make gentle suggestions for improvement.

Others  say this is “soft,” “touchy-feely”. They direct people firmly, ride them, tell them exactly what to do, chastise or punish errors or falling behind, compare people unfavorably with colleagues, or use favoritism as carrot-and-stick. Some use these techniques without realizing they are doing it.

Is the first approach soft? Does the second one work?

What we now know about the brain tells us a lot about both approaches. The brain is hard-wired to turn off creativity and intuition if the brain senses danger of any kind. Scientific studies tell us the firm, chastising, criticizing management approach signals danger. Just a hint of disapproval turns off most of the brain. Only a small sliver still thinks. That sliver can only function in a tight box of linear  thoughts    (a àbàc). It’s not very productive.

Scientific studies show the first method is highly effective. Praise, encouragement, freedom to work how you wish, and gentle suggestions actually work. They work well. This approach turns on nerve cells and circuits in the brain that inspire individuals and teams to do their best.

Why? Dr. David Rock reviewed the science in The Neuroleadership Journal 1 (2008).  He summed up influences on traits he calls “SCARF”: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. Increasing these five traits increases productivity by increasing comfort,  creativity, and intuition. Going against one of the traits, just one, any one, shuts down effectiveness and productivity. They shut down in a fraction of a second; and it takes hard work over a long time to get effectiveness and productivity back.

Status for Rock means social status, intellectual status, or a personal sense of honor and worth within a group, a department, an organization, or a company.

Certainty means the ability to know from moment to moment how actions will influence efforts. The efforts may be to get a effect one wants or to avoid errors. It is a subconscious state the brain is in when planning or carrying out complex tasks. 

Autonomy means being free to choose between possibilities. It gives a person or a group a sense of being in control.

Relatedness means feeling part of a group of friends. Lack of relatedness is what someone feels when (s)he is outside a clique or has to face an enemy.

Fairness means feeling that authorities are treating you just as they are treating others: no prejudices, no insiders, no favoritism.

All of us feel these traits. Reports feel these traits. They feel when the traits aren’t there. You as a report or subordinate feel these traits and their absence. You as a manager probably don’t. A manager who is abrupt or uses a carrot-and-stick may not intend to undercut the SCARF traits. (S)he may not recognize (s)he is undercutting anything. What counts is how the reports feel. How reports feel determines their effectiveness and productivity.

What is going on in the brain? Most of the brain deals with subconscious, reflex actions. A critical part of the brain are the nerve cells and connections that trigger reflexes to keep us out of danger.  They make sure we avoid enemies or threats. This is survival. It is a basic need. It is much stronger than a second, opposite, reflex action. The latter deals with gratification. Gratification is wanting to be with people we love and things we love, wanting to stay with a supportive group, enjoying what we are doing, getting rewards.

The parts of the brain that deal with survival are largely toward the front surface of the brain, low down on the front sides, and deep the front of the brain.

Reflexes act and work in a few thousands of a second. The subconscious brain treats anything that threatens a SCARF trait as  a danger or a threat. Danger threatens survival.  Our need to survive is much stronger than our wish to be gratified with pleasant things or rewards. Threats of all kinds signal a nucleus, or collection of nerve cells, deep in the brain. When these cells perceive a threat, they act instantly to put the rest of the brain into “fight-or-flight” mode. Emotions switch to fear and anger.  Bad memories come up, memories of fearful events and things that made us angry. Another part of the brain sends signals of disgust and nausea. The intuitive functions of the brain shut down. The only thinking part of the brain that is active is a thin layer of the outer surface up in front. This layer works only with learned, linear, logical behaviors; nothing else. All of this is the survival  mode.

You can’t avoid the survival mode. When we are trying to survive we cannot deal with non-linear problems.  We cannot be creative. We cannot think out of the box.  We cannot be kind to others, we cannot work out new ways of doing things, and we cannot use intuition. Survival is every man for himself. Teamwork and social abilities disappear. Managers and executives beware: the more often people perceive threats to survival  at their workplace, the worse the consequences. Behavior gets worse. Efficiency and productivity go down. It takes longer and longer to restore people’s brains to a neutral state, let alone an aligned, creative state.

You may want to point out exceptions, like firefighters, soldiers, emergency room doctors and nurses: people trained to deal with emergencies and disasters. These highly-trained people are actually hyper-focused when they are in survival mode that concerns their expertise. In this survival mode, they use linear logic instead of creativity. They are not exceptions. They’ve just been trained in a lot of specific linear processes the rest of us don’t know.

I only know one protection from automatic fright-or-flight. It is to get trained in technologies of consciousness that include skills to block negative emotional responses and to discreate the unpleasant emotions that are stirred up. How to do it is beyond the scope of this white paper.

What we know about the brain gives a clear message to executives, managers, organizations and companies. Encourage the SCARF traits. 1) Treat employees, staff, colleagues, and teams so they feel they are valued. 2) Treat them so  they are certain that whatever they try will be appreciated whether it succeeds or fails. 3) Treat them so they know they can make their own decisions about what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. 4) Make them feel they are regarded as valuable members of an organization in which superiors, peers, and people who report to them are friends not rivals.  5) Make sure no-one supervising them plays favorites.

Success in executive coaching and success in organizational development follow these rules.  For example, in his book,  “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith considers 20 types of flaws in interpersonal behavior that damage relations in a company.  Let me assign the flaws to SCARF categories. I don’t want to minimize the deep and broad analysis Goldsmith gives. I merely want to show that there are links between Goldsmith’s approach and Rock’s.

Problems with status seem to underlie Goldsmith’s flaws of needing to win too much, needing to add too much value, needing to tell the world how smart we are, needing to make excuses, needing to cling to the past to deflect blame, refusing to express regret, and an excessive need to be “me”.  Undermining certainty  is likely when a sentence begins with “no,” “but,” or “however”; when you “explain why that won’t work”, when you withhold information, and when you “speak when angry: using emotional volatility as a management tool.” Being unwilling to let people have autonomy underlies making destructive comments, sarcasm, cutting remarks; withholding information, and claiming credit we don’t deserve. Several flaws destroy the sense of relatedness: passing judgments, making destructive comments, speaking when angry, failing to give proper recognition, claiming credit we don’t deserve, making excuses, clinging to the past to deflect blame, refusing to express regret, failing to express gratitude, and passing the buck. Fairness is damaged by failing to give proper recognition, withholding information, claiming credit we don’t deserve, playing favorites, and punishing the messenger.

Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” is an example about management consulting, “organizational development”.  Again, my intent is merely to show links. I’m not trying to simplify Lencioni’s work.

·          Absence of Trust is the bottom of Lencioni’s pyramid of dysfunctions. Absence of trust includes a lack of a sense of relatedness. The members of a team may be assigned together, but they are suspicious and even afraid of each other. They do not feel they are a group of aligned friends. Often, they may be juggling for a sense of status. The absence of trust and its underlying issues is the first problem that needs to be solved when using Lencioni’s paradigm.

·          Fear of Conflict is the second layer of the pyramid. Fear of conflict is a fear of an open, free-flowing discussion. Why? Because people on the team don’t trust each other. Fear of conflict is an issue of relatedness.  Fear of conflict also means that the members of the team don’t feel autonomous and lack certainty about their actions in a discussion.

·          Lack of Commitment implies a lack of certainty and relatedness. Lack of commitment also means the teams’ members fear they don’t have autonomy and that their status is threatened.  

·          Avoidance of Accountability can come from problems with certainty, autonomy and relatedness. Avoidance of accountability is made worse if the team’s members have a sense of unfairness.

·          Inattention to Results comes from the sum of these problems. The sum can be stated in Lencioni’s paradigm or in David Rock’s. It is the same: people on a dysfunctional team don’t pay attention to the results they get or to the results they should be getting.

The message  is clear. Pay careful attention to the SCARF traits and needs. Are you reinforcing the traits with your colleagues, reports, and subordinates, letting them their work gratify them? Are you mistakenly undermining the traits,  consciously or unconsciously, putting your colleagues and subordinates immediately into flight-or-fright mode with its long term consequences that prevent effectiveness and productivity?

If you want to see the areas of the brain that are involved, look at the pictures in my earlier blog post, Getting Teams to Succeed. None of the originals are mine. They are from excellent British and German books of neuroanatomy and from images on the Internet. In a few, I have added colors myself.