By | David Klaasen | Helping You Create Clarity, Inspire Your People & Drive Performance | Retain your best people | Changing Management Mindsets and Behaviour | Practical Behaviour Analytics
How effectively are you using your inner director? Science is now catching up with ancient wisdom and showing that we need to change our approach to management. The latest experiments in neuroscience are showing us the need to use our inner director to think more about our thinking and inhibit our reactive impulses. But this takes effort because it means becoming more perceptive of the triggers below our normal conscious awareness.
Our brains are hard wired to protect our status, seek more certainty and to have more autonomy. These are primary-threat and primary-reward mechanisms. If they are challenged we automatically feel threatened and get a surge of neurochemicals that make us more pessimistic and reduce our ability to think clearly. In fact, when we feel threatened we become prone to making accidental connections like thinking that people are being difficult or awkward on purpose just to upset us.
However, if our status, autonomy and sense of certainty are increased we feel rewarded because the brain releases a dose of dopamine and serotonin, the hormones that make us happier. Cortisol levels, a marker of stress, go down and testosterone levels go up, helping us to feel strong and confident.
Lazy Management
It is very easy to unwittingly neglect staff when things are going well. We are all so busy and concerned with the millions of outstanding things that still need to be done today. But when things go wrong, it feels easiest and quickest to just dive in and provide the solutions. In fact, I know many senior Directors who complain that a lot of their time is taken up answering questions or providing solutions for their people. This is lazy management and only makes things worse.
