Tag: Leadership

Despite widespread and increasing reports of job burnout in the past year, the concept of burnout is often misunderstood or overlooked—to the detriment of both individuals and organizations. Dr. Kamila Sip, the Senior Director of Neuroscience Research at the Neuroleadership Institute, recently joined the HR Works Podcast to explore the concept through the lens of neuroscience. In the episode, she explores the causes of job burnout, sheds light on common misconceptions about burnout, and shares how organizations can prevent and alleviate job burnout. Kamila explains that while the concept of job burnout is not new—it was declared an occupational phenomenon by the World Health Organization back in 2019— for many, the experience of burnout was amplified and intensified by the massive amount of uncertainty we experienced in 2020. When the pandemic struck, and people moved from desks and offices to kitchen counters and converted bedrooms, many lost a sense of security in their jobs, their finances, and their health. As month rolled into month, and the pandemic did not recede, neither did the stress. In other words, we went from feeling stressed sometimes to feeling stressed all of the time. While the psychological toll of the pandemic is a huge contributor to stress and anxiety, it also magnified the workplace challenges in ways that exposed the causes of job burnout that are distinct from being generally overworked or stretched too thin. This is because the real causes of job burnout are more rooted in organizational culture and expectations than in the individuals’ ability to manage the stress of life. Kamila explains that job burnout, like all stress phenomena, affects how we make decisions, how we regulate our emotions, and how we interact with others (all critically important to work). She also unpacks the role and importance of having our psychological needs met, and how by meeting those needs, organizations can reduce job burnout and increase a healthy performance, even in the face of a crisis. To learn more about burnout and what organizations can do to prevent it, listen to the full episode of the HR Works Podcast here.

People started talking about “moonshots” back in 1949. Back then, the phrase quite literally meant to shoot for the moon—with a spacecraft, that is (eg. the Apollo missions). Since then, the term has become shorthand for an audacious vision paired with an ambitious goal. This type of thinking in the organizational context, popularized by pioneering organizations like Microsoft, Apple, Google and SpaceX, has driven innovation for decades and been the source of countless technological breakthroughs. So it has us thinking: What’s the moonshot for leadership? What do the effective leaders of the future look like? And how do we help today’s leaders get there? In his latest article on Forbes, Dr. David Rock, Co-founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute, reflects on those questions. David explores the key insights that leaders should embrace and act upon right now to set themselves up for success in the future. Throughout, he explains how science should inform and transform how we think about leadership. Some of the insights David unpacks include: How to leverage the moment to do big things Why leaders should care about humans at levels you never imagined How to embrace hybrid work and autonomy And why leaders should follow the science, experiment, and follow the data To read the full article click here, or to learn more about NLI’s approach to leadership click here.

IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Netflix reacted quickly to crisis. In doing so they showed that successful organizations put humans first for good reason.

Consider a different perspective on current events: By “befriending the naysayer,” we can better navigate the pandemic, personally and professionally.

Toxic cultures don’t stem from a lack of ping pong tables or free snacks. They stem from a poor set of priorities, habits, and systems.

More than 200 CEOs have agreed to put societal values ahead of profits. Here’s why brain science says this is a move in the right direction.

Exhaustive lists of leadership principles burden the brain, making them hard to remember and nearly impossible to weave into the larger culture.

A focus on growth mindset and building unity through conversations and bias mitigation have helped Nokia create lasting culture change.

Establishing the right priorities are important to create long-lasting change, but leaders also need to implement the right habits and systems.

A shift in mindset — from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset — is the first step leaders need to take in their organization to help kickstart culture change.

Changing a culture can feel like just about the toughest job a leader has. It’s hard enough getting yourself to act differently — how could you possibly change the behavior of hundreds or thousands of people? From both our research and extensive client work, helping companies like Microsoft and HP transform their cultures, the NeuroLeadership Institute is confident that all leaders are capable of effecting great change. The key is to follow the science — to know how to shift people’s mindsets to adopt new habits for the long haul. Our latest white paper, “The NLI Guide: How Culture Change Really Happens,” delves into just that topic. The report provides a two-step process that begins with building a growth mindset — that is, the pursuit of always improving, not proving, yourself — and following NLI’s method of Priorities, Habits, and Systems to cement culture change. Every Thursday for the next seven weeks, we’ll be publishing insights from the white paper on this blog, as part of our latest Master Class series. (Catch the last Master Class series, on growth mindset, here.) Table of Contents Week 2: The First Step Toward Culture Change Is a Shift in Mindset Week 3: Leaders Need More Than Buy-In to Create Culture Change Week 4: CASE STUDY: Nokia Turns Two Cultures into One Week 5: How Microsoft Changed Its Culture by Going Simple Week 6: CASE STUDY: HP Embraces Growth Mindset and Kickstarts Culture Change Together, the posts will serve as a handy reference guide for the essential science (and implementation) of culture change. The conventional wisdom around transformation is flawed. It assumes awareness of the challenge or goal is enough. But once you’ve gotten buy-in, then what? NLI’s approach to culture change helps organizations answer that question, so they can make a lasting, scalable impact — and they can do it weeks, not years. [action hash=”1c967ecd-f614-4b3d-a6f1-a14c6ec523bc”]

Leaders are constantly wondering how to create or strengthen their culture. So as part of its ongoing NLI Guide series, the NeuroLeadership Institute has released its latest white paper, “How Culture Change Really Happens.” In simple, everyday language, the guide makes a compelling case that leaders should be pursuing two lower-level objectives in order to produce — and sustain — culture change. Without both elements, teams may start working more efficiently, but the behavior is bound to subside. NLI’s approach to culture change starts with growth mindset. Leaders must help their employees understand that mistakes happen, and that failure is inevitable. What matters is whether people see those setbacks as reasons to give up, or to persist. Once people start embracing challenges as opportunities, rather than as threats, NLI believes the next step is PHS: priorities, habits, and systems. Leaders often make the mistake of thinking awareness of a goal is enough motivation to achieve it. But willpower is fleeting, so it’s important to create the habits that support a change, and the systems that reinforce those habits. We define culture as shared everyday habits. With a growth mindset and a focus on priorities, habits, and systems, leaders should have no trouble building the desired shared everyday habits in their own organization. [action hash=”1c967ecd-f614-4b3d-a6f1-a14c6ec523bc”]

The key to addressing toxic behavior might be the third person in the room. A new study of more than 6,000 college students suggests a major way to reduce toxic behavior is through bystander training — that is, equipping people who witness instances of assault, or possible warning signs, to quickly intervene. People who underwent training intended to act and actually did more much often than those who weren’t trained. The finding bolsters what the NeuroLeadership Institute has found with respect to “employee voice,” or the extent to which employees feel empowered to make constructive, challenging upward communication like calling out harassment or other toxic behaviors. Multiplied across an entire organization, cultures of speaking up may hold the power stamp out toxic behavior, creating a cultural impact that goes beyond compliance training. Bystanders play a crucial role Good-faith arguments that recipients of toxic behavior should speak up themselves make sense in theory, but for many who experience assault, bullying, or harassment firsthand, the pain and confusion is much too paralyzing. In turn, negative feelings get internalized, and toxic behaviors may go unchecked. The new study, led by Clemson University sociologist Heather Hensman Kettrey and published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, suggests an alternate path toward safer and healthier work environments. Kettrey found that training programs designed to encourage witnesses of sexual assault or predatory behavior to intervene had a meaningful effect on bystander behavior. Program participants both intended to take more action and did take more action in the months following the training — two times more often, on average — than students who hadn’t gotten trained. “These findings are especially important considering that research indicates that traditional sexual assault programs, which target the behavior of potential victims or of potential perpetrators, are not particularly effective at preventing assault,” Kettrey writes in The Conversation. “Thus, the power to prevent sexual assault may lie in the hands of bystanders.” The importance of focusing on culture When lower-status people feel targeted by higher-status people, fears of retribution or other social threats prevent them from speaking up. Bystanders don’t necessarily fit into the same power dynamic, enabling them to act as neutral advocates on behalf of the lower-status employee. It’s in leaders’ interest, in other words, to create better bystanders and cultivate a culture of speaking up. To do this, leaders need to instill the right day-to-day habits across their organizations. For instance, they can create clear if-then plans to give employees a sense of certainty if an ambiguous situation may arise. Rather than sit idly by, worrying if they’ll get punished for speaking out, a bystander can turn to the if-then plan everyone agreed upon. This kind of intervention is different from the norm because it goes beyond compliance. It gives leaders behavioral tools to enable all employees to speak up early and often. In cultures of speaking up, employees value consequences. Bad actors can’t slip under the radar because warning signs get reported long before they reach a boiling point. “We, as a society, should strive to become better bystanders by noticing the warning signs of a potential assault, knowing strategies to intervene, and remembering that we have a collective responsibility to prevent sexual assault,” Kettrey writes. The same is true in the workplace. Teams composed of better bystanders create a common good in the larger culture, which enables everyone to feel free and safe to get their best work done.

Organizations often justify a toxic environment and masculinity contest culture with the mentality of “how we do business here.”

It’s tempting to blame toxic work cultures on an unknowable set of factors, but often the answer is much simpler. In an article for Fast Company, author Meghan E. Butler, partner at Frame+Function, noted that toxic workplace cultures are consistently the product of poor leadership. Specifically, toxic behavior often stems from leaders missing (or ignoring) key warning signs in how teams function. Perhaps they see aggressive work styles as signs of passion, or label cases of bullying as harmless fun. Meanwhile, employees get hurt and the culture turns toxic. Understanding SCARF As Butler points out, there are five key social domains that demand leaders’ attention: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. We call it the SCARF Model. It relies on the widespread neuroscience finding that social threats register in the brain in a similar way as physical threats: Cognitive function suffers and people’s quality of work declines. Toxic behavior can affect any SCARF domain, or several in combination. For instance, it’s threatening to a person’s status when their co-worker openly calls out a recent mistake in a team meeting. And it damages people’s sense of fairness and relatedness (or sense of belonging) when a manager plays favorites by assigning projects only to certain people. Leaders who stay aware of these domains can actively take steps to fix them, in turn creating more psychological safety at work. That means bestowing employees not with social threats, but rewards. Here are examples for each SCARF domain: Status — Leaders can celebrate employees’ contributions to the wider team, and they can celebrate team wins to the larger department or organization. Certainty — Before starting a meeting, leaders can lay out the agenda and clarify the goals he or she wishes to achieve by the end. Autonomy — Leaders can raise employees’ sense of control and ownership over their work by delegating projects across the team, rather than hoarding information and keeping people out of the loop. Relatedness — Inclusive leaders help their employees recognize shared goals, such as hitting sales targets or wrapping a big project. (Contrary to popular belief, highlighting differences may only further divide people.) Fairness — Leaders can create a sense of equality by mitigating biases, such as seeking diverse opinions around the office to reduce what psychologists call “experience bias.” The takeaway Ultimately, toxic cultures form when leaders practice the same unhelpful behaviors over and over again. These actions are seldom intentionally destructive, but unless leaders actively try to develop the correct habits — and create psychological safety for everyone — social threats are bound to arise. As Butler notes, “All of these signs can generally be whittled down to one key factor: Fear. And fear corrodes mental health and productivity.”

As the world continues to evolve, and as business, economic, and social influences emerge, the NeuroLeadership Institute is always revisiting the emerging research and our internal frameworks to make sure we’re as relevant as possible. Since so much is going on in leadership, culture — and is now becoming clear, power — we felt a responsibility to revisit the way we describe our leadership practice not only to the world, but to ourselves. Going from Leadership and Change to Culture and Leadership may seem superficial at first glance, but in my twenty-plus years of human capital experience, I have realized that words matter. We say to our clients all the time: think essential, not exhaustive. For us to focus our energies, research, and discussion internally and with clients, it wasn’t just change we were interested in impacting, but culture. So what is culture? For one thing, it’s not a mystery. In the management world, culture is often spoken of with hushed tones, as some mercurial substance, ever-changing and impossible to be harnessed. But in fact, if you look into the brain science, it’s radically simple. Culture is shared everyday habits. They are shared in that they operate between people. They’re normative: they’re common across many people. It’s not reserved for the top echelon of the house, but the sum total of how everyone in the system behaves. They’re everyday, because frequency matters. It’s the consistency and the reinforcement that we provide one another that tells us what the norms are. And they replicate from person to person over time, like genetic code. The fundamentals need to be so integrated that you don’t even need to think about them. When you’re under pressure, your precious energy at work isn’t diverted to what you ought to do, but the expected behaviors are already baked in. You can apply your energy to more urgent issues and unique, in the moment problems. Habits are the stuff of muscle memory, enabling the automatic response. And the way you do it is with frequency, practice, and focus. Habits are contagious. They radiate out from leaders, who set the norms in their teams and across the organization. Decades of social and brain science research has shown that people defer to status, hierarchy, and power in conscious and nonconscious ways. That means that shifting leadership behavior is a lever for shifting culture, the center of the nesting doll of organizational habits. Understanding what your priorities, habits, and systems are allow you to take ownership of your culture. To that end, we have a host of research, insights, and products coming this year about culture. We have upcoming webinars on the science of smarter teams, the means to editing organizational DNA, and rethinking the 9-box. We are launching DIFFERENTIATE, for taking bias out of performance reviews, and DEVELOP, for better long-term career conversations. Culture is an ongoing process. We’re excited for you to join us. Continue reading on LinkedIn… SEE ALSO: The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset

As the world continues to evolve, and as business, economic, and social influences emerge, the NeuroLeadership Institute is always revisiting the emerging research and our internal frameworks to make sure we’re as relevant as possible. Since so much is going on in leadership, culture — and is now becoming clear, power — we felt a responsibility to revisit the way we describe our leadership practice not only to the world, but to ourselves. Going from Leadership and Change to Culture and Leadership may seem superficial at first glance, but in my twenty-plus years of human capital experience, I have realized that words matter. We say to our clients all the time: think essential, not exhaustive. For us to focus our energies, research, and discussion internally and with clients, it wasn’t just change we were interested in impacting, but culture. So what is culture? For one thing, it’s not a mystery. In the management world, culture is often spoken of with hushed tones, as some mercurial substance, ever-changing and impossible to be harnessed. But in fact, if you look into the brain science, it’s radically simple. Culture is shared everyday habits. They are shared in that they operate between people. They’re normative: they’re common across many people. It’s not reserved for the top echelon of the house, but the sum total of how everyone in the system behaves. They’re everyday, because frequency matters. It’s the consistency and the reinforcement that we provide one another that tells us what the norms are. And they replicate from person to person over time, like genetic code. The fundamentals need to be so integrated that you don’t even need to think about them. When you’re under pressure, your precious energy at work isn’t diverted to what you ought to do, but the expected behaviors are already baked in. You can apply your energy to more urgent issues and unique, in the moment problems. Habits are the stuff of muscle memory, enabling the automatic response. And the way you do it is with frequency, practice, and focus. Habits are contagious. They radiate out from leaders, who set the norms in their teams and across the organization. Decades of social and brain science research has shown that people defer to status, hierarchy, and power in conscious and nonconscious ways. That means that shifting leadership behavior is a lever for shifting culture, the center of the nesting doll of organizational habits. Understanding what your priorities, habits, and systems are allow you to take ownership of your culture. To that end, we have a host of research, insights, and products coming this year about culture. We have upcoming webinars on the science of smarter teams, the means to editing organizational DNA, and rethinking the 9-box. We are launching DIFFERENTIATE, for taking bias out of performance reviews, and DEVELOP, for better long-term career conversations. Culture is an ongoing process. We’re excited for you to join us. Continue reading on LinkedIn… SEE ALSO: The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset