Feedback can be challenging to give and receive…. use some tips from neuroscience to help make it more powerful and positive! 🙂 (I was honored to get to contribute this article)
THE INNOVATIVE LEADERÂ PODCAST WITH DAVID PHILLIPS AND CHRISTY GEIGER (www.InnovativeLeader.co) What do we do when things go south? In this episode of the Innovative Leader, we talk about leadership awareness and how to navigation of the frontal lobe (sage) vs limbic system (lizard). Emotions are real, and play a very
Sometimes in our 24/7, on the go society … we look and focus on ways we can increase our learning, habits, and performance. Downtime and mindfulness can seem like the opposite rhythm than the quick, efficient, and striving energy of achievement. Neuroscience helps us understand what is critical for our minds to be at their best, which directly impacts our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy. This “downtime” of mindfulness is actually critical for building gray matter and the balanced sage perspective that offers us greater wisdom, guidance, and emotional intelligence.
Leaders are in a constant state of learning and change. Leaders come to executive coaching to help gain insight for themselves to identify blind spots, to fill in leadership ditches, and to better achieve their goals. An accelerant to this is understanding how the brain works. Neuro awareness and skills can help a leader personally, and then as they hone their skills, they can practice, share, and mentor with their followers. Understanding how the brain works supports ourselves and our team to get the best results for human performance. Why? Because really, we are our brains.
There are three chemicals in the body that can help boost our mood and positive emotion when we are down or stressed. Studies show when these levels are low we can feel down. There are things you can do to naturally boost these “happy” levels daily. First is the hormone Oxytocin*, which increases when we have positive social interactions and connections. Second, are neurotransmitters; Dopamine and Serotonin*, which are produced by your body and used in your brain. Dopamine is connected to our senses, motivation and feeling good. Serotonin is a natural chemical that supports many functions in the body. It is sometimes referred to as the “happy chemical” because helps produce a healthy mental and emotional state and stimulates well-being and happiness.
When we are in situations where there are greater uncertainty and stress, it is common for worry and fear to increase. When we are not around other humans because our brains are actually wired for relationship and connection (introvert or not), we can feel sadness and loneliness. These feelings are all in the category of “social pain”.
Leaders can use the SCARF model to help them communicate in a way that helps people feel more secure and ensures what they say does not activate threat (fear and mistrust). The SCARF model has five domains: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.
Understanding the conditions that cultivate insight thinking could have many applications to life and work. While some of the “activities” that are recommended to set the stage for more natural insights might not seem “new”, they provide a reason why doing an activity is useful and also help leaders to better design strategic conditions for insights.
As humans, we are emotional beings. Things happen that stir our subconscious beliefs, unrealized biases, and silent expectations. A person can be going along in their day and suddenly emotions are flowing and sending messages to the brain and the brain reacts. To put it simply, we move from the greater emotional stability of the frontal lobe to the limbic system where the amygdala gets activated and things begin to spin and be triggered.
Dr. Leaf is a great researcher and neuroscience thought leader. Today she did a podcast on “how to deal with disappointment and failure”. It is a great topic because while we as leaders know it is important to FAIL FORWARD and failure is a gift to learn, it can be
