Do You Have Leadership Genes?

I’ve just got home, exhausted, after being responsible for a 3-day youth camp for 71 excited 14 to 16 year olds.  But it was a wonderful team of 17, mostly young (mid-twenties), team leaders that did the work and carried the camp to great success, despite some rather trying circumstances. In fact, one of the highlights of the experience was the way in which everyone adapted to suddenly changed conditions, without even a hint of panic. Although, no mobile phones, electronic devices and the like, was probably more of a challenge for our teenagers than not being able to have a shower or see in the dark. And their thumbs got a chance to have a rest for 3-days.

As you might expect the camp involved lots of team-based activities. What was wonderful to watch was how leaders popped up like jack-in-the-box and carried their team. Sometimes there was more than one of these leaders in a team and it was interesting to watch them compete or co-operate, depending on their wont. In some teams leaders didn’t emerge straight away and the adult team leaders had their work cut out for them trying to stimulate leadership. Sometimes a reluctant leader would emerge but it wasn’t spontaneous and they would need help. The climate of these two groups, those with spontaneous leaders and those without, was different, in terms of enthusiasm and output.

What was interesting, and important, about this leadership talent that I saw was that it was very raw in terms of skill. It was driven by personality characteristics rather than anything else and some were more skillful than others, presumably having learned from direct and vicarious experience.

The research on human personality is pointing towards the fact that it is based on our genes, initially, and then shaped by experience. We appear to have genes for certain traits and the extent to which they are turned on or off is determined by our environment and our experience. So, for example, a person might have a genetic predisposition for being very compassionate but it will be modified by what happens to the person: probably (but not exclusively) in the first few years of life. So, for example, if the person is raised in a violent, abusive family that trait may well not manifest itself at all. This can result in what I call intrapsychic conflict  and the source of psychological distress but that’s another blog altogether.

The research on leadership is much the same. The recent research on the human brain supports the notion that some of us have better developed areas for judgment, emotional responsiveness, relationship ability, adaptation and so on, than others

Organisations that run leadership programs take great delight in touting that about 30% of leadership ability is genetic while the other 70% is learned. Of course this makes sense: how else would they make a living?

Of course people can learn certain leadership skills. As a psychologist I would often teach people with Asperger’s syndrome (think Sheldon in Big Bang Theory) how to fake empathy, attentive listening and other relationship skills. And they would be able to use the skills, much to the delight of their families.

The point is that the 30%, or whatever it is (I’m sure this number was taken out of a Chinese fortune cookie) is critical. It’s the bit you need on which to build skills. One of the characteristics of personality is that under stress, we tend to revert to type. That is, we forget what we have learnt as our brain becomes more focused on survival.

Does it matter? Well, I think it does. One of the big mistakes organisations make is that they are more inclined to hire or promote people due to their technical skills than they are their leadership skills. In fact, the latter can get very short shrift during the hiring process, which (sadly) may only consist of an interview and some reference checks with the candidate’s best friends and mother. In most leadership roles the technical skills are less important. It is the leadership skills, that are personality based, that are the most critical-as many organisations have found or not found, to their detriment.

It’s the quality of the leadership that accounts for organizational culture, which in turn is responsible for employee engagement. Hopefully, you don’t need me to tell you about how important engagement is in the quantity and quality of widgets produced by your organization.

Select your leaders more carefully is my suggestion and on personality rather than technical skill or even reputation. Get the best fit for your organization, no matter how big or small. And do this by having the person spend  some time with the organization, getting to know them and watching how they respond. The interview is very unreliable and easy to manipulate. Trust me, I’ve successfully done it many times.

The Psychological Reasons Why Coaching Works

After 47 years spent trying to help people change I have to conclude that it is a lot harder than it looks. It makes me grimace a little when I see claims from smiling, smartly suited consultants that this training course or that formula will make a difference. Getting people to change, particularly if they are not motivated by some powerful need, is a bit like shifting the Olgas with an ice pick. In fact, I found in my years of being a therapist that even when people are in incredible psychological pain getting them to change can be extremely difficult.

Brain research shows that when people are confronted with change the brain releases chemicals that activate the fight and flight response. It creates anxiety. The same regions in the brain that are activated when we are in physical pain are activated when we see change on the horizon. Habits, on the other hand, are much more indelible since they are energy conserving and make us feel comfortable. It is no wonder change is difficult or even impossible, even in people who are in psychological pain and have every reason to change.

One of the amusing illogical things we humans do (and there are lots of them) is to think that if we tell someone to behave and think differently then that is all that is needed. The parents of children over the age of about 11 are good examples of this belief, as are bosses, teachers and people who run training programs. Psychology 101 tells us that people are more likely to become even more resistant when we tell them to change when they don’t want to, when motivation is low. Our brains are capable of making up all sorts of reasons to reject even good stuff that we hear or see, let along things that are of marginal interest. And please don’t think that logical argument will work either. A lot of change involves emotion and it is probably the main force that will move or not move mountains.

There is pretty convincing evidence that coaching is much more effective than training in changing behavior and it is useful to know why. While a case can be made for the use of training for obtaining knowledge and skills (competencies) there is not much evidence that any significant change in behavior or deep learning occurs beyond that. Change is just too difficult as described above. Mostly, people change as a result of their experience in applying their competence in varying circumstances, where there is a motivation to deal with specific situations or where they are confronted with problems. This is how we really learn.

Like psychotherapy, and I don’t make this comparison lightly, coaching accelerates the likelihood of deep learning and change. It seems to work for three main reasons. The coaching technique or approach appears to have little effectiveness on coaching outcomes. However, there is some good support for cognitive-behavioural techniques that are evidence-based and are used in mainstream psychology. What do seem to create exchange are: the relationship between coach and client; empathic understanding by the coach; and positive expectations.  Like psychotherapy these three factors make up about 80% of the reasons coaching works and about 20% is technique or skilled application.There are several dimensions to these main factors.

The coaching enterprise, if undertaken correctly, involves identifying very specific personal needs, the elaboration of the context and scope of these needs, exploration of problems encountered, discussion about the emotional impact of the issues raised, a sharing of understanding, identification of personal resources, development of an agreed course of action, and follow-up later to refine the action plan.

This process, if done well involves: engagement through effective listening and responding skills, acknowledgement of problems and issues, sharing of experiences, story telling, shared problem solving, a shared journey, acceptance of the other, being supportive, positive reinforcement, optimism, focus, and a relationship where failure is allowed.

Brain research tells us that a positive relationship causes the release of chemicals in the brain such as oxytocin, vasopressin and dopamine that make us feel good. Dopamine increases motivation.

Coupled with a focused program that makes change seem safe, a positive relationship overcomes those nasty chemicals that frighten us from changing and make us revert to habitual behavior. The fact that the client can try out new behaviours in a graded way means that change is much more manageable. Follow-up provides support over a prolonged period of time and difficulties can be overcome as they arise in a safe environment. One of the great strengths of coaching is that the coach can explore with the client why certain tactics or behavior is not working.

Blog: Neuroscience of leadership: evidence based practice

I’m fairly confident that were you to need surgery of some sort, and I hope you never have, you would want your surgeon was competent. In fact, you would be pretty confident that the shingle above the door and the very fact that she could get you onto the operating table before slicing and dicing, attested to her abilities. You would be expecting that the techniques she used would be up to date and based on the latest research: good research at that.  This would not be a time for experimenting with some fad, you would think.

Despite the importance of management/leadership to the well-being of millions of people and to organizational survival its practices have been defined by fads, fancies, anecdotes  and half-tested theories. But now, management/leadership practice can now move into the world of evidence-based practice. In fact, you can see the change in the titles in airport bookshops, the weathervane of what’s fashionable in management/leadership circles. I’ve often quipped that management is akin to prostitution in that they are two of the very few ‘professions’ that you can enter with little or no training other than on the job experience, and for which you don’t need any registration or ongoing education.

Research methods in how the brain is studied have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years to the point where the brain can be studies while people are performing behaviours. Researchers are now able to see which parts of the brain are firing in different circumstances, even when we are making decisions or reacting towards others.

Some canny researchers have started to make the links between what happens in the brain and what works for effective management/leadership practice. This exciting new field has been called the ‘neuroscience of leadership’. It is a significant leap forward in being able to apply science to a field of endeavor plagued by the difficulties of really understanding what works and doesn’t work outside of personal experiences.

Interestingly, a lot of the neuroscience seems to support many of the principles of transformational leadership, which is concerned with building human capacity and engagement in an organization. For example, the research shows that the carrot and stick approach that is a feature of transactional leadership is a poor motivator over even the medium term. People, assuming basic working conditions are reasonable, are more intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated. Being part of a team, having meaningful work, being able to apply one’s talents and imagination, and relationships are much more motivational than concrete rewards and punishments. And they increase effectiveness in a number of important areas described below.

Another great example from the brain research is the role of relationships in motivation, creativity, problem-solving and decision-making. It seems that people are much more productive in these areas if they have a positive relationship with their boss. This is based on research that shows that people experience, unconsciously of course, a rush of chemicals in the body that create a feeling of well-being when they have a positive interaction with another person. That is the other was engaged with them, listened, responded positively, was pleasant, and displayed empathy. Yes, all those ‘soft’ skills that are so easy to dismiss, work in motivating your team and enabling them to do their job better at the same time. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Two more examples before I close are people’s reactions to change and the folly of multi-tasking. The brain research shows that when confronted with change, any change, people release chemicals in their body that are the same as those that are released during a flight and fight situation. As a result they feel bad, but are not quite sure why, but the unconscious brain reacts by trying to establish stability. As a result the person resists the likely cause, any change in circumstances. This explains why humans are more likely to be conservative and are largely risk averse. We like the tried and true.

Finally, the mantra now in terms of high productivity and effectiveness is focus. It seems that the human brain is not that good at adapting to doing multiple tasks in a short period of time, despite what we might like to think. Rather, people are much more effective when they can focus, uninterrupted on a task rather than having to juggle many balls. This has huge implications for how we organize our day and our work. Not lease of these is the management of email and other social media. The choice seems to be: multi-task and be ineffective; or focus and be more effective in myriad ways.

What this brain research allows us to do is to base management/leadership practice on sound research, on evidence. The problem is that the research is shooting down a lot of ‘holy cows’ and beliefs that are held by managers/leaders.

What will be interesting is whether we can take notice of the evidence or continue to be comfortable with ineffective practices. Will we in fact take more notice of how we implement change, take more time to create good working relationships with our people, develop our teams, design our workplaces to be less ‘busy’ and more focused, and give people the time to be creative?

Clever managers/leaders are already doing it.

(Stewart is conducting half-day and full day workshops on how to apply neuroscience to leadership. He is also conducts webinars on the same topic for groups of up to 8)

Setting Free the Bears

I’ve just got back from Laos, doing the tourist thing: as you do. One day we went to the equivalent of what we would call a national park. They are desperately in need of preserving what forests and animals they have, as illegal and legal logging is decimating the flora and, as a result, the fauna. Poaching is another threat and has almost seen off what was a thriving elephant population. There aren’t many birds either as they have been hunted for food, and one can buy fried rats the market, but that is another story.

Then there are the bears. They too have been hunted to near extinction and are mostly kept in sanctuaries. One of the reasons for hunting them is for homeopathic (I refuse to call this pharmaceutical because it is far from that) purposes. One of the weirdest is the taking a bear paw and putting into a bottle of rice wine. Apparently it is good for the health. But the most barbaric practice is keeping bears in tiny cages and painfully extracting bile from them until they can no longer produce and die a horrible death: mostly practiced in China. Whatever medicinal benefit bile might provide can be obtained from synthetic substances but it probably has not health effect at all. Perhaps it’s a good placebo but so is a sugar pill.

Humans are a remarkably superstitious lot and this is not  just the preserve of so called developing countries. We see the same sort of psychological processes in our apparently more enlightened societies and it doesn’t need to be about grand scale belief systems. It can be spotted in everyday behavior as a primitive and flawed way of making judgments.

 One example is the way in which we invent explanations for things that we don’t understand or for which we don’t yet have a scientific reason. This happens on a daily basis when we observe other people’s behaviour that doesn’t fit with our model of the world. We don’t understand it so we find reasons that concur with stereotypes we might have, or preconceived notions that were probably implanted by a relative, a newspaper or some other ‘respected’ source. Given it is our only reference point we believe it to be true rather than take the time to do some research.

You see this sort of thing happening on Facebook where a wild rumour about some marginal racial, ethnic or other group gets circulated and people keep sharing it, believing it to be true. A five-minute bit of research mostly shows these outrageous posts to be false but nobody takes the time to look. And of course it happens in organisations and groups of all kinds.

I have often been asked for my expert (sic) advice on matters in which I have some expertise. These are not many but there are some things that I do know something about. It might be the quality of the advice but frequently not only is the advice ignored but the person or organization does the complete opposite. The usual reason is expediency and a desire to ignore, as Al Gore calls it, an inconvenient truth. It is just too hard to do the thing (whatever it is) right so the advice is dismissed and the more convenient, preconceived approach is used.

One example is the organization that has a problem and is looking for a training solution. In fact, a brief investigation finds that the problem involves the organizational systems, processes, procedures or, more intangibly, leadership. This is pointed out but ignore because the solution is seen as too difficult. Much better to adopt a solution that is easy but will not work. But this example can be taken as a metaphor.

This sort of behavior is as primitive as extracting bile from bears for no good purpose. But, it is part of the human condition. Our brains have a lot of evolving to do before we can claim to be as sophisticated as we think we are.

The Power of Self-Limiting Messages: And Drawing Straight Lines

Recently, I have taken up painting. Not the painting of buildings type but the artistic kind, although not sure what I’ve been painting could be called close to art, as of yet. I’m just six months into this new experiment with life and I’ve produced some reasonable efforts. What is even more interesting is that I have learned that I can draw. My birds, people and objects approximate what they are meant to look like, the proportions are good and others can tell what they are.

Since I was around 14 I have never tried to paint or draw. I was wont to quip that I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my life. The reason for this was that I developed an aversion to art when a teacher gave me 5% for an art exam and basically suggested I do science instead. I recall that day and I recall the painting that I did-it was pretty awful, a deep brown blob. The mark I got may have been generous like the joke about getting some marks for just turning up for an exam and writing your name. I duly went off to the science labs and never destroyed a nice white canvas again.

I have to agree with the teacher that I had no aptitude for art at all, at the time. But, of course, that was not the point. The complete lack of encouragement and writing me off as a dud had the effect of keeping me from a wonderfully creative experience for over 50 years. I suspect this is more true for those who have problems with being sporty and who are left on the sidelines rather than included, then lose interest in being active altogether.

I just love painting and, if left to my own devices and not disrupted by the  Director of Nursing waving the list of jobs to do around the house at me, will spend hours sitting at the easel. I am besotted.

What’s more, it is helping with other areas of my life, such as writing. And I seem to be having more good ideas lately. The evidence suggests that activating the creative parts of the brain will cause them to be active for some time afterwards. I always use creative activities to my workshops for this reason.  However, the point being that one does not have to be Renoir but just being creative is enough to have positive effects on my life.

As a psychologist I very frequently meet people who have self-limiting thoughts, usually implanted by an adult early in life, and nearly always without conscious malice. The malicious undermining of the self-esteem of another is a different matter, and it does happen, sadly.  Some people I meet struggle with these self-limiting messages all their lives. These are the ‘shoulds’, ‘musts’, ‘oughts’ and ‘cannots’ that get in the way of doing things that might ultimately fulfill us.

I also think that this can happen to adults too. Women in abusive relationships are a good example although they may have had some experience of abuse early in life as a model, so they don’t expect much else, although this is not true all the time.

As a psychologist, what interests me is how powerful these messages are: that we would take the opinion of another and believe it to be true. We are enormously fragile in a psychological sense. It behooves us to be aware of this when we make comments, even throw away ones, to children, family members, colleagues and those we manage at work.

The good news is that these self-limiting thoughts can be reversed. See your friendly local psychologist or send me an email and I can point you to some reading, if you are interested.

So, here I am, artist in the making. Still can’t draw straight lines but the great thing about art is that you don’t have to. Straight lines hardly exist in nature and they are boring anyway.

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You can find our most recent (there are two) book on self-determined learning (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=self+determined+learning).