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Posts tagged ‘IPNB’

Mar 10

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Excellence is a habit

I like this quote that I found in The Mind & The Brain (Schwartz & Begley): 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

From brain research done in the last 5 years, we learn that neurons (brain cells) that fire together wire together. The question is, “What do we repeatedly do?” We can either be creating excellence or mediocrity.

Daniel Pink recently listed his seven rules for writing. I’m going to modify a few of them here along with my own comments and ideas about maintaining daily habits.

  • Show up. Be present in each moment. It’s the only one I have.
  • Be useful. Seek out ways to be useful whether it’s helping with a tedious task at the office or putting dishes in the dishwasher.
  • Move. Exercise releases the stresses that build up over time and allows ideas to come to the front of my mind.
  • Connect. Have a meaningful conversation with a friend or co-worker each day. If you ask, “How are you?”, stop to really listen to the answer. 
  • Be thankful. Look for one thing each day to be grateful, even if it’s simple like the sunshine falling on the floor or a beautiful raindrop hanging from a branch.
  • Take one action. Act on and do one thing each day to advance your dream.
  • Eat well. Food nourishes me and gives me energy, which is why I choose whole foods as often as possible. (Many of my readers know that I’ve followed the Dean Ornish program since 1997.)
  • These rules work for me. Your mileage may vary.

I remind myself to keep the momentum going. Like turning a flywheel, restarting a habit takes far more energy than maintaining one. As we commit to develop personal habits of excellence, our organizations and families will change along with us.

Mar 6

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Creating a space for critical thinking

I continue to reflect and consider how we can bring critical thinking into our organizations. As I discussed in my last post, one of the challenges with critical thinking is not allowing the questions to derail the process. Questions are only part of an environment that encourages critical thinking.

When a situation calls for critical thinking, people are often already stuck and anxious. When a situation is tense or stressful, people’s brains can shut down the thinking process and shift to fight, flight, or freeze mode. In other research done by Dr. Stellan Ohlsson on impasses, he experimented with helping people solve problems by suggesting what the solution is not and alternatively by giving clues to move people toward the solution. In both cases, only 5% of people eventually reach a resolution. His next strategy was to dive deeply into the problem and look for the root cause. This too was only marginally effective.

With insight and ideas on the line, seeking ways to improve the environment and allow people to move from stress to a reflective state of mind is most important. Here’s a short list of ideas on how to do this (these ideas come from the IPNB research):

  • Encourage the person by showing appreciation or recognizing their status and role in the organization
  • Increase confidence and certainty by clarifying the objectives
  • Assure the person that they will be making the decisions and discovering the needed ideas
  • Ask the person to simply the question to a sentence or a few words

Once the environment is calmed, and people are in a better frame of mind (brought about by reducing the load on the limbic system and frontal cortex), questions may be used to encourage the person to focus on their own process. You can begin by encouraging them, “You have good ideas. Let’s explore what your ideas are rather than think about mind.”  David Rock in Your Brain at Work (p. 213) suggests the following four questions to stimulate reflection:

  • If you stop and think more deeply here, do you think you know what you need to do to resolve this?
  • What quiet hunches do you have about a solution, deeper inside?
  • How close to a solution are you?
  • Which pathway to a solution would be best to follow here?

By shifting the environment from one of stress, blame, or argument, the brain research shows that people can be more effective. As the leader or coach, you have to be willing to allow and encourage people to find their own solutions. Real change and progress are then possible.

Feb 26

Clearing the Brain’s Inbox

Neuroscientists have created a large body of evidence over the years for the importance of sleep. Now researchers have added new understanding to why sleep matters. When we sleep, information that is stored in our short-term memory (located in the hippocampus) moves to longer-term memory storage (located in the cortex). We process new information, create new neural pathways, and open space for new data and experience. This process happens during stage 2 REM sleep.

Of note is that it is equally advantageous to sleep before learning as well as after learning. Researchers say that sleeping before learning allows the brain to become like a dry sponge that is able to then absorb liquid. Enter the midday nap: data showed those who napped were able to integrate information more readily than those who did not. It allows the brain to take a “mental time out”. Even if you don’t sleep, a midday rest can produce similar results.

A good night’s sleep has not lost its importance. Most people know that stage 4 REM sleep is necessary for doing complex thinking and creative remapping of experiences and information.

In Brain Rules, Medina summarizes the importance of sleep by looking at its reverse, “Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function (decision-making), working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasons, and even motor dexterity.”

Some organizations have set up nap-pods. In day-long kindergartens and in some first grade classes an afternoon nap time still happens. How can our organizations and learning centers integrate the benefits of rest? Let the midday naps begin!

Feb 25

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Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

The old adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” is being turned upside-down. It used to be believed that the brain not only didn’t change, but deteriorated with age. But new research is proving that humans continue to form new brain cells and build new neural connections throughout their lives. The brain is elastic, “You can teach an old dog new tricks.” So what does the new science of neuroplasticity have to do with managing an organization?

In the past, the workplace was viewed as transactional: employees did work in exchange for pay. Managers made decisions and gave direction. But the research demonstrates that the human brain sees the workplace first as a social system. Like the human players in the game, people can experience anger and rejection at work. This happens when they are given negative feedback, not invited to participate in a team, assigned a task for which they’re overqualified, see unfairness, or asked to take a cut in benefits or pay. To the brain, these experiences are like being punched in the mouth or going hungry and are reflected in the activation of threat and pain related neural circuits.

The response changes the brain. The response uses up oxygen and glucose as blood is diverted from parts of the brain where working memory resides. It impairs the person’s ability to think effectively, to solve problems, and to be creative. Most employees learn to hide their reactions or shrug their shoulders and get on with it. But these same employees will begin to limit their commitment to the workplace and may give their best energy and ideas somewhere else.

This research has broad implications for how organizations are structured, communication happens, information is exchanged, and reward and benefits are structured. What are a few ideas that managers can use to avoid activating a threat response and activate a reward response? I propose the following as a short list for managers:

  • Choose your body language and words carefully. Observe how different patterns deliver different results. As a manager and leader, you’re always on stage.
  • Clearly communicate not only expectations, but priorities. Do this as often as necessary to maintain clarity in the organization.
  • Be flexible, whenever possible, letting employees make their own decisions.
  • Support employees’ ideas for building good workplace relationships.
  • Act with fairness, which can be increased by greater transparency, clear ground rules, and well explained objectives.

What is being learned in neuroscience about how we behave and relate to each other, creates a great advantage: there is now data backing the ideas that have been put forth in the past two decades about social and emotional intelligence. As managers and employees we have the opportunity to put that knowledge to use in successfully developing our organizations. We can all learn new tricks.

Read more about the research in my article: Managing in 2010: Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Feb 19

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Procrastination vs. Incubation

As someone who often sees herself as a procrastinator, this article offers a new perspective. I have often defined my operating mode as procrastination. And, it can look this way from the outside perspective. You’ll often find me setting aside 3 or 4 hours each day to read and reflect, go on a walk, or drink a cup of tea or coffee while having a conversation with tribe members and friends. And yes, from the outside, it looks as though nothing is happening. But when the project deadline arrives, it is delivered on time and within budget.

Robert Biswas-Diener suggests that the opposite side of the procrastination coin is incubation. He defines incubation as “a clear sense of deadlines, confidence that the work would be complete on time, certainty that the work would be of superior quality, and the ability to subconsciously process important ideas while doing other — often recreational — activities.” Acknowledging incubating as a strength was a breath of fresh air. In sharing this insight with a friend, yes – in a conversation over coffee, she added that incubation can be a big part of creativity and innovation.

As I reflect further, this idea fits in with the reading that I’ve been dong on interpersonal neurobiology and how our brains most effectively process and manage information. Our brains need a balance of sleep, exercise, good nutrition along with time for stimulation and relaxation in order to function at peak levels. And whatever one calls it, setting aside time for incubation, curiosity, thought experiments, reflection, or exploration, will allow us all to function at our best.

I will continue to plan and set deadlines. I will set realistic expectations for myself. I will communicate with clients and co-workers. But I stop judging myself for taking time to incubate ideas and projects.

Feb 2

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Brain – Mind – Body

I read an interesting article today that summarizes several research studies about how our brain, mind, and body are connected. Cognitive and neuroscience are beginning to provide insights into our brain, mind, and body that will have real world applications. Researchers from the Institute for the Future imagine that a growing understanding of neuroscience and behavior will impact training programs as we learn how to influence students focus, accuracy, and efficiency.

As I imagine what the research data means for organizations. I can imagine tools that will allow organizations to use the research to select the best persons for each team as they configure project teams. I envision tools for educators and trainers to improve transfer of information in classrooms. I can imagine managers using it to create tools to optimize workflow.

We continue to live in a world where there are as many problems with solutions as there are dilemmas without clear solutions. Bringing together disciplines like neurobiology, sociology, psychology, and organization development may help organizations and the individuals in them to live with uncertainty and continue to be successful.

“Yesterday is regrettable, tomorrow still hypothetical. But you can always listen to your body, and seize today with both hands.” – Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago

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