Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders (2 page)

About the Author

Srinivasan S. Pillay, M.D.
, is a certified master executive coach, brain-imaging researcher, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Founder, CEO, and President of NeuroBusiness Group—an executive coaching company with coaches trained in the application of brain science to profitability and personal satisfaction in the business environment. Dr. Pillay has taught these methods with very high acclaim to executives from many companies, including but not limited to McKinsey, The World Bank, The MITRE Corporation, Genzyme, Novartis, Arab Banks of North America, CEO Clubs of Greece and Boston, Coca Cola, Pepsico, and Microchip. He has worked with coaches in a teaching or collaborative capacity from The Forum Corporation, Mobius Executive Leadership, and Triad Consulting. In addition, he has been invited to present his work in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, London, Switzerland, Greece, and Singapore, and his most recent presentations have been to executives from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Pillay is also the author of
Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear
(Rodale, August 2010), and he also writes for
The Huffington Post
and
Psychology Today
.

He is extensively sought out as a speaker and by the media. Select media appearances related to his business experience include
The Financial Times
in Greece,
Epoca Magazine
in Brazil,
Forbes Magazine
,
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
,
Investors Business Daily
,
Atlanta Journal Constitution
, and the
Sarasota Herald Tribune
. Aside from his work on applying brain science to improving business performance, Dr. Pillay is also regarded as an international expert in burnout, stress, and anxiety, having been the Director of the Outpatient Anxiety Disorders Program at Mclean Hospital, consistently ranked the top freestanding psychiatric hospital in the United States for the past 20 years. Dr. Pillay lives in Newton, MA, and works out of Cambridge, MA.

Chapter 1. Relevance of Neuroscience to the Business Environment

It is one of my favorite times in teaching a class of managers, leaders, and coaches: those first five minutes when executives and leaders from a variety of personal and business backgrounds—small businesses and Fortune 100 companies, male and female coaches, “in-your-face” and “one-step-at-a-time” personalities—are all united by a single question lurking at the back of their minds: What the heck does knowledge of the brain have to do with business?

There is even a faint look of horror on some of the faces of the participants who have come to this neurocoaching certification program as they learn that we will be talking for three days on how neuroscience informs business practices. Everyone sits back at first, preparing for the information deluge. But even within the first half-hour, I can sense a “huh?” response: “Wait a minute. Maybe, just maybe, there is something here that I can use.” By the end of the first hour, hands are up asking questions or down scribbling ideas, and fingers are tapping on the desk while the information being presented is processed. The brains of these listeners are suddenly faced with an understanding of themselves, and I can sense that there is a readiness to change. Is this not the point that all of us want to bring our clients to? And is this not the point when we say, “Okay! Time to create the action plan.”?

Andy Habermacher is the Managing Director of CTP (Corporate Training Programs) in Zurich, Switzerland. As a coach, he works with a wide variety of leaders, including prominent leaders of political organizations. This is what he wrote about his exposure to neuroscience: “In the autumn of 2008 I sat down in a conference room in a hotel in New York. Just 15 minutes later I realized I now had in my hands an exceptionally powerful tool for coaching, for leadership and for change management. That was what I had realized after 15 minutes, now 6 months later do I still feel the same? No, now I would say it is my most powerful tool. And by saying that I don’t mean that neuroscience makes my other tools and my love of all things psychology irrelevant—no it simply makes them
more
relevant. I feel like I could see the nail before and knew where to bang the nail and was banging it with a brick—still effective, still doing the right things at more or less the right time. The concept and insights neuroscience brought me gave me the hammer to
really
bang home the nail....”

Coaches are not only those people who have trained to be executive coaches. They often are managers or leaders who have to act as coaches within their specific business domains. In fact, the role of “coach” is intrinsically built into the role of managers and leaders. When we use brain science as the basis of a coaching methodology or communication, our goal is to make this as practical as possible. In fact, it is really only useful when it is the
best
way to communicate. This book is about how to use this knowledge of the brain to communicate in the business environment.

This does not require an immediately in-depth understanding of brain chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. In the same way that a mechanic does not have to know the basic engineering principles behind how a car works, a manager or coach does not have to understand irrelevant intricacies. Also, because neuroscience in coaching is in its infancy, the learning involved in coaching is a staged approach that is gradual but incremental. Although the field is advancing at a tremendously rapid pace, learning the fundamental principles of neuroscience and how brain science can help communication in coaching is a solid first step.

In this chapter, we will get a chance to end those burning questions (and hopefully inspire new questions) about the relevance of neuroscience to improving performance in the business environment once and for all. You will come to see what a substantial role an understanding of the brain can play in how you work with people; and why now, more than any other time in the history of building leaders, knowing how to apply a knowledge of the brain in the corporate environment is an important and fundamental part of creating a context for change. This—
the ability to create a context for change
—is what coaching, management, and leadership are all about, and neuroscience is a critical part of this context development. But before we take a look at brain science and its applicability to the business environment, let’s briefly examine the specific angle of brain science that will be discussed in this book.

What Is “Brain Science”?

Neuroscience
refers to the scientific study of the nervous system.
Brain science
is a division of neuroscience. Studies on the brain relate to either its structure or function. “Brain science,” as it is used in this book, refers predominantly to functional brain imaging studies that have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. Functional brain imaging examines how the brain works when it is presented with a task or challenge when people lie inside an MRI scanner. There are various kinds of functional brain imaging, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography), and SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography). The focus of this book is fMRI, which measures brain blood flow as a correlate of brain cell (neuronal) activity. By understanding how brain blood flow changes in different brain regions in response to tasks or challenges, we can start to understand how the brain works, and in so doing, gain insights about a different metaphor to describe human behavior (apart from organizational psychology).
In addition, we can develop communication strategies that target specific brain regions.

The Development of Brain Science

Important discoveries as a result of the scientific study of the brain date back to ca. 4000 B.C.E., when the euphoriant effect of poppy plants was reported in Sumerian records. Since then, there have been various findings and discussions within the field, including Hippocrates discussing epilepsy as a phenomenon of the brain (460–379 B.C.E.) and Plato discussing the brain as the seat of mental processes (387 B.C.E.; see
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hist.html
). In fact, much of Darwin’s theory of evolution was centered around his theories about the brain.
¹

In contrast with these early interests in the brain, imaging the brain using MRI is a relatively recent technique. The first MR image was published in 1973, and the first studies in humans were done in 1977.
²
Furthermore, the first papers in the area of functional brain imaging (fMRI) were published in 1992, and since then, the technique has evolved so that we can understand brain changes within very small time periods and we can also see these brain changes more and more clearly as the technology evolves. By having people respond to various challenges (imagery, reaction time, emotions), we are unraveling the mystery of how the brain works. In this book, we will see how this understanding of brain function can be applied to the business environment.

It is important to remember that the field of fMRI is relatively new and still evolving. We are still in the process of trying to understand what the “lighting up” of the brain actually means, but as we grow in our knowledge of this meaning, there are several compelling findings that deserve reflection and translation into the business environment. As with organizational psychology, our knowledge and understanding of the brain is constantly being refreshed.

How Does Brain Science Relate to the Personal, Managerial, and Organizational Problems That Coaches Face?

Accelerating the execution of strategies is a goal that managers, leaders, and coaches share.
³
Up until now, coaching theory has been based largely on personal or organizational psychology. By understanding the ways in which people and organizations work, business developers have been able to institute effective interventions to create a context for change. Organizational development and coaching has distinguished itself from psychotherapy in being time limited and goal oriented, but over time, as the psychotherapies have evolved toward this approach as well, the gap between the two is getting smaller. Although the psychological frameworks can be used very effectively to help people develop, these are based mostly on “external” observations of behavior. Inferences about interventions have been based on these external observations. With the advent of fMRI, we now have a chance to infer what is going on inside the brains of leaders so that we can augment this “external” behavioral and psychological approach with an “internal” understanding of what is going on inside the brain. On their own, brain anatomy and physiology are too esoteric to have practical significance in the coaching environment, but when the brain is examined in the context of personal or organizational development, it can provide amazing insights and can also provide a template for targeted strategies in accelerating the execution of strategy.

How Does the Application of Brain Science Help Coaches Deal with Their Clients More Effectively?

There are six basic ways in which brain science can enhance understanding within the executive environment:

•
Repackaging—
Any person who has been in marketing knows that one can completely change whether people will buy a product by repackaging it. A girl’s toy, for example, may be
received differently when it is packaged in yellow versus baby pink. It is the same toy, but the packaging has changed. Similarly, business leaders and managers sometimes hit a wall when working with colleagues, and although they want to maintain their primary focus, the colleague may be completely closed to “buying into” the executive’s suggestion. This can cause a stalemate in communication. For example, if a leader feels that unconscious fear is eroding the thinking of a manager, the manager may be closed to such “psychological” concepts as “unconscious fear.” However, if the leader provides a biological explanation for how unconscious fear and stress impacts thinking and productivity, the manager may be more receptive to the follow-up interventions. Coaches can use this methodology when working with leaders or managers.

•
Decreasing threat—
One of the obstacles to communicating in the business environment occurs when there is a rupture in alliance between two people in conversation, and when the person being spoken to feels criticized or threatened. When a coach or the “manager/leader as coach” uses psychological language, some people may experience this as a personal affront and may close up. Using the language of brain science can be a powerful way for executives to understand their behaviors without personalizing the explanation. When a coach focuses on a leader, the effect is one of direct focus, whereas focusing on “the brain” is something the coach and client can look at together. For example, if a coach feels that a leader’s overconfidence is getting in his or her way, the coach cannot simply say to all leaders that they are being overconfident. The leader may be insulted and may close up. Instead, if a coach explains that confidence is tricky, and that there are two types of confidence—real confidence (which reflects the truth) and illusory confidence (which does not reflect the truth)—and that both of these types of confidence activate different parts of the brain without us being able to know which one we have (details are presented later in the book), this would soften the impact on the leader and encourage an exploration of the type of confidence that the leader has.

•
Uncovering myths—
This is one of the most important applications of brain science to coaching. When brain science tells us something different from personal or organizational psychology, it can provide major breakthroughs in how leaders think. Examples of myths include the following: (1) Productivity is fine as long as workers are not overtly anxious; (2) Confidence indicates that a decision is correct; (3) It is pointless interacting with employees if they don’t tell you what is going on; (4) It is important to tell employees to avoid doing the wrong thing; (5) It doesn’t matter if times are hard; I have to keep pushing on through. Each of these myths can be debunked by neuroscience and will be discussed in greater detail in the book.
Table 1.1
points to brief examples of the new insights of brain science.