Leadership Communication Tips
I recently learned about the work of brain science researcher David Rock and it’s application to leadership. Here’s my take on it.
Our brains are wired to react to threats. This was very necessary in the pre-civilized world where threats from predators were all too frequent. In the modern world there are no predators, like tigers, but our wiring still sparks whenever we feel threatened. Many of the threats we instinctively react to are interpersonal communications, even body language, that can make us feel less included and less safe. So, for example, if someone you expect to be friendly is not for some reason, your brain reacts, chemicals aimed at helping your safety are released and the result is ‘feelings’. In the workplace ‘feelings’ can be disruptive to optimal performance when they are related to a perception of less than optimal safety.
The opportunity for the leader is to use communications to help people feel safer more of the time so they are more productive and happy. Here are five ways to do that.
1. Reward people to make people feel good about themselves. Give them compliments. Show interest in them with questions and listening. Find opportunities to say “I need your help”. Find good ways to acknowledge effort and say thank you.
2. Keep people in the light by communicating more than necessary. Being tight lipped with people makes them feel less important and therefore less safe.
3. Give people a way to feel in control. Don’t micromanage or be an absentee manager. Ask them for their opinion. Give them appropriate opportunities to decide how to do their work.
4. Promote interaction among people to get more collaboration. Lots of collaboration in the workplace can produce a virtuous spiral or combined creativity.
5. Help people feel they are being treated fairly. People feel unfairly treated a] when the demands on them are out of sync with the control they feel and b] when the amount of effort they make is out of sync with the rewards they feel. As a leader or a friend intervene when you see an out of sync situation.
