Originally published December 2020.

When is it not a time of challenge?

Back in April 2020, I was delivering a seminar to a group of senior leaders on the neuroscience of leadership in times of uncertainty, challenge and crisis. And in the Q&A section, one lady prefixed her question with the statement: “If I hear ‘unprecedented times’ once more …!”

She, like us all, had heard it: ad nauseum. And like many of you, I’m sure, wasn’t just tired of the repetition; she fundamentally disagreed with the message.

Because here was a leader who understood that, as challenging and potentially devastating as a global pandemic can be, we are ALWAYS faced with challenge. There is ALWAYS change afoot. And it doesn’t take anything like as dramatic as a global incident to push our brains into a state of alarm.

Bringing the “thinking brain” back online

This particular seminar attendee I know well. And she is everything you want in your leader, when things are tough. No semblance of discounting the seriousness of the issue at hand. But then, all about creatively responding (vs. unproductively reacting) to develop clarity, introduce certainty, and get to work fashioning opportunity.

How do we do that? How do we manage our internal state so that we can bring our best thoughts to the challenge? And the first answer is to practice awareness of your levels of alert and alarm.

• What’s your current level of ALERT? Low, Medium, High?
• What’s your current level of ALARM? Low, Medium, High?

This is such a simple exercise, But so useful to bring a higher level of consciousness to your day. Just the act of recognising where I am (and just as importantly, where my team are), in these terms of alert and alarm keeps the thinking brain online.

Managing change

Next step: what can we do to better handle whatever it has that has our system regularly on high alert and at (at least!) mild alarm?

Well, let’s take a look at what makes change so difficult for the human mind:

1. It’s the first sign of uncertainty – and its unpredictable.
2. Changing is harder than not changing – so we avoid it.
3. Changing back is easier than staying changed – so we revert.

Again, a simple but super-useful habit to instil: to get to the fundamental aspects of any change, so that we can design a brain-friendly solution. Look again at the list above and think what you might do to make the ever-changing landscape far more palatable for your brain:

1. PREDICTABILITY. Create routine and structure. Have a robust process for managing changes. Promote consistency wherever you can: to create a sense of predictability, even about how we deal with unpredictability!
2. ENERGY. Instil energy, continually throughout the day. In every activity, between activities, in communications, when setting goals, in meetings. Everywhere. Take steps to protect and replenish your energy because change requires effort.
3. FUTURE. Put significant focus and attention on the new setup you’re creating. Create an empowered “Toward State” for the new future. Maximise the positives. Strengthen the goals. Because we want to prove to our lower brain that creating out of the change is the better option than trying to revert a change that has already happened.

So, as a leader: what are you doing to create predictability for those around you? To introduce energising sub-projects and championing restful periods? To create that empowered towards state for the new?

A superpower worth cultivating

The final brain-based domain I want to talk about is: Decision-making.

Have you ever been under significant pressure and made decisions so odd, that you look back and can hardly fathom not just what the thinking was behind that decision, but who that was making those decisions?! Because you can barely believe it was you.

Periods of challenge and crisis require an especially robust decision-making framework and a resilient executing mind. Why? Because moments of crisis bring together:

1. An inflection point. Demanding change at a time when stakes are high and initial direction-setting crucial.
2. A sub-optimal decision-making environment. The constant brain-based threat under which we’re making these judgement calls is decidedly less-than-conducive to high-quality decisions!

And these factors are over and above the primary decision-making challenges of any and all other times: the incompleteness of the data; and the imperfections of the system.

So, aside from avoiding the decision (which is NOT an option: we’ve all been stuck behind someone else’s indecision and we all know that no decision is not a neutral position, but a negative), what are our options for making high-quality decisions?

1. ENERGY. (Again!) Decisions – even “small” ones – are fatiguing. And when the brain senses it’s under threat, we literally have less resources to pay attention to all the factors at play. So Job One: look after your energy. Fuel your mind: sleep, rest, water, food. And take care of WHEN you make your decisions. If energy is low, plan to take the decision at a later point.
2. EMOTIONS. Emotion plays an important role in decision-making. Without it, we wouldn’t have anything to give us that final nudge to choose between the options. But too much, and our thinking is flawed. Take a beat ahead of any decision to regulate your emotions. Take a breath. Label the emotions you’re experiencing. Slow yourself down. Say “ok” to signal to yourself that that’s done, and now it’s time to apply thought.
3. NON-LOGIC. “Non-logic” is my catch-all phrase for all the other reasons (besides “logic”) why we take the decisions we do. Examples might include emotion, bias, brain-based shortcuts and (my favourite to observe!) office politics. Take a moment of reflection to recognise what “non-logics” could be at play; and what you could do to mitigate any unfavourable influence. Additionally: if you can, get the outside view by talking to someone else in your circle.

(If this has got you interested in the wonderfully intriguing world of human decision-making, please do raise your hand to hear more about my upcoming course The Brain-based Leader™. Decision-making and Bias feature as a complete, in-depth module.)

Great minds don’t want to be tethered

Great minds don’t want to be tethered; they want to be unleashed. And so, whether your interest is your own mind or the minds of those around you, it pays to understand that which does the thinking: the human brain.

Thanks for reading!

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