A Brain Based Leadership Approach For The Future Of Work

Throughout the years, I have had the opportunity to work in many projects related to leadership development and culture transformation.

Along the way, I discovered that despite the good intent of those who see the need for change and are keen to initiate such processes, the majority of people struggle to embrace the change, unless a significant commitment is clearly demonstrated by the leaders at the top of the organisation.

Change is inevitable and can no longer rely on the people at the top to be initiated or managed effectively.

I am certain that the time has arrived for anyone and everyone in an organisation to grow their leadership capacities. We are witnessing a new working era where imagination will be queen and the ideas of the best brains will create value for the economy.

Wouldn’t it be healthier for everyone in an organisation to take ownership of their own individuality and be more accountable and proactive without depending on what happens at the top? 

In today’s workplaces, people are eager to share their views and ideas to explore new solutions to their problems. Developing new mindsets and behaviours that can support this ‘renaissance’ is key.

We could say that behaviour is the manifestation of everything we say and do (following what we think and how we feel). This is, after all, what people notice.

For many years, the focus of how to change the culture of an organisation and develop its leaders has been about reshaping people’s behaviours following psychological and cognitive frameworks that only considered the external display of a person’s behaviour, with the expectation that the organisation would transform.

Now, with the emergence of brain science, there is enough evidence to suggest that the brain has a lot more to do with reshaping behaviours than we may have originally thought.

For example, when the brain is stressed or under pressure, it simply can’t perform to its full potential, no matter how much we try. On the other hand, given the right conditions, the brain is able to do some incredible things, sometimes beyond what we believe is possible.

Once we understand how the brain works in its optimal state, then we can start looking at behaviours and ‘culture’ through different lenses and utilise effective and leading edge models and frameworks different to those we have used in the past.

At the , we like to use the term 'Brain Friendly Culture' which could then be applied to an organisation and defined as an entity that aims to improve the performance of all the brains working within it, in order to increase business productivity and employees’ well-being and engagement.

Companies such as Zappos, Atlassian and Google which are having the most success, pay attention to providing the proper environment to their staff. They are the pioneers, the innovators, who know that most of today’s organisational practises still reflect the patterns of the industrial or the information eras.

Creating a brain friendly workplace where people can become creators or co-creators of how they want to handle their work-flow, so their brains can offer their best thinking, is what will differentiate the best organisations from the average ones in the years to come.

This new understanding of how we best function is here to stay. The sooner we embrace it and share it with others, the healthier the collective will be.