Lifting your employees’ work rate isn’t brain surgery
Four steps to help leaders unleash their team’s untapped potential.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience – how the brain works – have profound implications for almost every basic human activity: thinking, learning, feeling and interacting.
With businesses being nothing but organisations of people, these insights are powerful tools for any leader or business owner. They can help employees achieve more than you thought possible.
Harvard Business School research has revealed specific cells in the brain that explain the neural components of “emotional leadership”.
Followers of an effective leader will experience a rapport with them, created by a combination of mirror neurons (which cause us to reproduce the emotions of others) and oscillators (which cause us to subconsciously mimic the movements of another).
The actions of a leader that has “engaged” their team affects the brain chemistry of all team members.
Because of the interpersonal dynamic of mirror neurons and oscillators, any emotions within team members quickly spread to other people.
Soon, these emotions – positive or negative – can affect the team, inhibiting or boosting its performance.
Are you engaged, or in a meaningless fling?
Harvard research shows that successful, profitable businesses commonly have loyal, engaged employees who consistently perform at a high level to deliver a fantastic customer experience, which leads to customer loyalty.
There are four steps to increasing someone’s level of engagement:
1. Increase your energy levels
The first step to becoming fully engaged or getting your team or workforce on side is to get more energy in your life. It’s almost impossible to make significant improvements if you are constantly tired or unwell – sure, you can become more efficient, but you won’t make that mega-leap to maximise your true effectiveness.
To do this, you need to understand the three sources
of energy:
• Physical energy: There are many simple yet profound changes you can make to improve your physical energy: diet, exercise, sleep, rest and relaxation and concentration.
• Mental energy: Increase your energy and effectiveness
by focusing your daily activities on the most important things, and eliminating focus-breaking activities. Try doing more of the tasks you love (for example, by doing them exceptionally well so you keep getting those tasks) and decreasing the things you don’t enjoy, such as swapping or delegating.
• Emotional energy: Positive emotions improve the quality of your energy. Avoid negatives which sap emotional energy and do more of the activities that boost energy.
2. Boost your emotional engagement
For someone to feel engaged, they need to have an emotional connection with the activity or group. They need to feel valued, valuable and involved.
Ensure people feel they are an important member of the team. Ask for regular feedback about their experiences and how they can be improved – then act on the suggestions.
Recognise good performances. And keep everyone informed about the team or business. These activities can foster a stronger sense of unity, so that people work together better and try harder for each other.
3. Change bad habits, and re-learn good ones
You can teach an old dog new tricks. The scientific term for this is neuroplasticity – the ability of our billions of neurons to reorganise themselves to change established patterns.
Use a deliberate and focused effort to change your patterns of behaviour. With the right framework, it can be done. Often, the mental barrier of believing we can’t change ourselves, ensures we don’t even try.
4. Build skills in more effective ways
Why learn from your mistakes, when you can learn from someone else’s. Neuroscience provides an alternative to learning by trial and error.
By implementing a systematic approach to learning,
and using techniques such as skill visualisation, you can dramatically increase the effectiveness of skill development and application.
