Month: June 2011

Tom Talks about the Biology of Leadership–part 2

In Building a Winning Business, I spend considerable time focusing on important leadership skills, such as listening to others, fostering open communication, staying positive and taking the opinions of others into account. In other words, leaders must be able to relate to and communicate effectively with others.

G/B (see previous post for full citation) cite a study that found in an analysis of new C-level executives only those who could get along with others succeeded—even though all the executives were deemed to be equally smart, ambitious, and self disciplined.  Research also is bearing out the notion that non-verbal communication is more important that what people actually say or hear.

A recent study by Rutgers University professor Marie Dasborough found that employees who received positive information that was delivered critically (frowning and narrowed eyes) reported feeling worse about their performance than did employees who were given negative job performance information in a positive manner.

It’s not what we say so much, but how we say it that truly matters!

Of course, it’s not exactly a news flash to say that leaders must be able to connect with people to be effective. What is really interesting, though, is a recent neuroscience finding: the presence of mirror neutrons in the brain that causes people to reproduce the emotions of others within themselves. Collectively, G/B write, “these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience.”

Ever heard the old phrase, “anger spreads like the flu?” It’s the ancient wisdom of our forbearers but science is now proving its biological genesis. Or, as G/B opine, “Mirror neurons have particular importance in organizations, because leaders’ emotions and action prompt followers to mirror those feelings and deeds. The effects of activity neural circuitry in followers’ brains can be very powerful.”

That’s why I have long believed that leaders must set a positive example, always tell the truth, own their own mistakes and stay calm in the heat of crisis. A leaders’ behavior (or even the behavior of an employee that others respect) can build up or destroy an entire organization through mood contagion. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens when someone starts bad-mouthing your organization or clients. Within a very short time, many other employees will start to share those negative impressions, even if their own experience does not support them. If this goes on long enough, your entire business can begin to fall apart.

Luckily, mood contagion also can be positive. So even if we’re juggling a lot, worried about personal issue or just feeling crabby, effective leaders learn how to put aside their negative emotions and focus on the positive. The health of our organizations depends upon it!

Tom Talks about the Biology of Leadership–part 1 (first in a series on this topic)

Remember all the buzz about ten or so years ago about “emotional intelligence,” which was a concept pioneered by thinker/author Daniel Goleman and focused on the vital role that empathy and self-knowledge play in effective leadership?

Goleman co-chairs the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, which is based at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. He published a book on emotional intelligence in the late 1990s and got a lot of people thinking about this important subject. Now he and a fellow social scientist, Richard Boyatzis, are looking into a fascinating new area called “social neuroscience,” or the study of what happens in the brain when people interact. According to Goleman and Boyatzis (G/B for easy reference) in a recent article in Harvard Business Review OnPoint (a compendium of selected HBR articles), social neuroscience is “beginning to reveal subtle new truths about what makes a good leader:

“The salient discovery is that certain things leaders do—specifically, exhibit empathy and become attuned to others’ moods—literally affect both their own brain chemistry and that of their followers,” G/B write. “Indeed, researchers have found that the leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system. We believe that great leaders are those whose behavior powerfully leverages the system of brain interconnectedness.”

Brain interconnectedness?

At first glance this might sound like a campy science fiction novel or maybe a weird cult where everyone drinks acid Kool-Aid before heading off to nirvana in his or her brand new Nikes. But if you read further, G/B make a lot of sense. In fact, many of their assertions reinforce my own ideas about what makes a great leader, which I discuss in my new book “Building a Winning Business.”

I’m going to explore some of the ideas advanced by G/B in this post and a few more that will follow in the coming weeks. If you would like to read more about “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” be sure to check out the article by the same title in the spring 2011 edition of Harvard Business Review OnPoint (www.hbr.org).