Pop quiz: Which of these would be worse:
- Learning that, based on economic performance, lawyers in your practice group (including yourself) would be getting year-end raises smaller than average across the firm; or
- Feeling that you, individually, are being systematically shunned by the head of your practice group.
If you answered (b), welcome to the Mammal population.
I’m not being facetious. Neuroscientific research described in Managing with the Brain in Mind, (Booz & Co., Strategy + Business, Issue 56, Autumn 2009, p. 59–not yet published online, but keep an eye on their site) demonstrates that mammals perceive the feeling of emotional exclusion (based on activity in the “suffering” region of the brain) as the neurological equivalent of the distress associated with physical pain.
According to Naomi Eisenberger, the UCLA researcher who designed the study reaching this conclusion (involving fMRI’s and a rigged computer game, since you asked), “Most proesses operating in the background when your brain is at rest are involved in thinking about other people and yourself.”
What does this mean to you as a manager? Plenty.
As social animals, and as mammals animals extraordinarily dependent on the support of members of our community, work is not a financial transaction, not a quid pro quo of compensation in exchange for behavior. It’s social interaction, where being given an assignment we feel unworthy of, being reprimanded (fairly or unfairly), or feeling excluded are far more devastatingly negative experiences than the differenceof a few dollars, or thousands of dollars, at the end of the month.
So what?
Don’t think you can treat people–especially highly talented professionals–like a hydraulic system or internal combustion engine, where you adjust the richness of the incoming fuel/air ratio (compensation) and get corresponding horsepower out of the system.
Now, this is not news to anyone who’s legitimately earned a role in management (and who has any memory whatsoever of the schoolyard playground), but what’s shocking to me is how often this core human insight is honored in the breach in large and medium size firms.
Before, we might have thought that leaders who were empathetic enough to engage
employees’ strongest talents, support and encourage collaborative teams, and
generally create an environment fostering productivity and creativity were
“nice to have’s.” But the reason I bring this new research
to your attention is it argues strongly that such leadership is a lot more
than that: It’s indispensable to high-performing organizations.
In an important sense this new research challenges Abraham Maslow’s famous
“hierarchy
of needs,” which posits that higher needs can only be met once lower-level
needs are satisfied and which ranks the “hierarchy,” from bottom to top, as
follows:
- physiological survival, such as breathing, sleep, food, and clothing;
- safety, such as personal and financial security, and health;
- social, such as friendship, intimacy, and family
- esteem, both from others and self-esteem; and finally
- self-actualization.
But if being hungry, being physically threatened (by a snake, let’s say, a
vicious-looking dog, or a reckless driver), and being socially ostracized all
trigger the same response in the brain–which this research confirms–then
“merely social” needs start to appear more fundamental.
Coincidentally, we got unintentional but powerful confirmation of where “social” needs fit, in what otherwise would have seemed a small bit of news this weekend: The story was that three fishermen were rescued after spending 9 days 200 miles off the Gulf Coast on top of a capsized boat—one day after the Coast Guard called off the rescue efforts as in vain, and by sheer accident as a sharp-eyed guy on a passing boat spotted what he first thought was an innertube and went to investigate.
The story continued that the three had survived on a few gallons of fresh water serendipitously saved from the boat, a box of crackers, “and some bubble gum.” (The nutritional value of bubble gum being a topic that had hitherto not crossed our minds.) But what’s germane about the story? When asked by the inevitable reporter looking for a “human reaction,” “What was the hardest part of the 9 days?,” the spokesman for the three replied: “Right around the fifth day we just really all wanted somebody else to talk to.”
Bingo. You’re hanging on for dear life to a useless boat in the middle of the Gulf with dwindling and palpably inadequate resources of food and water, hope for rescue diminishing by the day, and you report that “the hardest part” of the ordeal was being deprived of human companionship? I did not make this story up.
Making this more important is what happens when the threat response is triggered,
as hunger, danger, and ostracism all do: Analytic thinking and creative
insight go right out the window, and in a professional, performance-driven
setting, just what people need most deserts them.
Lest you think that this is all about avoiding dysfunctional human behavior, the good news from the new wave of neuroscientific research is “that the brain is highly plastic. Even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.” Neural connections are not static from adolescence (or thereabouts) onward, as once was thought:
Neural connections can be reformed, new behaviors can be learned, and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified at any age. The brain will make these shifts only when it is engaged in mindful attention. This is the state of thought associated with observing one’s own mental processes (or, in an organization, stepping back to observe the flow of a conversation as it is happening). Mindfulness requires both serenity and concentration; in a threatened state, people are much more likely to be “mindless.” Their attention is diverted by the threat, and they cannot easily move to self-discovery.
What conditions, then, might conduce to “mindful attention,” or at least to a disposition to collaborate instead of to clam up, to suggest imaginative or creative approaches instead of reproducing the last matter’s approach by rote, or to truly engaged conversations instead of what we often get instead, punctuated monologues?
Again, the new research provides evidence that the predisposing conditions include:
- status
- certainty
- autonomy
- relatedness
- fairness.
Status is something we are constantly evaluating: Higher, lower, the same? In whose eyes? And high status is very important: It correlates with higher longevity and health (even adjusting for income, education, etc.). In a firm, the key point is that which indicators of status people value depend on the perceived values of the organization. If the firm is all about rewarding rainmakers, then the only “status” signal that matters is compensation. If the firm is committed to training and professional development, then recognition for increasing levels of professional competence and excellence will be at least as valuable in terms of morale-boosting and teamwork as serious raises.
Certainty is valued simply because its opposite, uncertainty, requires so much energy and attention, a/k/a distraction. Take this with a grain of salt: Moderate uncertainty (will we win the client? will we win the oral argument? will she go to bed with me the client approve our strategy?) can increase tension in very positive, creative, and energizing ways.
But too much uncertainty is simply exhausting. We have to pay so much attention to what seems like a series of unknown but potential threats (each one of which has to be assessed, discussed, and worried about) that we can’t focus on what we’re actually here to do. Particularly when change is on the agenda–especially if it’s internally at the firm–all-hands efforts to reduce uncertainty are called for. Explain the rationale for change and then explain it again. Be reassuring not by assertion that everything will be fine but by explaining what is entailed and–one can hope–letting the logic of the change speak for itself.
Autonomy is an uber-value for lawyers. But it’s important across the board, because the more autonomy one feels one has, the more capable one is of dealing with “the same” level of stress. The classic example is people who can control the hours they work vs. those who can’t. A 40-, 50-, 60-, or even 70-hour week is relatively manageable if one feels in control of when one will be working and when not. But if quixotic and unpredictable forces from above dictate when you’ll be working and when not, far fewer total hours can be worked productively before total burn-out sets in.
With lawyers in particular, be exquisitely sensitive to their perceived need for autonomy. Present options, not mandates; alternatives, not requirements; and offer independence wherever possible.
Relatedness goes right back to the old “friend or foe” distinction we all come hard-wired with. New people perceived as different may not be embraced in a spontaneous one-for-all hug. But if you lay the groundwork for new people to meet through social events (partner retreats, anyone?), the path will be smoothed towards accepting them as colleagues down the road.
Fairness may be the most critical ingredient of all. How many of you can sympathize with an executive who, when asked why he’d been at the same firm for 22 years, responded, “Because they always did the right thing.”
Conversely, leaders perceived as having an “inner circle,” whiffs of clubbiness, croniness, or old boys’ networks, will destroy the perception of fairness in a heartbeat.
Particularly in times like these when cutbacks and pain are on the agenda, they must be perceived as fairly distributed, equitably arrived at, objectively parceled out, and explainable in common sense sentences containing words of few syllables.
What might all this mean for you as a leader?
Apply it to yourself, is the short answer.
Give people latitude to make their own mistakes (at least where it’s not mission-critical). Buttress economic incentives with social reinforcement. If you’re inclined to micromanage, try to wean yourself from the habit (it doesn’t help your targets, and in the long run it doesn’t help you).
The beauty of learning how to read your own reactions better, as a leader, is that once you’re more comfortable in the zone of uncertainty, others will pick up on that cue and be able to relax into doing their real work rather than obsessively second-guessing your decisions. Don’t be afraid to be spontaneous; it shows you’re real and increases confidence.
The acid test may be this: Do you trust your colleagues in the firm to rise to the highest professional standards because that’s what they believe in, because they feel confident their status entitles them to make autonomous decisions, and because they know they’ll be treated fairly if they exercise their best judgment, regardless of the outcome?
As I said at the outset, you may think all this is obvious. I commend you if you know it all already. But the new research shows how profoundly grounded in our human and animal natures is the need for reinforcement of the social, not just the economic, context of our daily work.
Oh, and where do we fit in the Linnaean table?
Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclass: Tetrapoda
(unranked) Amniota
Class: Mammalia
Linnaeus, 1758
