“As humans, we can identify galaxies light years away and we can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the 3 lbs of matter that sits between our ears” – President Barack Obama on the BRAIN initiative, 2015.
Neurosciences bring fascinating light to different forms of human intelligence, whether individual or collective systems. It tells us that the brain has the capacity to regenerate, expand and change shape – that’s what’s called plasticity- as well as create new connections. While it ensures our survival, the brain also allows us to grow beyond our known abilities.
As collective intelligence systems, organizations both strive for survival and have an immense potential for growth and innovation as well. So how can we unlock this potential to go beyond boundaries in our organizations?
Let’s take a quick look at the brain. In its survival function, the brain constantly scans our environment to identify and respond to threats and opportunities, seeking ways to minimize threats and maximize rewards.
Responses to opportunities and threats are emotional in nature. When the brain perceives a threat, it gives a fight or flight response and in the long run this causes avoidance behaviors whereas when it perceives a reward, this causes a desire leading to a proactive behavior that is likely to be repeated.
Our mindset is also decisive in our apprehension of the reality that we perceive: fixed, it will encourage short-term responses, while a Growth Mindset will encourage efforts seeking for long-term development and lasting success.
Organizational networks, like brains, will tend to move toward some things to maximize rewards and away from others to minimize threats.
Creating a rewarding feedback culture in the organization, that allows to learn and grow, is key to innovate.
As the brain cannot at the same time strive to survive (Fear system) and seek to expand (Seeking system), companies have to choose one system or the other. A feedback culture that fosters innovation will look at aspirations, encourage experimentation, connectedness, information-sharing and self-expression and will stay away from messages that create social threats for people.
“When the seeking systems are not active, human aspirations remain frozen in an endless winter of discontent”
– Jaak Panksepp
An environment guaranteeing psychological safety and that encourages and values the exchange of information within the organization is conducive to the establishment of a caring feedback culture, which in return allows learning and development, thus creating the essential conditions for growth and innovation.
Such feedback culture is by nature appreciative and inclusive, and as such, it stimulates emotional intelligence, both individually and in collective processes.
Because it is focusing on what people and the organization are doing best, building on their strengths and welcoming inputs from inside and outside, an appreciative feedback culture is the perfect terrain to make people and organizations constantly seek for new possibilities, liberate their creative energies and unleash their potential.
What are your contributions to creating a feedback culture at work, in your teams, and in your organization?
Sources:
Carol Dweck: “Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential”, updated edition 2017.
Daniel Cable: “Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do”, 2018.
David Cooperrider: “Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change”, 2005.
David Rock: “SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others”, NeuroLeadership Journal, 2008.
