Your Brain at Work

A few months ago now, I was asked to come up and speak at the launch of HR Club Newcastle. As a thank you for doing that I was given a copy of “Your Brain at Work” (thanks Jenny & Olivia!) and on holidays recently I was able to get some quiet time to read it.

The introduction starts like this:

• An avalanche of emails.
• An overload of information.
• A meeting that leaves you exhausted.
• Ever more change and uncertainty.
• The occasional win just to keep you going.

At this point I was like, “Yes- that’s me. I need help!”

While I found this book to be like some of the other psychology books I’ve read (i.e. it’s not an easy read that you can get through in a few days), its jam packed with interesting info and research that can be applied to anyone in the workplace. The way in which the brain is explained is so simple; it makes me think even I could be a neurologist!

Basically the book teaches you about how the brain works so that you can work smarter, be more focused and productive, stay cool under pressure and even influence others. It also focuses on problems and decisions, collaborating with others and facilitating change. I won’t be able to go through it all but I will present a few key takeouts that you might find useful.

Recently I attended a Working Smart with Outlook Program which was fantastic and is already keeping me a lot better organised, saving me time and relieving the pressure I put on myself by allowing me to leave work with an empty inbox everyday. However I have found that recently I do feel like a bit of a slave to my inbox, and that this is something I also need to change.

For example, how many times do you check your inbox a day?
From what hours do you check your email?
Do you feel bad/depressed/overwhelmed when your inbox is out of control?

Before I did that course I was a bit out of control. I was responding to emails as fast as I could- which meant more emails in my inbox because people saw I responded quickly so they started to send me more issues to respond to. I checked my email on my iphone when I opened my eyes in the morning, I answered emails on the train, I answered them all day at work and then I checked them when I got home. What an ineffective way of working while trying to do other tasks at work and find time for a personal life in there somewhere too.

For instance ‘Your Brain at Work’ talks about ‘dual-task interference’. The scientist Harold Pashler showed that when people do two cognitive tasks at one, their cognitive capacity can drop from that of a Harvard MBA to that of an eight year old. If accuracy is important, then you shouldn’t be dividing your attention. Linda Stone, a former VP at Microsoft, coined the term ‘continuous partial attention’ in 1998. It is what happens when people’s focus is split, continuously. The effect is constant and intense mental exhaustion.

Further to this, a study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capacity by an average of five points for women and fifteen points for men on an IQ test. This effect is similar to missing a night’s sleep! For men, it’s around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis. Hence always ‘being on’ is not an effective way to work and you can focus on only one conscious task at a time. This means that the only way to do two mental tasks quickly if accuracy is important is to do them one at a time.

‘But I can multitask’ I hear you say (particularly if you are a woman- this is something we pride ourselves on), and so there is a possible solution to this- practising the activities over and over until they are embedded. With regards to how the brain works, by embedding the action it means that these actions are not being managed by your prefrontal cortex, but rather the basal ganglia. An example of this is learning the keystrokes to cut and paste data rather than going to manually cut and paste using the mouse each time.

This book is full of helpful and thought provoking ideas that are relevant to the way in which we work as individuals, leadership development, influencing others- all that meaty and interesting HR stuff. There isn’t time to go through it all but I will leave you with a few more chestnuts you might find interesting.

1) Studies show that the strongest emotion in a team can ripple out and drive everyone to resonate with the same emotion, without anyone consciously knowing this is happening. The strong emotion gets attention, and what people pay attention to will activate their mirror neurons.

In a similar way, the boss’s emotions can have a flow-on effect to others, since people pay so much attention to the boss. You see the boss smile, and your brain starts to mimic the smile; then you smile; then the boss smiles back. It’s a virtuous and upward cycle, with each person raising the depth of the other’s smile through a mirroring function. Mirror neurons explain why leaders need to be extra conscious of managing their stress levels, as their emotions really do impact others.

2) Having many social connections doesn’t just increase your happiness, it can also help you perform on the job, and even live longer (another reason to get involved with HR peeps in the community). Being connected to others in a positive way, feeling a sense of relatedness, is a basic need for human beings, similar to eating and drinking.

3) A study by Gallup Organization showed that companies that encourage water cooler conversations exhibit greater productivity. Increasing the quality and quantity of social connections (up to a point, of course is likely to improve productivity, as more people find themselves surrounded by fewer foes first and foremost, and then more friends as well.

4) David Rock says that there are five domains of social experience that your brain treats the same as survival issues (such as food and water- yes Maslow’s hierarchy is challenged). These domains are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness- the SCARF model.

This model describes the interpersonal primary rewards or threats that are important to the brain, and strengthening your ability to increase several of these elements toward a reward or away in order to reduce the threat will help you to operate much more effectively.

For more info on how your brain works, there is a very cool website you may like to check out.