Neuroscience IS about working with emotions

As soon as we mention the “brain” many people recoil because they assume that a neuroscience approach to leadership development will be all about thinking and logic instead of emotional intelligence. Such a paradox. In truth, a neuroscience approach can fast-track our understanding of emotions and our ability to work with them. That is especially true for people who tend to avoid discussing feelings and emotions in the first place.

Learning about how the brain is operating means understanding emotions and the social nature of humans :

• How emotions happen
• Being more intentional about motivating others
• Learning what triggers demotivation, quiet quitting and disengagement, then creating a different approach to mitigate those
• Understanding conflict and how to avoid or reduce it
• How to give effective feedback that people can actually hear and use
• Influencing others
• Why emotions, especially fear, can spread quickly around a team and destroy progress and team spirit
• How to recognise and diffuse a toxic environment
• How to create psychological safety
• Where biases come from, how to become more aware of them and how to be more inclusive

In short, understanding how the emotional brain functions is a fast track to emotional intelligence.

Our emotions are a result of chemistry produced by the brain because of its focus on self-preservation and survival. It’s quite simple and extremely effective to learn these dynamics and put a few practices into place that will help leaders improve their organisation culture. 

If a tool/approach works – whether it’s from coaching, psychology, spirituality or other approaches to understanding and working with human behaviour – it works BECAUSE it works for the brain.

So let’s skip the intermediate steps and go straight to the heart of the matter: the brain and how its design drives behaviour.

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