Ed Batista

Neuroscience, Joyful Learning and the SCARF Model

What conditions best support learning and personal growth?

1. Judy Willis on "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education"

Stephanie West Allen points to a thought-provoking and compelling answer to the question above in the work of Judy Willis, a former neurologist who obtained her teaching credential after a 15-year career in medicine and now teaches at Santa Barbara Middle School and blogs at Psychology Today.

Willis brings an unusual and highly valuable combination of hands-on experience as an educator and a deep understanding of neuroscience to her writing, and her article in the Summer 2007 issue of Educational Leadership, "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education," is one of the most helpful pieces I've read on the subject of understanding the practical relevance of neuroscientific research.

Willis's article is focused on formal education in a classroom setting, but I believe that the findings she discusses have relevance for any experience in which we're trying to impart knowledge, stimulate understanding and foster growth, from a group workshop to an executive coaching session to an impromptu feedback conversation.  I take the liberty of quoting Willis at length here (interspersed with my comments), but I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing:

[W]hen we scrub joy and comfort from the classroom, we distance our students from effective information processing and long-term memory storage. Instead of taking pleasure from learning, students become bored, anxious, and anything but engaged...

My own experience as a neurologist and classroom teacher has shown me the benefits of joy in the classroom. Neuroimaging studies and measurement of brain chemical transmitters reveal that students' comfort level can influence information transmission and storage in the brain (Thanos et al., 1999). When students are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience "aha" moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery (Kohn, 2004).

"An atmosphere of exuberant discovery."  I LOVE that phrase!  It perfectly describes my most fulfilling learning experiences.  If I can help to evoke that feeling--in myself and in others--in a workshop or a class or a coaching session, then I know we're on the right path.  I'm reminded of my recent post on being an infectious agent of enthusiasm.  Like enthusiasm, "exuberant discovery" is a contagious state. 

Willis continues:

The Brain-Based Research

Neuroimaging and neurochemical research support an education model in which stress and anxiety are not pervasive (Chugani, 1998; Pawlak, Magarinos, Melchor, McEwan, & Strickland, 2003). This research suggests that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are enjoyable and relevant to students' lives, interests, and experiences.

Many education theorists (Dulay & Burt, 1977; Krashen, 1982) have proposed that students retain what they learn when the learning is associated with strong positive emotion. Cognitive psychology studies provide clinical evidence that stress, boredom, confusion, low motivation, and anxiety can individually, and more profoundly in combination, interfere with learning (Christianson, 1992).

Neuroimaging and measurement of brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) show us what happens in the brain during stressful emotional states. By reading glucose or oxygen use and blood flow, positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicate activity in identifiable regions of the brain. These scans demonstrate that under stressful conditions information is blocked from entering the brain's areas of higher cognitive memory consolidation and storage. In other words, when stress activates the brain's affective filters, information flow to the higher cognitive networks is limited and the learning process grinds to a halt.

Simply put, stress kills learning--and yet so many settings intended to support learning are needlessly stressful.  I'm reminded of Hans Selye's concept of eustress and the resulting awareness that some level of stress--which differs for each of us in different situations--supports optimal performance, but above that level performance declines.  The curve below may not be accurate--I suspect that in reality it's quite a bit steeper for most of us, but it serves to illustrate the concept:

Willis's work is an important reminder to pay close attention to the profile of this curve and to insure that we don't push ourselves and others beyond that point of optimal performance where learning ceases.  Willis continues:

Neuroimaging and electroencephalography (EEG) brain mapping of subjects in the process of learning new information reveal that the most active areas of the brain when new sensory information is received are the somatosensory cortex areas. Input from each individual sense (hearing, touch, taste, vision, smell) is delivered to these areas and then matched with previously stored related memories...

I'm struck here by the potential importance of all the senses in the learning process and the way in which most learning environments fail to make effective use of any but hearing and vision (and even then rely heavily on monotonous lectures and boring lists of bullet points.)  It suggests to me that learning is enhanced when all the senses are stimulated more thoroughly, through movement, vivid imagery and language, and perhaps even taste and smell.

Willis's website is www.RADteach.com, an acronym that stands for "Reach And Discover" but that also has a more specific neurological meaning:

RAD Lessons for the Classroom

A common theme in brain research is that superior cognitive input to the executive function networks is more likely when stress is low and learning experiences are relevant to students. Lessons that are stimulating and challenging are more likely to pass through the reticular activating system (a filter in the lower brain that focuses attention on novel changes perceived in the environment). Classroom experiences that are free of intimidation may help information pass through the amygdala's affective filter. In addition, when classroom activities are pleasurable, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that stimulates the memory centers and promotes the release of acetylcholinem, which increases focused attention.

The acronym RAD can remind educators of three important neuroscience concepts to consider when preparing lessons:

• Novelty promotes information transmission through the Reticular activating system.
• Stress-free classrooms propel data through the Amygdala's affective filter.
• Pleasurable associations linked with learning are more likely to release more Dopamine...

Planning for the Ideal Emotional Atmosphere

Although it is valuable for teachers to be familiar with neuroscientific research and pass relevant findings along to education stakeholders, it is crucial that educators use classroom strategies that reflect what we know about the brain and learning. So how can teachers create environments where anxiety is low while providing enough challenge and novelty for suitable brain stimulation?

Make it relevant.

When stress in the classroom is getting high, it is often because a lesson is overly abstract or seems irrelevant to students. Teachers can reduce this type of stress by making the lesson more personally interesting and motivating. Ideally, students should be able to answer the question, "Why are we learning about this?" at any point in a lesson...

Give them a break.

...[T]eachers can give students a three-minute vacation to reduce stress. Any pleasurable activity used as a brief break can give the amygdala a chance to cool down and the neurotransmitters time to rebuild.

Create positive associations.

Eliminating all stress from students' lives is impossible. However, even if previous classroom experiences have led to associations that link certain activities, such as memorizing multiplication tables, to a stress response from the amygdala, students can benefit from revisiting the activity without something negative happening. By avoiding stressful practices like calling on students who have not raised their hands, teachers can dampen the stress association...

Prioritize information.

It is helpful for teachers to guide students in learning how to prioritize information—how to decide what facts are worthy of writing down and reviewing when studying. When teachers demonstrate and explain how they determine which facts are important, students see how to make those judgments for themselves as they read texts and study. Helping students learn how to prioritize and therefore reduce the amount of information they need to deal with is a valuable stress-buster.

Allow independent discovery learning.

Thanks to dopamine release and the consolidation of relational memories, students are more likely to remember and understand what they learn if they find it compelling or have a part in figuring it out for themselves. In addition, when students have some choices in the way they will study or report on something, their motivation will increase and stress will diminish. They will be more accepting of their errors, motivated to try again, and less self-conscious about asking questions.

Whenever we're helping people learn, whether it's in a workshop, a coaching relationship, or just a supportive conversation, we can feel tempted to tell, to advise, to provide answers.  My experience as a coach has taught me the importance of resisting this temptation, and Willis's final point above helps to explain the neuroscientific basis for this dynamic.  Our brains are wired to learn more effectively when we figure things out for ourselves.  (There's a connection here to the value of experiential learning and its emphasis on the "perceptual order" of our direct experience rather than the "conceptual order" stressed in most learning, in William James's language.)  This isn't to say that we should never tell or advise or provide answers--there are times when that's what's needed.  But when we take those shortcuts, we need to be mindful of their potential to undermine learning.

2. Joyful Learning and David Rock's SCARF Model

Willis's perspective on "joyful learning" is embedded in David Rock's SCARF Model, which provides a useful framework for understanding how our brains respond to social threats and rewards.  Rock's acronym stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness, five domains of social experience within which we regularly encounter threats and rewards that trigger responses in the brain similar to those triggered by physical threats, such as pain and hunger, and physical rewards, such as relief and satiation.

Rock writes in "SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others," (available as a PDF on the Resources page of the site promoting Rock's new book, "Your Brain at Work"):

[M]uch of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward (Gordon, 2000)...[and] several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs (Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2008). In other words, social needs are treated in much the same way in the brain as the need for food and water.

The SCARF model summarizes these two themes within a framework that captures the common factors that can activate a reward or threat response in social situations. This model can be applied (and tested) in any situation where people collaborate in groups, including all types of workplaces, educational environments, family settings and general social events.

Willis's work provides an vivid example of the SCARF Model in action.  As Willis describes the neurology of learning, it's easy to envision specific aspects of stressful learning environments that trigger social threats: Authoritarian teachers and intimidating leaders who diminish others' status.  Unclear lessons and irrelevant exercises that fail to provide certainty around learning goals (or the likelihood of achieving them.)  Excessive structure and a lack of choice that rob people of their autonomy.  A heightened power distance preventing teachers or leaders from developing a sense of connection and relatedness with others.  And favoritism or arbitrary rules that undermine fairness.

Rock's model describes a set of neurological dynamics at work in every social setting, but Willis makes clear their vital importance in learning environments.  Whenever we're seeking to promote learning, it's essential that we structure the environment to minimize these social threats and cultivate that "atmosphere of exuberant discovery" Willis describes above by promoting social rewards.

As teachers and leaders, we need to take advantage of every opportunity to raise the status of those around us.  We need to provide sufficient certainty without stifling creativity, and we need to provide sufficient autonomy without leaving others feeling lost or alone.  We need to foster a feeling of connection and relatedness among the diverse members of a group.  And we must always be fair.

3. Safety, Trust, Intimacy and Learning

Finally, Willis's essay reminds me of my own belief in the importance of safety, trust and intimacy in any learning environment.  As I wrote recently:

The foundational qualities that define every group are the levels of safety, trust and intimacy: Safety =  A belief that we won't get hurt.  Trust = We mean what we say and we say what we mean.  Intimacy = A willingness to make the private public.

When safety, trust and intimacy are established, these qualities support the actions that lead to greater success as a group: experimentation, risk-taking and a willingness to be vulnerable.

When we feel able to experiment, take risks and make ourselves vulnerable, our ability to learn, to increase our self-awareness (and our awareness of others) and to change our behavior in order to achieve our goals more effectively increases dramatically.

Photo by Phineas H.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Self-Coaching Guides, One Year Later

Next month marks the first anniversary of the publication of my Self-Coaching Guides, six compilations of posts on the topics of Communication, Leadership, Motivation, Change, Learning and Happiness.

The Guides have been well-received--hey, they're currently in the top 10 when you search for "self coaching"--and I'm glad people have found them useful.  That said, they're due for an update, and there's plenty of room for improvement--a project I'm planning to tackle this Summer.  The main changes I hope to make include:

• Integrating my increased understanding of neuroscience and its implications for coaching.
• Making more effective use of of the framework that links these topics together.
• And transforming the Guides from compilations into more independent narratives on each topic.

If you have any feedback on how the Guides could be made more useful, please take a look and let me know--I'd be grateful for your input.

A final thought: ALL coaching is ultimately "self-coaching."  No matter how closely I work with my clients and students, and no matter what useful insights may emerge during our sessions, they do the heavy lifting of understanding themselves, tapping into their strengths, and, when necessary, changing their behavior on their own.

Photo by Theresa Thompson. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Are You in the First Half...Or the Second Half?

My former Stanford colleague Andy Chan (now Vice President for Career Development at Wake Forest) has a great question that he uses to help someone determine where they are in a given journey or experience:

Are you in the first half or the second half?

It's applicable in any context--a job, a career, a lifetime--and its simplicity cuts through the distractions that can cloud our perspective on the future.  And because we often don't (and can't) know the answer with any certainty, the real value comes from the feelings and intuitions that emerge as we reflect on the question and their implications for choices we face going forward.  For example:

• A job: I'm in my fourth year in my role as a Leadership Coach at Stanford, and I'm as certain as we can be about anything that I'll continue in this role through the end of 2010.  So if I'm in the first half of this experience, it'll continue for at least another 4+ years, lasting into 2015--and that feels like a long way off right now.  Alternatively, if I'm in the second half of this experience, it'll end within the next three years, before 2013--and while I don't feel an urgent need to make a transition, that timetable feels a little more balanced.  So this suggests that I may be in the second half of this experience, and if so, it's probably early in the third quarter.

• A career: In contrast, I'm in my fifth year as an executive coach, and I'm absolutely certain that I'm in still in the first half of this career.  While I've come a long way and learned a great deal since making the leap from management into coaching, by definition this isn't a profession that one ever masters--coaches must be lifelong learners, approaching each engagement with a beginner's mind.  At this point I hope to coach as long as I live, and yet I may never feel that I'm in the second half.

• A lifetime: That said, in a few months I'll be 43, and while I'm hopeful that it's still somewhat early in the second half of my life, it feels safe to say that halftime is over.  Rather than induce feelings of sadness, this awareness triggers a deep appreciation for life and every remaining moment that I've been granted, feelings that are only reinforced by the recent loss of  Amy's father and a student of mine.

This question--Are you in the first half or the second half?-- is also a nice complement to my Time Horizons framework.  Asking ourselves where we are in the time horizons that matter most to us is a useful way to get even more specific about our feelings and how they impact the choices we face within that horizon.

Continued thanks to Andy Chan for his great work and thought-provoking insights.

Photo by MPD01605.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Jessica Hagy on How to Get Unstuck

Jessica Hagy's Indexed is an incredibly creative and thought-provoking (and funny) resource, and I find inspiration in her work on a regular basis.  I was particularly struck by today's entry, How to Get Unstuck, which is really an expanded version of the Experiential Learning Cycle.

We typically view this cycle as a series of sequential steps from one stage of the process to the next, in part for conceptual simplicity, but also--and more importantly--to get us to think more deeply about how we can learn more effectively from our experiences (hence the name!)

But Jessica's inclusion of some additional steps in the process--seeing "Imagination" springing from "Frustration" and noting that "Experimentation" should precede formal "Implementation" reminds me that in reality we move through this cycle not in an orderly stage-by-stage sequence, but in a messy series of intertwined loops that often lead us backwards:

The point of a tool like this isn't to tell us the "right" way to do things--it's to suggest a different way of doing things that might allow us to learn more, be more creative, or be more efficient in the process.  While I like Jessica's new version, you might find an even simpler one helpful:

The Strategic Importance of Empathy

In my work as a coach, empathy--defined by Merriam-Webster as "understanding and vicariously experiencing the feelings and thoughts of another"--is a foundational skill, and my effectiveness is inextricably tied to my capacity to empathize (which is why I seek to understand and transcend my limitations.)

So it's gratifying when someone other than a coach talks about the importance of empathy, particularly in a business context.  Last week I recommended Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer, and in addition to supporting his advocacy for that new profession, I want to call attention to his case for empathy as an essential capability in business:

[pp 128-129] In the twentieth century, the corporation was so large it created its own weather system.  General Motors, IBM and Coca-Cola could shape the world to their will.  And in this world it was enough to be really analytically smart.  Now we have to know the world outside the corporation.  We have to know worlds alien to our own.  We have to know worlds that proceed according to other assumptions.  Without empathy, these worlds are opaque to us.

The news has reached even the Harvard Business School.  When faculty members Srikant Datar and David Garvin consulted the b-school world, they were told that MBAs needed more "self-awareness and the capacity for introspection and empathy."  This is good news, but I am a little puzzled why they continue to call these "soft skills."  In fact, empathy is frequently the blade that finds the right insight, extracts from it the real strategic and tactical opportunity, and crafts it into a final, compelling form.  Is this really a "soft" skill?  (And what does it say about the b-school community that it uses this patronizing language?)...

The CEO of Delta Air Lines, Richard Anderson was recently asked how business school should change... As he told the New York Times, "We measure, study, quantify, analyze every single piece of our business.  Business schools in the United States have done a phenomenal job of creating the capability.  But then you've got to be able to take all that data and information and transform it into change in the organization and improvement in the organization and the formulation of the business strategy."

We may think of empathy as the ability to see the bigger picture that will transform the corporation inside and out.

In my role as a Leadership Coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, I'm directly involved in the effort to help MBAs develop more "self-awareness and the capacity for introspection and empathy," and something the GSB gets right--partly by design, partly by accident--is the rich array of opportunities for our students to cultivate these qualities.

The designed aspect is a function not only of the GSB's "new curriculum" and its emphasis on leadership and communication skills, but also of the school's decades-long commitment to its Interpersonal Dynamics course, a transformative experience for the majority of the student body (including me, way back in 1999.)  That said, the accidental aspect derives from my sense that, despite all the progress that's been made, some of our most important work in these areas still happens on the margins of the institution, in happenstance conversations and relationships, and, to Grant's point above, all of this work is still easily dismissed by some as mere "soft skills."

I'm reminded of a November 2007 post by Tom Peters (which he actually wrote in ALL CAPS to signify his passion):

BOB WATERMAN AND I, IN 1980, DEVELOPED A MANTRA IN THOSE DAYS OF YORE WHEN "STRATEGY [STRATEGIC PLANS] WAS EVERYTHING." WE SAID:

HARD IS SOFT.
SOFT IS HARD.

THE READILY-MANIPULABLE NUMBERS ARE THE TRUE "SOFT STUFF."

THE RELATIONSHIPS-LEADERSHIP-"CULTURE"-"ACTION BIAS" [OR NOT] ARE THE TRUE "HARD STUFF."

I'd readily add "self-awareness and the capacity for introspection and empathy" to that last list--none of them are easy to develop.  I'm also reminded of Charlie Rose's 2007 interview with Bill George:

Charlie Rose: [Leadership] can be taught and learned?

Bill George: Learned. I teach now, and I don't think you can teach leadership, I think you can learn about it.  I think you can learn about yourself.  It comes from within, from who are you inside and what makes you tick, and what are those tapes playing in your head about what you want to be and what your limitations are.

(later in the interview)

Bill George: In this century, leadership has changed.  Leadership is not about getting people to follow you, the "Great Man theory," follow you over the hill General George Patton style.  That idea is out.  To me, the great leaders today are able to align people around a sense of purpose and values and get that consistency all around the globe, and then empower other people to step up and lead.  And I've found that in organizations that are really effective at generating leaders, there are thousands of leaders because people empower them to step up and lead.

And just how do we develop leaders who can "go within," who can "align people around a sense of purpose," who can "empower other[s]"?  By helping them to cultivate their self-awareness, their capacity for introspection, their ability to empathize.

Blogs I Read

Here are several lists of blogs, ranging from Management to Miscellaneous, written by people whose work I admire and from which I draw inspiration on a regular basis.  (I'll keep a link to this post on my Resources page.)

Photo by Matti Mattila.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

David Rock on Neuroscience, Leadership and the SCARF Model

Shortly before taking a break from writing last Fall, I began digging more deeply into the work of David Rock, who for many years has been exploring the field of neuroscience and its implications for management, coaching, and organizational life.  (This resulted in my November 2009 post David Rock on Neuroscience, Coaching and Leadership.)  Having begun writing again, I continue to find inspiration in Rock's work.

The SCARF Model

Much of Rock's current thinking is distilled in Managing with the Brain in Mind, published in August 2009 in strategy+business, Booz & Company's quarterly magazine (free registration required) and in "SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others," a paper originally published in 2008 in Issue #1 of the NeuroLeadership Journal (co-founded by Rock) and available as a PDF on the Resources page of the site promoting Rock's new book, "Your Brain at Work."

The SCARF model referenced in both pieces (and briefly touched on in my previous post) refers to Rock's framework for understanding the five primary social dimensions within which our brains respond to perceived threats and rewards.  From Rock's "SCARF..." paper:

[T]wo themes are emerging from social neuroscience. Firstly, that much of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward (Gordon, 2000). Secondly, that several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs (Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2008). In other words, social needs are treated in much the same way in the brain as the need for food and water.

The SCARF model summarizes these two themes within a framework that captures the common factors that can activate a reward or threat response in social situations. This model can be applied (and tested) in any situation where people collaborate in groups, including all types of workplaces, educational environments, family settings and general social events.

The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.

Status is about relative importance to others. Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. Relatedness is a sense of safety with others, of friend rather than foe. And fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people.

These five domains activate either the 'primary reward' or 'primary threat' circuitry (and associated networks) of the brain. For example, a perceived threat to one's status activates similar brain networks to a threat to one's life. In the same way, a perceived increase in fairness activates the same reward circuitry as receiving a monetary reward.

I've taken the liberty of adapting Rock's graphic version of the SCARF model, with an increased emphasis on the disproportionate ability of threat responses to drive us away relative to reward responses' ability to pull us closer:

Some further comments on each of the five dimensions of the SCARF model:

Status

Status is "about relative importance, 'pecking order' and seniority," Rock writes in "SCARF..."  He cites the work of epidemiologist Michael Marmot, whose research suggests that status is "the most significant determinant of human longevity and health, even when controlling for education and income."

Two key aspects of our brain's perception of status are: 1) how easily a threat response can be triggered by such conventional workplace practices as performance reviews and "feedback" conversations, and 2) the fact that threat and reward responses related to changes in status can be triggered "even when the stakes are meaningless," as Rock writes in strategy+business.  These dynamics imply not only that extreme care must be taken to conduct reviews and provide feedback in ways designed to boost, rather than threaten, the recipient's status, but also that attention must be paid to all the little, everyday ways in which interpersonal status can be built up and torn down.

Certainty

The importance of certainty can be seen as a result of the brain's effort to conserve energy, which derives from the limited capacity of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive function.  As I wrote last November, "we resist mental effort around decision-making and impulse control because we're preserving resources in case we need them more urgently in the next moment," and the same dynamic contributes to our resistance to uncertainty.  When we're acting with sufficient certainty, our brain senses patterns, successfully predicts next steps, and operates much more efficiently.  But when we lack certainty and can't predict what will happen next, "the brain must use dramatically more resources, involving the more energy-intensive prefrontal cortex, to process moment-to-moment experience," as Rock writes in "SCARF..."

That said, it's useful to distinguish mild uncertainty from excessive uncertainty.  The former triggers a mild threat response, generating just enough adrenalin and dopamine "to spark curiosity and energize people to solve problems, Rock writes in strategy+business.  However, he continues, "when perceived uncertainty gets out of hand, people panic and make bad decisions."

Autonomy

Our perception of our ability to exert control over our environment has a substantial effect on our response to stress factors in our life.  When we feel more autonomous, we're much more resistant to stress--and when we feel less autonomous, we can perceive the same set of circumstances as much more stressful.

Two aspects of autonomy worth nothing are: 1) autonomy and certainty are intertwined--more autonomy yields a greater sense of certainty about the future; and 2) similar to status, "even a subtle perception of autonomy can help," Rock writes in "SCARF..." suggesting that even where autonomy is substantially limited by organizational constraints, meaningful perceptions of autonomy can be generated by small gestures.

Relatedness

"[I]n the brain," Rock writes in strategy+business, "the ability to feel trust and empathy about others is shaped by whether they are perceived to be part of the same social group... When [a] new person is perceived as different, the information travels along neural pathways that are associated with uncomfortable feelings (different from the neural pathways triggered by people who are perceived as similar to oneself.)... Once people begin to make a stronger social connection, their brains begin to secrete a hormone called oxytocin in one another's presence.  This chemical, which has been linked with affection, maternal behavior, sexual arousal and generosity, disarms the threat response and further activates the neural networks that permit us to perceive someone as 'just like us.'"

So in an interpersonal setting it's important to interact in ways that will surface points of similarity, strengthen social connections and increase a sense of relatedness.  From a neuroscientific perspective, this process generates oxytocin, allows our brains to classify the other person as "friend" rather than "foe," and contributes to feelings of trust and empathy.  Of course, this begs the question of how to address dimensions of diversity.  I'm certainly not suggesting that such differences be ignored, but Rock's theory (and my empirical experience with a wide range of clients and students) implies that differences are much more effectively addressed only after a sense of relatedness has been established.

Fairness

"The perception that an event has been unfair," Rock writes in strategy+business, "generates a strong response in the [brain], stirring hostility and undermining trust... In organizations, the perception of unfairness creates an environment in which trust and collaboration cannot flourish."  Rock notes in his "SCARF..." paper that "unfair exchanges generate a strong threat response [that] sometimes includes activation of the insular, a part of the brain involved in intense emotions such as disgust... People who perceive others as unfair don't feel empathy for their pain, and in some instances, will feel rewarded when unfair others are punished."

And like status, perceptions of fairness are relative.  I'm reminded of a recent experience with some colleagues in which I acted in a manner that I felt was fair and justified, while several others had the opposite perception.  At the time I was surprised not only by the difference in our perceptions, but also by the difficulty we experienced in resolving the issue under discussion.  However, in hindsight it's easy to see that the relative nature of fairness implied that there was no absolute truth to be discovered, and the logical arguments of either side were bound to be fruitless.  It was only after we stopped trying to convince the other side of our rightness and simply accepted our relative perceptions that we made any progress toward resolving our differences.

Conclusions

The implications of the SCARF model (and the neurological processes it describes) for the workplace are made clear in Rock's strategy+business article:

Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system...

Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees' best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead...

The impact of this neural dynamic is often visible in organizations.  For example, when leaders trigger a threat response, employees' brains become much less efficient.  But when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people's efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response.  Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas and more creative.  They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention.  They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress.  The feel intrinsically rewarded...

If you are a leader, every action you take and every decision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness in your enterprise.  In fact, this is why leading is so difficult.

More specifically, as Rock writes in his "SCARF..." paper...

[K]nowing the drivers that can cause a threat response enables people to design interactions to minimize threats. For example, knowing that a lack of autonomy activates a genuine threat response, a leader or educator may consciously avoid micromanaging their employees or students. Secondly, knowing about the drivers that can activate a reward response enables people to motivate others more effectively by tapping into internal rewards, thereby reducing the reliance on external rewards such as money.

Looming in the background are several key factors Rock mentioned in his talk at Oracle last November: First, as made clear in the graphic above, threat responses are usually much more powerful than reward responses, and thus we move away from threats more quickly and more vigorously than we move toward rewards.  So it's not enough to give equal emphasis to rewards in our leadership and management practices--our brains' disproportionate response to perceived social threats implies that we need to put a much greater weight on efforts intended to generate a reward response, and take great pains to avoid triggering a threat response.  (I'm reminded of psychologist John Gottman's research indicating that the ratio of positive to negative interactions in good relationships is 5:1, even in times of conflict.)

Second, our typical reaction to the strong negative emotions generated by a threat response is to suppress them, particularly in the workplace.  But this response has many undesirable consequences, from reducing our own memory function to raising the blood pressure of people around us.  So the cost of a threat response isn't borne solely by the person experiencing it, but by anyone who interacts with them or depends on their effectiveness.  It's a shared--one might even say contagious--social experience, and this highlights the importance of group dynamics, perhaps most significantly the extent to which it's safe (or unsafe) in a given group to express negative or difficult emotions.  (I'm reminded of my post last year on crying at work.)

Finally, we have very little time--approximately 1/3 of a second--after the perception of a potential threat before a neurological threat response is triggered.  So on an individual basis, it's essential to cultivate our ability to recognize the conditions that might trigger a threat response and proactively reappraise the situation.  And at the group or interpersonal level, it's important to be aware of the speed and ease with which a threat response can be triggered in someone else, to understand how such a response is likely to undermine effective communication, and to take steps that support the other person's reappraisal of the situation without creating defensiveness.  (The importance of reappraisal is a topic I'll be returning to in the future.)

As I noted last November, I see Rock as a (and perhaps the) leading figure in the process of helping practitioners such as myself understand current neuroscience research and apply its findings responsibly.  Rock's SCARF model is a great example of his ability to translate the science into language appropriate for a lay business audience, and I expect to refer to it regularly in my work with coaching clients and MBA students.  Many thanks, David.

Photo by Vato Bob. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Safety, Trust, Intimacy

In my capacity as a Leadership Coach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, I work regularly with groups of MBA students whose purpose is to help the members learn, become more self-aware (and more aware of others), and change their behavior in order to achieve their goals more effectively.

But I'd argue that every group in every organization serves one or more of these purposes in addition to the group's explicitly stated function.  Intentionally or not, each group in which we participate serves as a de facto learning laboratory, within which we come to understand how our interactions with others support or undermine our efforts to accomplish the tasks noted above.

It's clear that some groups are more effective than others at helping the members learn, increase their awareness and change their behavior, and I believe that the group's levels of safety, trust and intimacy are the key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard.

1) Every group's experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled?  What will our first meeting be like?  What will we discuss there?  These initial conditions form the foundation for all subsequent "layers" of the group dynamic.

2) The foundational qualities that define every group are the levels of safety, trust and intimacy: Safety =  A belief that we won't get hurt.  Trust = We mean what we say and we say what we mean.  Intimacy = A willingness to make the private public.

3) When safety, trust and intimacy are established, these qualities support the actions that lead to greater success as a group: experimentation, risk-taking and a willingness to be vulnerable.

4) When we feel able to experiment, take risks and make ourselves vulnerable, our ability to learn, to increase our self-awareness (and our awareness of others) and to change our behavior in order to achieve our goals more effectively increases dramatically.

5) The process of building one layer upon another occurs in a unique context—so in addition to asking whether learning and change are taking place, we also need to assess how the group's context supports (or inhibits) the development of the underlying layers in the group dynamic.

As we learn, become more aware (of ourselves and others), and change our behavior to achieve our goals more effectively...

• Learning, awareness and change become self-reinforcing norms in the group.
• Group members become more willing to experiment, take risks, and express more vulnerability.
• We value the importance of safety, trust and intimacy and act to enhance these qualities in the group.
• And we identify and seek to replicate initial conditions that support the development of these qualities in future groups.

So we need to ask...

• How will the group's initial conditions support or inhibit the establishment of safety, trust and intimacy?
• At each step of the group's subsequent development, are we increasing or decreasing the levels of these qualities?
• What behaviors in the the group dynamic support the development of these qualities?  And what behaviors inhibit these qualities?

A final point regarding feedback: While excessive delicacy and indirectness inhibit learning, awareness and change, the degree of candor and directness in a group must be calibrated to the group’s current levels of safety, trust and intimacy.  Feedback attuned to these qualities can increase their presence in the group by stretching the group’s capacity for candid and direct discussion.  But feedback that fails to take these qualities into account can actually lead to less safety, trust and intimacy than before and undermine the group’s ability to learn and change.

(Here's a 10-slide PowerPoint version [268 KB] of this post.)

David Rock on Neuroscience, Coaching and Leadership

My interest in neuroscience and its implications for executive coaching, leadership development and other processes that involve behavioral change led me to a talk by David Rock at Oracle last week, sponsored by the South Bay Organizational Development Network (SBODN).

I first came across Rock in mid-2006, when he and Jeffrey Schwartz co-authored "The Neuroscience of Leadership" (free registration required), which, as I wrote in response, "builds on recent findings in brain research to explain why much of the conventional wisdom in the organizational development field is wrong and to suggest alternative approaches that are better suited to how our brains actually work."  I found Rock and Schwartz's vision compelling, although I took issue with their assertion that "humanism is overrated":

This is the one section of Rock and Schwartz's otherwise outstanding article that rings false for me.  It's not an effective critique of humanism, although it is a highly effective critique of various misunderstandings and poorly implemented management practices.

I'd be less critical if Rock and Schwartz had said, "Humanism is difficult to execute, can't be faked, and sometimes devolves into thinly veiled and patronizing efforts at persuasion," or, more concisely, "Pseudo-humanism is overrated."

In fact, I actually associate many of Rock and Schwartz's other recommendations to managers with a range of humanistic disciplines, from coaching to positive psychology:

• Be aware that change is difficult because it causes pain.
• Recognize that people in different functions process in different ways.
• Cultivate "moments of insight" to facilitate change.
• Leave "problem behaviors in the past; focus on identifying and creating new behaviors."

I'm fully convinced by Rock and Schwartz's overall thesis--a better understanding of how our brains function will allow organizations to embrace change and tackle new initiatives much more effectively.

Over the past three years Rock has continued to build upon this thesis in a series of books and articles with a particular focus on executive coaching and the process of personal development.  In 2006 he also published A Brain Based Approach to Coaching (PDF) and Quiet Leadership.  And this year he published Coaching with the Brain in Mind, aimed at coaches and consultants, and Your Brain at Work and Managing with the Brain in Mind (free registration required), both aimed at a general business readership.

Rock's talk at Oracle last week was a stop on his book tour for "Your Brain at Work" and provided a high-level overview of his thinking on neuroscience, coaching and leadership.  I'm not going to attempt a comprehensive assessment of Rock's work here, although I make some more general comments in the Note below.  Rather, these are simply the key points that jumped out at me and seemed most relevant to my own work with coaching corporate clients and MBA students at Stanford (much as I did in my recent review of "The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness."  (A note on quotes: I took hand-written notes during Rock's talk, but didn't make an audio recording.  Where I'm confident that my notes captured his language accurately, I quote the relevant passage, but where I'm not, I paraphrase and cite passages from his written work to convey my understanding of his intent.)

Why Neuroscience?

Rock began coaching in 1996 with no prior exposure to neuroscience.  As his coaching practice grew, he encountered prospective clients who wanted to know more about how and why the process worked.  He found that he could cobble together an explanation by drawing upon such disciplines as positive psychology, cognitive therapy, and various theories of change, learning and systems development, but this patchwork was ultimately unsatisfying (to Rock and presumably to his questioning clients as well.)

But in the early 2000s Rock found that contemporary neuroscience offered a more coherent and useful explanation for the efficacy of the coaching process.  As he wrote in A Brain Based Approach to Coaching (PDF) in 2006...

In 2003, together with a colleague, Elizabeth Guilday, I began helping New York University build a series of certificate programs in coaching. As educators, we both had explored all the underpinning theories of coaching, running classes that covered change theory, systems theory, learning theory, positive psychology, philosophy and other fields. Every time we explored the scientific foundations of coaching, recent findings in neuroscience kept jumping out like a flashing red light to me and to many of my students. Neuroscience was helping me make sense of coaching and opening up great possibilities for research. This inspired me to rethink my whole approach to coaching and explore the neuroscience of the field...

Rock believes that relying upon a neuroscience-based understanding of coaching has several key benefits.  First, "neuroscience gives leaders a language they're comfortable using to understand their experience," and that level of comfort may itself have a neurological basis; Rock notes that tangible concepts (such as the heightened understanding of brain function provided by neuroscience) are actually easier and faster for the brain to recall than intangible concepts.  Another aspect of this dynamic is that neuroscience is a conceptually convenient way for us to understand ourselves; Rock says that "neuroscience provides a data-processing frame for self-awareness," a bit of jargon I find quite catchy.

Second, coupling new skills (such as those developed by coaching clients) with a theory that helps the client understand how and why they're developing those skills makes the skill-development process itself more effective.  According to Rock, the union of skill and theory taps into "a richer brain network to help people understand" the process they're immersed in.

Finally, Rock recognizes that "people pay attention" when we use "hard science" to help explain "soft skills," and his work has obviously capitalized on this dynamic quite effectively.  (For a lengthy but important digression on this point, see the Note below.)

Four Big Surprises

Rock's central thesis is that neuroscience research has revealed four big (and surprising) truths with implications for coaching and personal development:

1) How limited our attention is.
2) How wrong we get emotions.
3) How important the social world is.
4) How attention changes the brain.

In order to better explain these concepts, Rock drew a very simple diagram of the brain showing three key elements:

- The prefrontal cortex, a small region over the forehead.
- The limbic system, a relatively large region in the center of the brain.
- The basal ganglia, a smaller region below the limbic system.

In his talk Rock assumed that his audience understood the primary functions of these brain regions.  To provide a little more context for readers here, the prefrontal cortex...

...has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior.  The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.

The most typical psychological term for functions carried out by the prefrontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes).

And the basal ganglia...

...are associated with a variety of functions, including motor control and learning. Currently popular theories implicate the basal ganglia primarily in action selection, that is, the decision of which of several possible behaviors to execute at a given time.

But note that although neuroscience has advanced substantially in recent years, there's still controversy about basic brain structures and their function.  Thus the limbic system can be described at an elemental level as...

...a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex, which support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction.

But anything more specific seems to be speculative.  That said, it's sufficient for my purposes here to view the limbic system as a constellation of related brain features that collectively affect our emotions, particularly our responses to perceived threats and rewards.

Rock noted that if we define the capacity of the prefrontal cortex as equivalent to a single cubic foot, the rest of the brain's capacity would be the equivalent of the Milky Way galaxy.  I have questions about the science that underpins this assertion--Is it simply a matter of counting neurons?--but I accept the larger point Rock is making with the metaphor: The portion of our brain that we believe to be responsible for such functions as complex thought, decision-making, moderating social behavior and other aspects of executive function is quite small relative to the rest of the brain, and that has significant implications for how we interact with others.

To emphasize that point, Rock quoted Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister: "We have limited resources for activities like decision-making and impulse control, and when we use these up we have less available for the next activity."  (An important implication of the resource constraint referred to by Baumeister is that we resist mental effort around decision-making and impulse control because we're preserving resources in case we need them more urgently in the next moment.)

First Surprise: How limited our attention is.

Our attention is a finite resource.  Rock stated that people typically average just 1-2 hours of focused attention per day because the prefrontal cortex tires easily.  (Rock asked us what we would do differently, knowing that our attention is so limited.  I realized that I generally fail to appreciate the value of focused attention time, and thus fail to acknowledge the dangers posed by distractions.  Things that sap our attention or cause us to lose focus aren't merely annoyances--they're serious productivity-killers, and I could certainly act more decisively to resist them and keep them at bay.)

Rock also noted that our ability to learn is affected by the levels of certain brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters.  Specifically, relatively high levels of dopamine and sufficient levels of norepinephrine are required for optimal learning conditions.  Difficulty in learning--which could be characterized as insufficient attention--can be eased by increasing the levels of dopamine, which will increase our ability to focus.  One way to accomplish this is by doing something novel, which typically raises dopamine levels significantly.  For example, we can experience humor as novel, particularly when it's unexpected, and thus when teachers use humor effectively it can often enhance their students' ability to pay attention and allow them to learn more.

An important aspect of brain chemistry is that it's relatively hard to raise dopamine levels and relatively easy to raise levels of brain chemicals triggered by a threat response--specifically adrenaline and cortisol.  And increasing the amount of adrenaline in the brain actually serves to decrease the amount of dopamine, further hampering the learning process--thus the importance of minimizing and/or reassessing threat responses when learning is the goal.

An implication of the limits of our attention (and, more specifically, the capacity of our prefrontal cortex) relates to the Cubic Foot/Milky Way metaphor discussed above.  Rock noted that complex problems are rarely solved via working memory in the prefrontal cortex; studies indicate that we solve 60% of the problems we face without knowing how we solved them, i.e. "the answer simply occurred to me."  This is particularly important when we're trying to innovate.  Intense, active cognitive thought involves focusing the prefrontal cortex--the Cubic Foot--but this can often cause us to "prime" our brain with the wrong answer, according to Rock.  The solution is to "deprime" the brain in order to solve the problem.  In Rock's words, "Use the Milky Way and not the Cubic Foot... Innovation happens when you shut the heck up and stop trying to solve the problems and let your unconscious [i.e. the Milky Way] solve it."  (As Steve Jobs has said, "Sometimes when you're almost asleep, you realize something you wouldn't otherwise have noted.")

Another point Rock sought to make in this discussion was the importance of metacognition, thinking about thinking.  This occurs not only at a cognitive, conceptual level--how do I think?--but also at a more visceral, immediate level--what am I thinking (and feeling) at this moment, and is it useful, or would I be better served by thinking (and feeling) differently?  As Rock said, "the more metacognition you do, the more adaptive you are."

Rock concluded this section of his talk with a discussion of the ways in which our limited attention can be diverted by less useful types of brain activity.  Intuitive feelings and low-level cognitions activate relatively few neurons and generate small amounts of electrical activity in the brain.  In contrast, cognitive thought activates large numbers of neurons and generates more electrical activity, and a threat response activates even more neurons and generates even more electrical activity.  But, as noted above, intuitive feelings and low-level cognitions play an important role in complex problem-solving and innovation, so at times when we're focused on those tasks, it's important to be able to lower the level of electrical activity in the brain--not only by avoiding threat responses, but also by avoiding getting trapped in intense (yet unproductive) conscious thought--in order for us to notice and act upon those intuitive feelings and low-level cognitions.  Paradoxically, the ability to stop or minimize active conscious thinking and "quiet our minds" is an important problem-solving skill.  (Rock didn't touch on practices to develop this skill, but I suspect that that meditation and activities that generate "flow states" would be useful here.)

Second Surprise: How wrong we get emotions.

Negative emotions are extremely powerful, and according to Rock, we move away from threats much more quickly and vigorously than we move toward rewards.  Strong negative emotions also significantly reduce prefrontal cortex function, so a threat response diminishes our problem-solving abilities and other executive functions governed by that region of the brain.

Many factors in the workplace create a threat response--a topic Rock explores in greater depth in "Your Brain at Work"--which means that we often experience strong negative emotions there (and far more frequently than we realize.)  But our typical response to negative emotions in that context is to suppress them, because they're "not appropriate" for the workplace, according to many organizational cultures (and our own training.)  Unfortunately, suppressing negative emotions has a number of undesirable consequences, from reducing memory function to raising the blood pressure of other people around us (presumably via "mirror neurons", which fire when we observe behaviors in others.)

A useful alternative to suppressing negative emotions is to simply talk about them.  As I've discussed before, research by Matt Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger et al has "demonstrated that linguistic processing of the emotional aspects of an emotional image produces less amygdala activity than perceptual processing of the emotional aspects of the same image."  In lay terms, talking about negative emotions helps us manage them more effectively than merely thinking about them.

This process, known as affect labeling, is part of a larger dynamic related to how we respond to negative emotions.  We can't control the negative emotions we feel, but we can exert more control over how we respond to them, and perhaps the most significant distinction is whether we suppress or reappraise negative emotions.  Here Rock cited the work of James Gross, a Stanford professor of psychology known as "the father of emotional regulation," and Kevin Ochsner, who directs the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Columbia.  Studies have shown a substantial difference in a number of quality-of-life and effectiveness indicators based on our tendency to suppress or reappraise negative emotions, and reappraisal inevitably leads to better outcomes.  In response to a question of mine, Rock said that there is some evidence that we can retrain ourselves to reappraise rather than suppress negative emotions, but given the importance of this factor for so many forms of personal development and behavioral change, I'll be looking into Gross's and Ochsner's research further in the coming weeks, and I hope to meet with Gross at Stanford next month.

If we think of the strong emotions and other responses generated by the limbic system as the brain's "accelerator," then we might think of the opposing forces that cause us to reappraise a situation before a full-blown threat response kicks in, which are generated by the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, as the brain's "braking system."  A dilemma related to the Cubic Foot/Milky Way metaphor discussed above is that the resources available for acceleration, i.e. the capacity of the limbic system, are far greater than the resources available for braking, i.e. the capacity of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.  Accordingly, we have very little time--something on the order of 1/3 of a second--to "put on the brakes" and intervene to reappraise a situation and our response to it.

At this point in his talk Rock noted that we have two ways of experiencing the world around us that tap into two separate neural networks in the brain: 1) A "narrative circuit," consisting of the limbic system and the thinking/planning regions of the prefrontal cortex, in which active, conscious thought allows us to make meaning of the world in an ongoing, logical narrative, and 2) "direct experience," a state of mindfulness in which we're not engaged in conscious thought but rather activating our sensory systems and taking in increased amounts of sensory data which we don't consciously analyze but simply experience.  (I'm reminded of Jill Bolte Taylor's discussion [video] of her experience as a brain researcher in the midst of having a stroke, which allowed her to access these two ways of being in sharp and vivid contrast.)  Rock added that the networks these systems make use of actually switch each other off, so when we focus on one, activity in the other diminishes.  Unsurprisingly, we tend to focus on the "narrative circuit," which switches off the "direct experience" network, reducing the amount of sensory data available and increasing the amount of conscious thought, which, as noted above, increases the level of electrical activity in the brain and potentially "drowns out" intuitive feelings and low-level cognitions.

Given the limited time and resources available for us to make use of the brain's "braking system," Rock believes it's essential to enhance our ability to operate in "direct experience" mode, increasing the available sensory data and allowing us greater access to intuitive feelings and low-level cognitions that might otherwise be ignored.  To be clear, this doesn't mean being mindful all the time, but rather being more adaptive, so we can choose to be more mindful, activating the direct experience network and increasing the flow of sensory data when it would be useful to do so.

Third Surprise: The deeply social brain.

Returning to the idea that we move away from threats more powerfully than we move toward rewards, Rock noted that there are five social dimensions within which we can perceive threats and rewards: Status, our position relative to others; Certainty, our ability to predict future outcomes; Autonomy, the feeling that we have choices and are in control; Relatedness, the feeling that we are connected to others; and Fairness, the sense that people will act ethically and justly.

Our brain responds to social threats in these dimensions just as it does to the threat of physical pain, a finding that has substantial implications for leadership practices.  The power of our threat response means that leaders can use social threats--those related to Status, Certainly, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness--to dramatic effect.  I'm reminded of a recent Stanford Daily article on the research of university biologist and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, which noted that our threat response evolved in a very specific context:

In the wild, 99 percent of stress responses never exceed three minutes, after which Sapolsky said, "either it's over with or you're over with."  In humans, the response is often mounted in anticipation of an assault on homeostasis rather than an actual perturbation.  "We’re having these anticipatory psychological stressors, [and] we turn on the exact same stress response as every other beast out there, and we use it for all the wrong reasons," said Sapolsky. "If you do it chronically, you’re going to get sick, because that’s not what the stress response evolved for."

So leaders who rely on threat responses may see results in the short term, but they and their colleagues will likely pay a substantial price in the long term.  Rock believes that it's more sustainable and ultimately more effective for leaders to rely on social rewards rather than threats.  I agree, but Rock's own assertion that the reward response is weaker and slower to develop than the threat response implies that it will take more skill, effort and possibly restraint on the part of a leader to emphasize rewards rather than threats.

(A additional comment on Relatedness: Rock said that at a fundamental level our brains see the world as populated by an In-Group, to which we're connected, and an Out-Group, to which we're not--Friends and Foes, in other words.  Strangers are automatically classified by our brains as Foes until we share some sort of bonding experience with them that generates oxytocin, which allows our brains to re-classify them as Friends.)

Fourth Surprise: How attention changes the brain

The good news is that Rock was quick to respond to questions from the audience throughout his talk; the bad news is that this left us short of time, and he wasn't able to address the fourth point of his thesis in detail.  Based on my understanding of his work, I assume he would have discussed the concept of neuroplasticity, which I touch on briefly below.

Rock closed with a short list of resources where his work is available (in addition to the books and articles I cite above):
- Blog at Psychology Today
- Neuroleadership Institute
- Neuroleadership Summit in Boston, October 2010
- Results Coaching Systems, Rock's coaches training firm

In summary, I learned a great deal and found Rock's interpretation of current neuroscience research compelling.  I even bought a copy of "Your Mind at Work," which I've skimmed in the course of writing this review, and I expect to dig more deeply into his work going forward.

A Note on Credibility

Rock's role as a populizer of complex and experimental scientific research has exposed him to criticism, such as a thorough (but unfortunately anonymous) critical review of "Quiet Leadership" on Amazon that calls the book "psuedo-scientific mumbo-jumbo."  Rock has clearly made an effort to associate himself with reputable scientists, many from UCLA's School of Medicine, including Daniel Siegel, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry who wrote the foreward to "Your Brain at Work," and numerous speakers at the Neuroleadership Summit (which Rock founded and organizes), including Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberg, clinical neuroscientists at UCLA whose work I've cited before.  So despite any shortcomings in specific passages of Rock's work, I trust that he's engaged in a good faith effort to understand the science and represent it accurately for a lay audience.  That said, I have two caveats.

First, in addition to the many neuroscientists speaking at the 2009 Neuroleadership Summit, Werner Erhard spoke on "How Language Shapes the World."  Erhard, who founded est and the Forum, and whose work formed the basis of the subsequent Landmark Forum programs, clearly has a unique perspective on personal growth and development.  And I know people who've attended and benefited from Landmark seminars (and I'm aware that some well-known management thinkers have been associated with Landmark over the years, including Warren Bennis--another 2009 Neuroleadership Summit speaker--and Michael Jansen.)  But I've also read a number of articles that raise serious concerns about est and Landmark, particularly related to methods that participants experienced as coercive and the pressure placed on participants to sign up for additional workshops and to recruit their family and friends.  So while I'm sure Erhard is a compelling and thought-provoking speaker, his credibility is diminished by those criticisms.

Second, while much of Rock's work with Jeffrey Schwartz is grounded in neuroscience that seems amply documented (at least to a layperson such as myself), in at least one instance they stray far into experimental territory and reach conclusions that seem unsupported by research.  For example, in "A Brain-Based Approach to Coaching," Rock and Schwartz assert that the brain is a "quantum environment," by which they mean that it changes in response to observation, just as particles do in quantum physics (in contrast to the more predictable and invariable movements of particles in conventional Newtonian physics.)  The implication, according to Schwartz, is "what has been termed self-directed neuroplasticity, or the ability of an individual to alter his or her own brain activity through the active practice of focusing attention in constructive ways."  This is a complex concept, but it's certainly one that I find credible, and describing the brain as a quantum environment helps me to understand it.

But asked by Rock to explain this process how and why this process occurs, Schwartz takes a big (and problematic) leap:

An important and well-verified law in quantum mechanics called the Quantum Zeno Effect turns out to be the key to understanding how focused attention can systematically re-wire the brain. Quantum Zeno Effect was first described nearly 30 years ago and has been extensively studied many times since then. One classic example of it is the fact that rapidly repeated observation of a molecule will hold the molecule in a stable state. It does this by markedly slowing the rate of fluctuation the molecule demonstrates when not observed in a repetitive fashion. This is a basic principle of quantum physics -- the rate of observation has marked measurable effects on the phenomenon being observed. The Quantum Zeno Effect for neuroscience application states that the mental act of focusing attention holds in place brain circuits associated with what is being focused on. If you pay enough attention to a certain set of brain connections, it keeps this relevant circuitry stable, open and dynamically alive, enabling it to eventually becoming a part of the brain’s hard wiring. [My emphasis]

The problem is that the existence of a "Quantum Zeno Effect for neuroscience research" appears to be theoretical.  In 2004 Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State, published a paper titled "Does quantum mechanics play a non-trivial role in life?" (PDF), and his conclusion was essentially "We don't know":

The case for quantum biology remains one of "not proven." There are many suggestive experiments and lines of argument indicating that some biological functions operate close to, or within, the quantum regime, but as yet no clear-cut example has been presented of non-trivial quantum effects at work in a key biological process.

This suggests to me that while Schwartz may be accurately describing an aspect of brain function that we can observe empirically through fMRI images and other neuroscientific tools (i.e. that "focusing attention holds in place brain circuits associated with what is being focused on"), the idea that this process is caused by a "Quantum Zeno effect for neuroscience application" is unproven.  It might be a great metaphor and a useful teaching tool, and it might fit well with other aspects of Schwartz's or Rock's thought, but asserting it as a proven fact seems to undermine, rather than bolster, the scientific credibility of Rock's work.

As I mention above, I do trust Rock's interpretation of current neuroscience research, and I believe his application of its findings to coaching offers a compelling explanation for how and why the coaching process actually works.  At the same time, it's clear that the field of neuroscience attracts thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds and extends into highly experimental territory.  Coaches with an interest in applying the principles of neuroscience would do well to maintain an open mind while also remaining skeptical of purported experts and of any far-reaching conclusions that don't seem to be fully supported by research.

Bad Leader! Stifling Dissent

In short order Bret Simmons of the University of Nevada, Reno, has become one of my favorite thinkers on management; he's in Bob Sutton's class as an academic who clearly gets the web, and his blog is a lively and informative read.

Today Bret has a great post on how bad leaders stifle dissent:

1) Your people never see you say no.  You never disagree or challenge the people you work for, so your people never learn from you how to do this with purpose.  You send the very clear message that “no” is not acceptable around here.

2) People that have told you no are gone.  You have systematically removed from your inner circle everyone that disagreed or challenged your policies and decisions.  But that’s ok, because everyone knows they were not team players, or were disloyal or disrespectful.  This is the rhetoric of conformity and exclusion.

I'd add a third behavior to this list: Failing to accept differences of opinion and pushing beyond a reasonable point to obtain uniform public agreement.  Your people don't feel free to voice disagreement because you hound them until they change their mind (or at least that's what they appear to be doing.)

There will always be times when leaders need to override their team members--and making that decision wisely is a key element of effective leadership.  When a leader makes that choice, it's usually advisable to devote some time to discussion to see if common ground can be found and/or to persuade the team.

But if common ground can't be found, and persuasion's not effective, and the leader still believes that overriding the team is the right way to go, they need to accept their team's right to disagree and trust that the team can still deliver on their mandate.  Pushing further to extract (superficial) agreement demonstrates a lack of trust (in them and in your own authority), leads to intractable arguments and/or hypocrisy, and insures that you'll hear fewer honest opinions in the future.

(And if you don't recognize Humprey Bogart as Captain Queeg, get The Caine Mutiny on your Netflix queue ASAP.)