The Neuroscience of Change
Achieving meaningful change in an organization can be a daunting task. And it’s not always welcome. While there are some folks who enjoy change, and even champion it to the level of “change-for-change’s-sake,” many more of us resist it. And sometimes with good reason.
Change should always be driven by a purpose. And it better not be because our CEO read a new management book on the red eye home from Las Vegas. We have all experienced those moments when we have a good head of steam going, improving the way we run our organizations, and then someone decides to mess with something.
But sometimes change is actually good for the organization, and it can be vital to achieving growth. Sometimes, it can even be vital to survival. In these instances, it is the leadership team’s responsibility to take ownership of this process, and to stay focused on it from start to finish. Even if they see a shiny new bestseller at the newsstand.
We need this focus because as human beings we are wired to resist change. Neuroscience has discovered that change actually produces a painful physiological response in our bodies. It increases stress and sparks a survival instinct that works against our better judgement. To accomplish anything out of the ordinary we have to behave differently. When we do that, our brain recognizes the deviation from the norm and sets off alarms. Its goal is to stop the new behavior and get things back to normal. And it usually succeeds.
That is why, to my great consternation, so many of my own emails do not accomplish their goal. Have you ever tried to establish a new process by just sending an email? As the sender, I think I made my case pretty clear. I’m proud of the thought I put into convincing people why the change is important. I was clear about what to do in the future. I’m a very special person. My mother was right. Things will go as planned.
Then I click send and all hell breaks loose as the message disappears into a vacuum of excuses. I’m moving on to the next thing, thinking that I don’t have to give my request another thought. Change will come quickly, thoroughly and effectively. Because I sent one email.
The truth is, I should have known better. But here is the good news: our minds resist change, but they can also be remarkably plastic. In order to take advantage of the brain’s plasticity, we need to train it to change. It will resist at first, but curiously, researchers have found that the brain behaves differently when consistent focus is applied.
In their article The Neuroscience of Leadership, David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz state that “Over time, paying enough attention to any specific brain connection keeps the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive. These circuits can then eventually become not just chemical links but stable, physical changes in the brain’s structure.”
In short, the brain will begin to establish different physical pathways that it recognizes as the new normal. Our brains, and the collective minds of our teams, will transform themselves to adopt the new behavior.
The lesson? Nothing is easy. The bigger the change, the more investment it will take. And leadership needs to own it. Yes, hierarchy and accountability down the reporting structure have their place. People should do their jobs the way they are expected to. But initiating change means a responsibility on leadership’s part to retrain, to coach, to reinforce and to maintain focus until the change takes hold. We need to recognize the level of effort it will take, while never doubting that it can be done. The results may very well change our world.
Originally Published at http://blog.atrion.com/2016/02/the-science-of-training-your-brain-for-change/
