Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

by David Rock

Many of the arguments and conflicts at work, and in life, have status issues at their core. The more you can label status threats as they occur, in real time, the easier it will be to reappraise on the spot and respond more appropriately.

If you want to have a potentially threatening conversation with someone, try talking down your own performance to help put the other person at ease.

Another strategy for managing status is to help someone else feel that her status has gone up. Giving people positive feedback, pointing out what they do well, gives others a sense of increasing status, especially when done publicly.

one way you might play against yourself could be to work on improving your capacity to catch your brain in action. You could practice getting faster at things such as labeling and reappraising, reading other people’s states, or developing a quiet mind when needed. As you improve your skills in this area you raise your status, without risking other people’s status. You increase relatedness if you share what you notice; you even build your director. And of course you make better decisions, deal better under pressure, and collaborate better with others.

there are five domains of social experience that your brain treats the same as survival issues. These domains form a model, which I call the SCARF model, which stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.

if you can find ways to increase several of the elements of SCARF at the same time, either in yourself or in others, you have a powerful tool not just for feeling great but for improving performance, too.

when you interact with someone who makes you notice what’s good about yourself (raising your status), who is clear with his expectations of you (increasing certainty), who lets you make decisions (increasing autonomy), who connects with you on a human level (increasing relatedness), and who treats you fairly.

Because we perceive ourselves using the same circuits we use when perceiving others, you can trick your brain into a status reward by playing against yourself.

Status is one of five major social domains that are all either primary rewards or threats, which form the SCARF model for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.

The problem with “constructive performance feedback” is that, like a wolf sniffing a meal across a field, even a subtle status threat is picked up unconsciously by our deeply social brain, no matter how nicely it’s couched. As “constructive” as you try to make it, feedback packs a punch.

The result is that most feedback conversations revolve around people defending themselves.

The past has lots of certainty; the future, little. Going into the past might make you want to take a nap, but finding answers amid uncertainty can feel like diving into a deep and unknown ocean.

The brain has few circuits for the future. Conceptually speaking, electrical impulses are more likely to travel along existing paths, because this requires less energy than traveling along paths that don’t yet exist.

Attention went to your goal, rather than to your problem.

Despite the inefficiency of giving advice, people rush to dish out solutions because waiting for someone to come up with their own ideas requires effort. First you have to hold back your desire to solve the problem yourself, which takes inhibition, an energy-hungry process. It can feel like staring at someone trying to solve a crossword puzzle clue you know the answer to—a little painful! You also have to work hard to dampen your arousal from the uncertainty of what solution the other person will come to, the lack of autonomy you might now experience because someone else is making the choices, and the possible threat to your status if the other person comes up with a good idea you didn’t have.

Insights happen when people think globally and widely rather than focusing on the details. Insights require a quiet brain, meaning there is an overall low level of electrical activity, which helps people notice subtle internal signals.

people are, in theory, capable of giving themselves feedback, especially if their status isn’t threatened. They may even be more capable if their status is harnessed.

Catch yourself when you go to give feedback, problem solve, or provide solutions. Help people think about their own thinking by focusing them on their own subtle internal thoughts, without getting into too much detail. Find ways to make it valuable for people to give themselves feedback; reward them for activating their director.

Adults can recognize that someone offering goodies is trying to change them, and they class that person as a threat. Or an adult sensing impending punishment may launch a preemptive strike, insulting his punisher with an attack on her status. Now you have a tit-for-tat war of words, rather than any changed behavior.

This idea that attention is the active ingredient that changes the brain is supported by a large body of research called neuroplasticity,

Sensing someone is trying to change you often creates an automatic threat response, linked to uncertainty, status, and autonomy.

“I love to learn, but I hate to be taught.” If being changed by others is usually a threat, this leads to the idea that when real change occurs, it is probably because an individual has chosen to change his own brain.

How do you “facilitate self-directed neuroplasticity” on a large scale? There appears to be three key components to this kind of change. First, you need to create a safe environment so that any threat response is minimized. Second, you need to help others focus their attention in just the right ways to create just the right new connections. Finally, to keep any new circuits alive, you have to get people coming back to pay attention to their new circuits over and again.

people expect this reward it tends to become less valuable, and a reward isn’t so rewarding unless it gets bigger each time, which isn’t sustainable.

The positive reward from positive public recognition can resonate with people for years.

In the workplace, increasing a sense of certainty comes from having a better understanding of the big picture.

People feel much more certain about their world when they have information, which puts their mind more at ease and therefore makes them better able to solve difficult problems.

To increase a sense of autonomy, Emily could have given the kids the chance to make more of their own decisions—even small ones—such as what to eat for dinner, or when or where they can do their homework. In the workplace, this could be letting people work more flexibly, or work from home, or reducing the amount of reporting required.

To increase relatedness, Emily might offer to increase the amount of time the kids spend connecting with their friends, to arrange a party, or to increase their allowed hours for phone calls. In the workplace, a...

To increase a sense of fairness, Emily could have created “fair trades” with the kids: more family bonding time in return for, say, less pressure on them to keep their rooms tidy. In the workplace, some organizations allow employees to have “community days,” where they give their time to a charity of their choice. I wonder if helping those in need feels good because of a sense of decreasing unfairness.

At times you might use the whole SCARF model, especially when there is a high possible threat level. Imagine you are starting a conversation with a team of people whom you manage, and you want them to pay attention to something difficult. Taking care of status, you might say, “You’re all doing great. I’m not here to attack you but to find ways of our becoming even better than we already are.” Taking care of certainty, you might say, “I only want to talk for fifteen minutes, and I am not looking for specific outcomes.” Taking care of autonomy, you might say, “Is that okay with you, if we focus on this right now?” Taking care of relatedness, you might share something about yourself on a human level. Taking care of fairness, you might be careful to point out that you have had the same conversation with everyone else on your team. As you lay all this out, the alarm bells in people’s heads start to quiet down, which increases your chances of focusing people’s attention in the direction you want.

In this way, great leaders are often humble leaders, thereby reducing the status threat. Great leaders provide clear expectations and talk a lot about the future, helping to increase certainty. Great leaders let others take charge and make decisions, increasing autonomy. Great leaders often have a strong presence, which comes from working hard to be authentic and real with other people,

ineffective leaders tend to make people feel even less safe, by being too directive, which attacks status. They are not clear with their goals and expectations, which impacts certainty. They micromanage, impacting autonomy, and don’t connect on a human level, so there’s little relatedness. And they often don’t understand the importance of fairness.

Toward goals have you visualize and create connections around where you are going. You are creating new connections. What’s interesting is you start to feel good at lower levels with toward goals. There are benefits earlier. Away goals have you visualize what can go wrong, which reactivates the emotions involved.” The trouble is, because problems come to mind so much easier than solutions, people are always setting away goals instead of toward goals. Also, problems are more certain than unknown solutions, and the brain naturally steers toward certainty. For these reasons and more, toward goals are rare, and setting them might require getting some help from someone else, such as a mentor or coach.

Unfortunately, many of the people who make it to leadership positions have a highly developed intellect but are poor on the social side of things.