Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders by Srinivasan S. Pillay Page A
Authors: Srinivasan S. Pillay
Ads: Link
to deal with his or her own inertia. Managers and coaches can tell team members the following: “Your plan sounds great, and we have to decide how to get it in action. What are the first steps you would want to take to see your plan in action?” Then, you listen to the energy behind the articulated steps to discern whether this is in fact an action plan that has the momentum to reach completion. If it’s not, you can say, “We know from studies on brain biology that the left part of your frontal lobe has to be activated for action orientation to occur. It is like being in the ‘get set’ position before you can run a race. It adds momentum.”
Behavioral coaching has its precedent in sports coaching. It has long been known that part of the training for runners involves imagining the race. Champion runners are able to imagine running a race in the exact amount of time that they eventually run it. Imagination sets up the brain to perform an action. Coaching, therefore, ideally stimulates this focused imagination. Target goals stimulate the imagination, and benchmarking constitutes the racetrack—the start and end points of the race. When a runner reaches his or her destination, he or she knows it. The ideal result in coaching involves this quality of knowing.
Imagery vs. Observation
The concept: The idea of imagery (i.e., creating mental images) is more complex than it might initially seem. If I asked a room full of people to imagine running a 100-meter race and then asked them what they were imagining, I would likely get a variety of responses. Some people would say that they saw themselves running; others would say that they saw themselves at the start line; still others would say that they imagined reaching their goal. There would also be those who say that they did not actually see a picture of themselves but instead put themselves on the track and felt others running around them. Each of these is an imagination, but each is different.
It turns out that imagining an action (motor imagery) and observing the action stimulate overlapping areas in the brain, but they are not identical. 19 An fMRI conjunction analysis (an analysis that looks at commonly overlapping areas for both conditions) revealed overlapping activation for imagery and observation in the primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, and supplementary motor area (all movement-related regions) as well as in the intraparietal sulcus, cerebellar hemispheres, and parts of the basal ganglia (the reward and movement-related regions). The hippocampus (long-term memory), the superior parietal lobe, and the cerebellar areas were differentially activated in the observation condition. It is unclear what each of these activations represents, but the point is that there is significant overlap.
Note that motor imagery revealed stronger activation for imagery than observation in the posterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). (Recall that these brain regions—the gut feeling register and the conflict detector—are often activated together. These regions are shown in Figure 5.14 .) It is also notable that when worry tendencies are high, ACC and insula activation are low, 20 probably because worry replaces internal gut-level conflict. It is no wonder, then, that worry disrupts image formation and that stress can inhibit your path to action. We also know that stress perpetuates habit. Thus,asking team members to imagine what they want will be less than optimal if they are worried about the outcome.
Figure 5.14. Location of the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
It is important to make sure that both of these brain regions are activated. Thus, asking a team member to imagine a desired behavior is critical if you want the posterior insula and ACC to activate. The insula has been implicated in mapping visceral states (gut feelings) associated with emotional states, giving rise to conscious emotions. 21 Thus, in imagery, we give
Behavioral coaching has its precedent in sports coaching. It has long been known that part of the training for runners involves imagining the race. Champion runners are able to imagine running a race in the exact amount of time that they eventually run it. Imagination sets up the brain to perform an action. Coaching, therefore, ideally stimulates this focused imagination. Target goals stimulate the imagination, and benchmarking constitutes the racetrack—the start and end points of the race. When a runner reaches his or her destination, he or she knows it. The ideal result in coaching involves this quality of knowing.
Imagery vs. Observation
The concept: The idea of imagery (i.e., creating mental images) is more complex than it might initially seem. If I asked a room full of people to imagine running a 100-meter race and then asked them what they were imagining, I would likely get a variety of responses. Some people would say that they saw themselves running; others would say that they saw themselves at the start line; still others would say that they imagined reaching their goal. There would also be those who say that they did not actually see a picture of themselves but instead put themselves on the track and felt others running around them. Each of these is an imagination, but each is different.
It turns out that imagining an action (motor imagery) and observing the action stimulate overlapping areas in the brain, but they are not identical. 19 An fMRI conjunction analysis (an analysis that looks at commonly overlapping areas for both conditions) revealed overlapping activation for imagery and observation in the primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, and supplementary motor area (all movement-related regions) as well as in the intraparietal sulcus, cerebellar hemispheres, and parts of the basal ganglia (the reward and movement-related regions). The hippocampus (long-term memory), the superior parietal lobe, and the cerebellar areas were differentially activated in the observation condition. It is unclear what each of these activations represents, but the point is that there is significant overlap.
Note that motor imagery revealed stronger activation for imagery than observation in the posterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). (Recall that these brain regions—the gut feeling register and the conflict detector—are often activated together. These regions are shown in Figure 5.14 .) It is also notable that when worry tendencies are high, ACC and insula activation are low, 20 probably because worry replaces internal gut-level conflict. It is no wonder, then, that worry disrupts image formation and that stress can inhibit your path to action. We also know that stress perpetuates habit. Thus,asking team members to imagine what they want will be less than optimal if they are worried about the outcome.
Figure 5.14. Location of the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
It is important to make sure that both of these brain regions are activated. Thus, asking a team member to imagine a desired behavior is critical if you want the posterior insula and ACC to activate. The insula has been implicated in mapping visceral states (gut feelings) associated with emotional states, giving rise to conscious emotions. 21 Thus, in imagery, we give
Similar Books
