Neuroleadership

The notion of leadership must be redefined beyond the traditional vertical exercise of power, the easy way of leading. Leadership is more demanding and cannot be dissociated from followership. It should be considered as a process which engages leaders and followers to collaborate and learn within a motivating cultural context. This approach leads to a reference model, the creative leadership model where leaders have to break away from the comfort of being driven by their natural predispositions and biases. Despite the multiplicity of convincing models of leadership, leaders regularly fail to follow these prescriptive models because they do not sufficiently consider the limitations of their own human nature and the challenge of motivating people. They have to learn about how the brain functions in the same way that sports professionals work hard to understand the functioning of their body. This is where neuroscience can help.

While prescriptive models of leadership often remain a mirage, the bureaucratic Taylorian model spread remarkably well in the wake of the industrial revolution. Its effectiveness was the result of a straightforward command-and-control approach based on rational methods to organize operations. Leaders could operate without excessive effort as they relied on the hierarchical bias to exercise power and extrinsic motivators like carrots and sticks. This rational approach did not take into consideration the basic motivators that are essential to engage followers in a fruitful collaboration. It remained strongly influenced by our inherent predispositions and four cardinal biases, which were allowed to operate freely.

This chapter presents a simplified overview of the brain in three dimensions. The vertical dimension shows the integration over time from the instinctive brain to the emotional brain and the cognitive brain. From the left–right angle, the two cerebral hemispheres have developed separate but complementary functions. From the back-to-front angle, the posterior part of the cortex is dedicated to perception according to regions that specialize in vision, hearing, or touch, and the frontal part is devoted to movement and abstraction, the prefrontal cortex overseeing thinking, action planning and relaying reason and emotion. The analogy of the theater stage, with a few interacting players, illustrates the conscious processing of information in the working memory. Our rationality, located in the frontal lobes, is unique to humans who give a central role to reason in directing their existence. But rationality remains limited even if it is enhanced by memory systems and external supports.

The brain works primarily with affects and emotions, and reason is built on the foundation of affects. Current research in neuroscience shows that the dichotomy between reason and emotion is illusory and false. We appraise our internal states and our environment with affects that are the result of a continuous internal process called interoception, and our rational reasoning does not have direct control over our affects. Emotion is the energy that drives, organizes, amplifies, or dampens cognitive activity. Consequently, good leaders should draw on their emotional intelligence. The two main emotional mechanisms that help us react and rapidly adapt are the fear circuit and the reward circuit. In the system of pleasure seeking, dopamine, a powerful stimulator, drives the quest for reward and novelty. Deferral of the urges of this reward circuit, and exercising willpower, requires activation of the dopamine control circuit incurring a high cost in brain energy.

The inflexibility of the Taylorian bureaucratic model and the resulting waste of human and material resources has led to a movement of resistance from the rank-and-file employees who want to regain some meaning and control over their work. Most new experiments focused on participative management but remained limited and partial, as operations continued to be pushed from top to bottom. Customers also rebelled by refusing to have their individual needs ignored and be forced to pay for the prevalent waste and costs. This led to the reorganization of the whole value chain that was to be pulled by customer demand. The Toyota production system, also called the lean production system, is one of the best examples of such a process. The focus on the customer is further amplified when the organization is service oriented. Finally, to avoid facing rebellion from customers, employees, or other stakeholders, some leaders accept leaving the comfortable command-and-control approach and moving toward the creative leadership model that is organized along three main lines of action: an ambitious strategic vision, an open leadership style, and a favorable cultural context.

This chapter focuses on the creative leadership model in action. Toyota provides a pioneering example that has spread to the rest of the world under the name of Toyotism and lean management. Toyotism: The Toyota case highlights the three main aspects of a successful creative model of leadership in action. Pulling the flow of operations from the final customer demand gave everyone a way to formulate meaningful goals and identify with the whole organization. As empowerment, horizontal cooperation, and continuous improvement became core principles, the company made a considerable effort to hire and develop employees capable of adapting to a teamwork culture and ready to experiment and learn. The number of hierarchical levels and the complexity of interactions could be reduced as teamwork became prevalent and managers worked closer to field operations. Learning from errors was made possible by increasing visual checks and making hidden problems visible. Continuous improvement and learning led to the development of a strong culture of relational engagement, in a climate of trust. A management center was essential to orchestrate the coherence of the whole. Turning around Virginia Mason: This second example shows how Gary Kaplan succeeded in turning around the problematic situation at the Virginia Mason Hospital Center. Once again we see in action the three aspects, strategic vision, leadership style, and cultural context. The strategic and long-term vision of the whole organization was focused on the patient and Gary Kaplan deployed this new approach by remaining modest, adopting an open style of leadership, and recruiting or retaining the best talent. He instituted a continuous improvement approach by empowering people to take initiatives and by increasing opportunities for team experimentation. By mapping the flow of patients that crossed different units, it was possible to reveal not just sources of waste but also sources of innovation. Gary Kaplan was convinced of the necessity of creating a context and a culture of relational engagement by developing team collaboration and transversal cooperation between groups and work units. The flattening of hierarchy occurred naturally as people worked in teams and a learning culture developed in a climate of psychological safety. Cultural change would not work without a systematic and deliberate approach involving the whole organization, under the guidance of a promotion and monitoring office.

In this chapter we review the first pillar of the creative model of leadership. Strategic thinking is a key competence expected from leaders who set the direction to follow. Goals and priorities should be able to mobilize followers by giving them the feeling that they can make an impact. Strategic thinking is a rational approach that places great demands on the prefrontal cortex and the narrow window of attention available to access information in our working memory. In contrast, predictive intelligence or intuitive thinking is based on a massive parallel processing that operates unconsciously and feeds inferences and predictions in the form of intuition, a rapid judgment process which mostly eludes our conscious mind. Many managers prefer to use their intuitive functioning to avoid recondite analyses, but intuition must be trained to be trusted. Eventually, intuition leads to a third option, creativity. But establishing a convincing strategic approach looks like a hard to achieve mirage. In fact, strategic thinking is weakened and constrained by our biases. The bias of immediate reward prevents long-term strategic thinking, and the confirmation bias prevents questioning and innovating. Taking the long path toward the creative leadership model requires mitigating biases and motivating people, as long-term strategic thinking is essential to activate clear lines of action and priorities that will mobilize the whole organization.

In this chapter we review the second pillar of the creative model of leadership. Leaders must now deploy the direction to follow and show their personal engagement to convince employees not only to follow them, but also to take on a leadership role. This leadership style involves three main aspects: first, the long-term personal commitment of leaders; second, their ability to communicate and share the chosen direction and goals; and third, their willingness to engage employees to cooperate, learn, and innovate, by empowering them. But developing a convincing leadership style again appears elusive. Good resolutions are weakened by self-centered predispositions deeply rooted in the brain. This tendency to put oneself first is fueled by the egocentric bias that some leaders manage to push very far with omnipotence and narcissism. What undermines the credibility of leaders is not only their tendency to put themselves first, but above all their lack of persistence and long-term commitment as they are conditioned by the bias of immediate reward. Moreover, the problem with well-designed strategies is that they often remain at the exhortation level. Speeches and hype create a gap between talk and reality. Finally, are leaders ready to share power and reduce their obsession with control and immediate results? Are they ready to let go of the easy path of command-and-control in line with the hierarchical bias, a bias that remains pervasive in most institutions.

Redistributing power implies that followers must be competent and positioned in the right cultural context. This is the third pillar of the creative model of leadership. As employees are to be trusted with proper competences, the organization must get the right people on board. At this stage, the bias of similarity and social conformity leads to hiring people with similar backgrounds, and this restricts innovation. But establishing a proper cultural context is another elusive goal. It takes a long haul to escape the culture of immediate results, transactional relationships, and struggle for power as leaders have to fight against the bias of least effort. Moreover, transversal coordination is hindered by the bias of social conformity. The learning culture also requires a climate of psychological safety to give people the courage to speak up and tolerate failure. The bias of psychological insecurity does not encourage initiative as people focus attention on being at fault. Moreover, change is stressful and effortful because it is more difficult to unlearn than to learn. Finally, victory is collective, and it becomes essential to measure results and recognize the contributions of all, while orchestrating the whole.

After an overview of the functioning of the human brain, we see how to deal with the seven capital biases in everyday life. We must accept the fact that our brains are biased and that we have to learn how to define and correct these predispositions. Biases cannot be erased but can be mitigated by being aware of their influence and looking at them from different perspectives. To control our biases, we can rely on ourselves, rely on others, or prevent them according to the situation. Finally, making a personal effort to become aware of our seven capital biases and counter them is not enough. This effort should be integrated into a systematic process that will transform the organization and make it a great place to work.

Leadership training cannot ignore the functioning of the brain and its flaws. It is about time we acknowledged our emotional intelligence or recognized our natural inclinations and biases in our daily behaviors. We have described two leadership models that have served as reference points, at the two ends of the range of most observed practices. The fixed model is the one on which leaders easily fall back when they just exercise power over people who remain passive and obey. At the other end, the creative model mobilizes actors to cooperate and innovate when leaders follow a much harder and disciplined process that motivates people and creates the proper cultural context. We conclude that the relational culture should be put back at the heart of things to give collaborative and creative leadership the place it deserves. There is no happy leadership unless we are determined to reach it through collaboration, with application and discipline.