Leaders Change™ Principle 1, By Dianne Garrett

A leader’s job is change - to lead change in your organization and in yourself.

How do you lead change when change initiatives fail so often? John Kotter, Professor at Harvard Business School (known worldwide for his leadership expertise), tells us 70% of all organizational change initiatives fail. Ouch. Additionally, other research reports that 90% of individuals (in this study), who are in a life & death health situation fail to change, even when their life depends on it. Why is change achievement so hard?

How can you help others change successfully, as a leader of your home life, in your workplace, and the community. To answer these questions, we need to better understand our main decision-making tool - the brain. The more we understand our brain, the more we can work within our excellence and our limits to influence others. This article series, Leaders Change™, will detail brain principles and offer associated leadership strategies.

Principle 1: Threat is more powerful than reward.

Our brains are instinctually built to protect us; its primary job function
is to constantly and unconsciously scan the environment for threat. In
doing so, we make judgments regarding safety. Is that food edible?
Is that person going to hurt me?

Eons ago, identifying or not identifying a danger could be
life-threatening. Today we still have these threat systems in our brain
and we need them to help us live - to react fast to press the brake in the car
to prevent a crash, for instance. These perceived threatening situations
drive our behavior (our choices based on our perceptions). Sometimes
we fight. Sometimes we flee. Sometimes we freeze. Sometimes we
avoid or deny. As leaders, we need to understand our own threat
situations and how we express that energy as well as recognize threat in
others.

Leaders need to notice the emotional climates in their body at the time they experience them. I have an exercise called Emotional Inventory where I ask leaders to record their emotions twice an hour - as awareness is the first step to strategic expression. Once you are comfortable in knowing the feeling of emotional threat, take notice of the triggers (both internal and external) and when they occur. In order to effectively communicate, you need to be fully aware of your triggers and your emotional states in order to choose how to execute or not execute that feeling. It’s a leader’s responsibility to have cognitive control of one’s threat or uncontrolled energy will show up in your decisions. Remember, those that follow you are always watching and learning from your choices.

In your work with others, you need to be able to recognize when others are in threat states. As their leader you need to make smart language decisions, both verbally and nonverbally, to not add threat and provoke an increase in cortisol - the threat (increased arousal) brain chemical. Brain research shows that stress damages our ability to make smart decisions and interact with one another. A leader’s job is to create an environment that forwards people not one that causes negative stress.

Furthermore, research shows us that social threat is even more upsetting than a physical threat. Dr. David Rock, Founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and creator of the SCARF brain model, helps us understand the social power in this question he poses audiences, “Which causes you more stress, getting a bruise on your upper arm from bumping into a wall or from a person using their fist and bruising your upper arm? The answer is a person; it’s much harder for us to get the social infraction off the mind.” Our socialness is part of our humanness.

In summary, leaders, I charge you with increased emotional awareness and increased responsibility of your language as to not create threat in yourself and in others. Remember your constituency is following your lead.

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The next Leaders Change article will detail Principle 2: The Power of Habit another brain principle that impacts our decision-making ability and our leadership.

Author:
Dianne R. Garrett
Co-founder, QLEAD Intl
http://www.qleadintl.com/