Brain Savvy HR: A neuroscience evidence base by Hills Jan

Author:Hills, Jan [Hills, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head Heart + Brain
Published: 2014-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

“They just need to copy the role model?”

It’s not just about showing how, but understanding why

We know modelling is an effective way of learning new skills and behaviours, from children modelling their behaviour on their parents and siblings, to apprenticeship schemes.

Leadership development has adopted role modelling as the way to break through some of the challenges of passing on requirements to future leaders. The thinking goes: “If we can point to the role models, tell people who they are and suggest new leaders copy what they do, our leadership problems will be over.” Of course we’re exaggerating, but you get the point…

Are role models a good idea?

We believe in the power of role models. Our Success Profile® process is a methodology for identifying what the most successful people do and how they do it. The profile can be used to show other leaders and more junior employees what the very best do, how they think about their role and the most important factors for success.

But going from knowing what someone does and successfully adopting that capability is quite a big leap. For example, our work creating Success Profiles across many organisations, in countries all around the world, has found that the difference in the success of the most successful is not what they do but how they think: the purpose they bring to the role and the beliefs that they hold.

You need more than a name

For many organisations knowing what those beliefs and purposes are can be difficult and it is very difficult for others to observe role models and guess what drives their behaviour.

Knowing how someone behaves is not enough. You have to also understand why they behave that way. The “why” drives the behaviour. Only with the “why” will the behaviour be authentic; based on common beliefs, not just aping actions.

Time and time again we’ve seen that acting out the same steps as the role model doesn’t work. People have to believe in what they’re doing: believe that it’s effective behaving in this way; believe that they can do it; believe that they can adopt these attitudes and behaviours and still be themselves – not pretending to be someone else.

This is the true challenge for leadership development. How do you develop leaders who adopt the successful “why,” and not just the “what”?

How does this happen in the brain?

Our beliefs on this are supported by some of the latest findings in neuroscience.

Work by Matt Lieberman at UCLA has focused on 229 the role of mirror neurons versus the area known as the default system. This is associated with mentalizing, the ability to understand others and to “guess” what they are thinking, their goals and motivations.

The default system is the area of the brain where we think about ourselves, and it largely overlaps with the areas activated when we think about and try to predict the actions of other people. Useful for our cave-man predecessors when “am I safe with this stranger?” was so closely linked to “is he going

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