3 simple (and sometimes hard) truths holding your team back
The challenge leaders & their teams are facing right now
It’s the start of a New Year and many leaders, founders & their teams have BIG goals. Change is happening all around our workplaces and in our personal lives. Stress & burnout levels are at an all time high (despite the increased investment in mental health offerings — a topic for another day).
And yet… our goals seem to be increasing at the same pace and velocity as our stress levels. We know through the latest neuroscience that blood flow doesn’t reach our prefrontal cortex during times of heightened (actual or perceived) stress.
Why is this so important you might be asking?
Our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain where we do all of our complex thinking and decisioning — from creativity, to problem-solving, to accessing empathy and formulating new & innovative solutions — all of these necessary functions cannot happen when the prefrontal cortex goes offline.
So what can you the leader of your team or business line do to support yourself and your team members in building the resilience necessary to drive creativity, problem-solving and bottomline results? Let’s have a deeper look…
3 simple (and sometimes hard) truths that are holding your team & organization back
Truth #1: you cannot strategize, think or “mindset” your way to results
You can only embody them.
Strategy is something that’s existed and been prioritized inside of organizations since the birth of business. And we agree, strategy IS important. Strategy by itself will lead to results (at best) and burnout, team conflict & high turnover (at worst).
“Mindset work” or thinking positively only engages ~20% of our entire system — leaving ~80% to chance. What good business leader would leave 80% of their results to chance?
the SOLUTION: a bottom-up, root-cause approach that addresses the whole picture
Truth #2: lasting positive change will feel like an uphill battle when you or your team have a dysregulated nervous system
Polyvagal theory tells us that 80% of our individual thoughts, feelings, behaviors, habits & results are driven from what’s happening inside of our body (not our mind).
Profit problems start as people problems. Organizational success relies on team success and team success relies on individual awareness & daily behaviors. And individual success can only happen when one’s nervous system is fully onboard.
Truth #3: YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM DIRECTLY AFFECTS YOUR CLIENTS’ NERVOUS SYSTEM
This is called the emotional contagion effect, which means that through mirror neurons whatever is happening in 1 person’s nervous system will be mirrored and matched by the other nervous systems’ that he/she/they comes into contact with — remote, in-person or otherwise.
What implications does this have on our business or organization?
As a leader, YOUR nervous system will directly impact each person on your team’s nervous system — and in turn how much capacity, creativity, problem-solving, etc. they can tap into each day.
For client-facing teams, this goes one step further. Your sales people (and the state of their nervous systems) will directly impact the state of your clients’ nervous systems — and how they engage, buy and maintain (or not) a relationship with your organization.
