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In the field of neuroscience and its application to business, we are most interested in how this applies to leadership stress and resilience, risk-taking and decision-making, harnessing diversity of thinking in teams, creating the conditions for success in organisations and innovating into the future, writes Dr Tara Swart
It is imperative for business leaders to create a lasting environment in which creativity, meaning and purpose can thrive.
Harnessing neuroscience lets us embed sustainable behaviour changes in existing leadership patterns. This, in turn, leads teams to be more innovative and allows organisations to flourish in a culture of trust.
It’s important to understand that our brains are neither fixed nor set in adulthood. We are all capable of neuroplasticity – changing the way we think and feel about things.
The more we practise, the deeper the neural pathways will become, and the easier the new process will be. If we want to make a change, say from a fixed to a growth mind-set, we have to do it consciously and deliberately with awareness, focus and attention.
In applying ourselves to a new skill or activity in this way, we can retain the capacity for the brain to change, reformat and potentially grow, well into our sixties.
Of course, we can also help the brain by ensuring that we care for it.
Sleep
Sleep is one of the key factors in neurological health that cannot be ignored. Many executives survive on far too little.
What they don’t realise is that a lack of sleep can have the same effect on your decision-making abilities as being drunk. This is not what executives are hired and paid for. Seven to nine hours of sleep is key for the cerebrospinal fluid that sits around your brain and spinal cord to filter through the brain.
This process clears neurotoxins from your brain, specifically one called beta-amyloid, which has been found in clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
When this system can’t function properly due to a lack of sleep, harmful remnants, like beta-amyloid, are allowed to build up. We can also help the brain by resting during the day (short naps, for example) if we want to and are able to do so.
Eat
What we put into our bodies as fuel also has a huge effect on how our brain works. Our body is not just a convenient vehicle for moving the brain from meeting to meeting.
We receive a lot of information and input from our bodies.
Almost all of the neurotransmitters – such as serotonin and dopamine – are found in the stomach and gut. They are also active in the brain and help us to make decisions and to function in daily life.
The gut is often referred to as the other brain. We can improve our brain’s effectiveness at work by caring for the body and the brain with a healthy diet. Good hydration is equally important, as is cutting back on alcohol and caffeine.
If you are a senior leader in your company, you need to understand the effect that stress hormones can have on your body and on those around you.
We often see clients with high levels of stress hormones – cortisol and adrenalin. High cortisol often causes fat to be deposited around the midsection (belly) and makes people crave high-calorie carbohydrates, which exacerbates the situation around the waist.
What’s even more interesting is that cortisol can spread around an office. That’s right. It hangs around the body and can be absorbed by others through the skin. This effect is even stronger if it is the leader who is stressed.
Reducing cortisol and adrenalin are key to a happy and creative work environment, and can be sweated out through exercise.
Meditate
Other things that help include mindfulness, meditation, writing in your journal or diary and coaching – where you can release tension and worrying thoughts on to paper or to another person.
Sometimes it’s not possible to remove the stressors from our lives. In these cases, resilience, or an ability to deal with stress, is key.
If people can use their brain plasticity to reframe and rethink the stress they’re feeling, they will be more resilient to its negative effects.
Neuroimaging has shown that mindfulness and meditation, for example, increase the gyrification (folding) of the cortex.
This means we are more likely to be resilient to stress: the thicker the cortex, the less reactive we are to the impulses of the limbic system.
Neuroscience turns out to be far more important for business than we might first imagine.
Neuroscience-based coaching and drawing on the plasticity of the brain helps to create the ideal environment and mind-set in which business leaders can thrive, enjoy their work and build happier teams.
Tips to keep your brain healthy:
- Develop a regular mindfulness or meditation practice - often focusing on your breath - to enhance your wellbeing and calmness
- Eat a healthy, balanced diet and eat regularly
- Stay hydrated. This means drinking half a litre of water for every 15kg of body weight
- Try going to sleep at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning
- Don’t look at your mobile phone an hour before you go to bed bed. The blue light it produces inhibits the production of melatonin and can affect your sleep
- Keep up your exercise. Regular activity through the day, even if gentle, is actually better than going to the gym for an hour
Swart is CEO of The Unlimited Mind, and is a medical doctor and neuroscientist
