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CEO and executive are moving into an uncertain future. We can find ourselves a little lost in the new world we’re living in, merely reacting to or overwhelmed by the externalities of the Covid pandemic. We see firsthand how employees and leaders alike are challenged to maintain their centeredness while the floor is falling around them. 

When we talk about the radical changes to our routines, the bulk of what we focus on is safety first and technical solutions for virtual work. While these are important, it is also vital that we design into our routines ways that will allow us to consider our humanity and sense of wellbeing.

That thought has led me to wonder — what could it look like for us to use this moment to design a work experience that enhances our human capacities, needs, aspirations, and values – even in this challenging time? Below are three elements I believe will be essential for organizational leaders to consider toward this end: 

1. Human Moments

This moment of virtual work in isolation will require we design for deeper human connections, not just digital expertise. Digital interaction is now the new normal, but I believe what will set apart leaders at this moment are not how good we are at the technical side of virtual work, but how able we are to foster empathy, care, connection and a feeling of belonging — things that technology cannot do for us.

Before starting your calls and meetings for the day, ask yourself: “What opportunities do I have to be a little more human and a little more caring today?” When you are in a meeting, starting a meeting, or talking to a colleague, ask yourself, “what small acts of kindness or connections can I make right now?” Do you know what this moment means for them? In my experience, it can be a simple as closing another browser, stop the sharing of your screen, and being as present as you can be with the other person. 

2. Creating Belonging

Our new work reality is directly in conflict with our innate needs as social creatures who rely on social connecting and the signals we get from nonverbal cues to understand our environment. Belonging and social connection is vital. This is why I believe we will need to design for our life in this new reality for more, not less, human connection.

In the middle of all the stressful changes in our lives, it might feel impossible to find space to connect with the people around us. Yet even small gestures of kindness and connection, can have a positive effect on others. Human connection is the foundation to virtual teams functioning and of building the kind of trust that technology cannot create for us.

Explore when we can create new online spaces and find time calendar gaps for connecting. For example, give yourself an extra 10 minutes to check in with your teams. Design meetings that address team uncertainty, and encourage employees to attend on video so you can better read nonverbal cues and find ways to signal calm through your body language. I believe the more we design work around humanness of this moment, the more permission we give others to follow suit.

3. The Need to Decompress

Given the endless onslaught of news and information about Covid-19, creating space to decompress is vital – now more than ever. Our current environments are impacting our mental health and wellbeing, with constant news alerts on social media and TV. Now is a great time to build good habits and practice breathing and meditation — which could become central to how we maintain our wellbeing.

Just as we schedule our Zoom meetings, we need to schedule time to restore and unplug. It’s merely a matter of prioritizing it. The same goes for your teams. Encourage people to take a few moments to breathe and meditate. Tapping into the rhythms of our breath and calming our mind can allow us to find the center in the storm.

While so many things are out of our control – we also have some agency in design the reality we want through things that are in our control. Too often, technology and urgent situations determine how our lives are run and our teams. Now is a moment when leaders and their teams can rethink and experiment with ways to build a better future of work might — and in doing so, help our organizations through this time of stress and uncertainty. 

Great philosophers have said throughout the ages that change is inevitable, and that certainly seems true in the moment we’re living through. How can we lead our teams through this time of disruption? It turns out that change is hard for humans, especially when our health, jobs, or the survival of our businesses depend on it.

Why is change so challenging for people, even when we know it is necessary or useful for us? It may have to do with how our brains are wired. According to integrative neuroscientist Dr. Evian Gordon, Ph.D., MD, maintaining safety is the core driver of brain function — what he calls the “safety 1st principle.” Our nonconscious brain can see even beneficial change as a threat. Change often requires that we learn new skills and build new habits, which challenge the certainty of our current actions and can make us feel we’re losing control.

Disruptive events create a perception of threat that can put management and executives tasked with leading change directly in conflict with their own brains’ core needs for safety and stability. At the moment when they need to be open, flexible, and adaptive, they may fall into the trap of being defensive, protective, and closed, undermining their own best efforts. Even the best technical and management solutions can’t overcome this evolutionary hardwiring of our brains. Leaders can explain the need to change all day, yet such rational, objective reasoning does little to make change successful.

So, how can we cultivate new patterns of thinking and ways of working together that allow us to embrace uncertain times?

Integrating rituals to practice openness, whether consciously designed or not, teams practice rituals that send their members messages, or cues, about what is safe, acceptable, and predictable. These rituals create and reinforce social norms. Rituals can be generative and can reward innovation and ingenuity, or they can send messages that cause team members to remain closed and protectionist — to shut people down — as we often see in siloed organizations. The regularity of rituals reinforces ways of thinking and behaving, so they become second nature to us. We can build in intentional rituals that allow people to practice remaining open and curious, creating new brain patterns that become stable over time, and that can persist even during times of change and uncertainty. The familiarity of rituals can give us a sense of certainty and stability, even as they are nudging us toward evolving and changing.

Peter Cooper, the legendary investor, founder, and CIO of Australian investment firm Cooper Investors, uses regular rituals based on neuroscience and universal human values of humility, curiosity, and being in the present moment. CI’s approach to rituals is not common in the financial industry, shiny object management trends, nor are they found in formulaic management techniques often taught in MBA programs. The rituals that CI regularly practices prime their employees to deal with uncertainty in the market and protect them from overcompensating in the face of threat. A ritual around humility, for example, can include regularly acknowledging that many investment decisions are based on incomplete information; it can be modeled by admitting mistakes and not doubling down on faulty thinking to save face.

Creating norms and rituals around being present can include explicitly calling out the typical biases and heuristics (mental shortcuts) that prevent us from observing things as they are — for example, our bias toward confirming what we already believe. Rewarding curiosity can cultivate learning mindsets, which are vital to being open to change and finding new possibilities. At CI, for instance, investors and executive leadership understand how rational thinking is only part of the problem-solving process, and they are allowed space to give both rational and intuitive explanations when thinking through complex problems.

As humans, change is never easy. We may be wired to resist it because of the “safety 1st” principle. Understanding and acknowledging that our nonconscious minds drive much of our conscious thoughts can help leaders and teams feel safe and stable, even during uncertainty. Building the right rituals can allow us to buffer against our automatic reflexes to threat and create social norms that reward the flexible, open thinking we need to keep up and thrive in uncertainty.

What have been your experiences been with overcoming the threat of change and forming new habits to adapt to challenges?

The transformations we are seeing in our life at home and at work are only likely to escalate in the coming years. Yet as humans, many of us find change and building new habits to thrive in that change hard, particularly when our jobs or the success of our businesses depend on it.

In an effort to better understand why change is so difficult, I sat down with one of the world’s top neuroscientists – Dr. Evian Gordon, PhD, MD – who has published more than 300 papers on the brain. Over the last 16 years, Dr. Gordon built Total Brain, a neuro-scientific assessment linked to the world’s largest brain database. In our conversation, we talked about why adapting to change is so difficult, and explored what neuroscience can tell us about building new habits.

Many of the leading companies we work with have launched change initiatives. In spite of huge investment in technology solutions and high priced consultants, they struggle to get buy-in – even when there is a clear need. From the literature you’ve reviewed and the data you’ve collected of close to a million people: What is the most important thing we need to understand about how the brain functions to understand why change so difficult?

Making lasting changes is so hard because “Safety 1st” is the core driver of brain function. ANY change (even if it’s beneficial) is perceived as a non-conscious threat to your brain’s comfortable repetition and overall stability. Change poses a threat to the stable certainty of your current actions and self-control. Moreover, it introduces the possibility of having to face the fear of failure as you transition into a new way of doing, thinking, or being.

Your brain’s inherent desire for stability and its fear of failure can magnify the threat of any change, fueling further resistance. So unless change is fully embraced by you and has an extremely high probability of success and unambiguous benefit to you — your brain is unlikely to change anything substantial (other than for brief periods or motivated by short-term enthusiasm that does not last).

I’ve observed that the leaders I’ve worked with who have successfully moved their teams and employees through change put a lot of attention on new habits, rituals, and practices. What can you tell us about how the brain generates new habits which allow change to stick even under the stress of needing to perform under pressure?

Neural networks that fire together — wire together. Most of the initial habit generation requires conscious initiation and effort. After sufficient practice and visualization, the habit is so well consolidated that it can occur without awareness of the implementation details and sometimes without a conscious trigger.We have seen that there are five key milestones to generate a new brain habit are: 1–7–20–30–1000. Habits are generated by daily small steps that give your brain a dopamine reward buzz. Habits are more likely to stick if you track your milestones.

Each milestone is a significant success. Your first training is a game changer. By the seventh, you learn the most about generating an effective habit. By the twentieth training, there is statistically significant habit engagement. Habit is consolidated on the thirtieth training. Habit becomes an automatic part of your daily life on the 1,000th training.

What has your experience been with building habits to cope with change? What has worked? What has not? We would love to hear from you in the comments section below.

While you may not be familiar with Louis Gagnon, he used to be senior vice president at job site Monster Worldwide, and then chief product officer and chief marketing officer for Amazon’s Audible unit, where he led a team that doubled revenue and KPI growth rates in less than 24 months.

Today, however, Louis is CEO and managing director of My Brain Solutions, which is building the first “Fitbit” for the brain – integrating neuroscience, mental health, and wellness best practices in ways that have never been done before.

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But the path that Louis took to his position as CEO at My Brain Solutions – founded in 2000 by neuroscientist Evian Gordon – was not a typical one. “Three years ago,” shares Louis, “I met an Indian guru, and through his teachings I went on a self-discovery journey in the mind, consciousness, and self.”

For thousands of years, humans have been curious about the workings of the human brain and the interactions of consciousness, self, and mind. The ancient Egyptians left behind texts detailing early neurosurgical practices, and Greek philosophers debated the role of the brain in thought and sensation (Aristotle thought that the heart was where thought was centered, with the brain serving as a cooling mechanism for the blood). Vedic texts – written several thousand years ago in India – explore the nature of consciousness.

While at Audible, Louis Gagnon was invited to a retreat with Indian spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of The Art of Living and the International Association for Human Values. This retreat profoundly affected Louis. Led by Sri Sri, Louis experienced techniques of the ancient Vigyan Bhairav, a 5,000-year-old text describing techniques that open up meditative and expanded dimensions of consciousness.

Profoundly impacted by the experience of silence and transcendence, Louis brought this ancient knowledge to his team at Audible. “Our team was engaged, opened and excited to have the rare luxury to focus on themselves as individuals – individuals as a conduit and lever to ourselves as a team,” Louis shares. “We all felt deeply rejuvenated and at peace with each other. That, ultimately, built trust – the ultimate ingredient to teamwork.”  

The experience inspired a thought in Louis’s brain: “How can I take what is happening in my own mind and bring it into companies, at scale?”

The how was answered when he took the helm of My Brain Solutions with the goal of capturing a significant portion of the global wellness market. This market was estimated by the Global Wellness Institute to represent $3.7 trillion in revenue in 2015, with growth expected to exceed 17 percent through 2020. The fitness and mind-body category represents $542 billion in revenue, or approximately 15 percent of the total industry. Brain fitness is of particular interest to an increasing number of consumers, who hope to enhance the functioning of their brains while staving off memory loss. In fact, one recent study of older Americans revealed that memory loss is their number one fear – greater than terrorist attacks and being buried alive.

This continued growth in consumer interest around wellness and brain fitness provides Louis Gagnon and his company with a timely opportunity. Says Louis, “We are building the world’s first subscription-based digital brain fitness platform to allow individuals to assess and benchmark brain capacities and recommend personalized mind-body fitness programs.”

By combining the latest neuroscience discoveries with ancient Vedic wisdom, Louis and his team have delivered positive outcomes to a variety of well-established organizations, including Boeing, Kaiser Permanente, TEVA, and American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). As a result, Louis expects to double revenue this year while tripling the user base of the company’s MyBrainSolution product.

Says Louis, “We are providing a new way – based in ancient wisdom and emerging scientific discoveries – for anyone to boost their mental fitness.” And for an increasing number of consumers, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.

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I’ve coached hundreds of leaders across the globe — and there’s one practice that makes a huge difference in almost everyone’s performance.

When we think of productivity in business, we often think of people pushing themselves to past their limits — pulling all-nighters at work, eating lunch while responding to emails, zooming from one project or appointment to the next. But in my experience, this myth of productivity serves neither the employee nor the organization in the long term.

As CEO of TLEX Institute which teaches leaders tools for greater self mastery, social connection, and purpose, I’ve coached hundreds of leaders across the globe across a variety of sectors. I have found that leaders who create gaps in their busy schedules to restore and replenish are ultimately more effective and successful in the long run.

There’s one restorative practice in particular that makes a meaningful difference in leaders’ performance: conscious breathing.

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Conscious breathing is a powerful mechanism to  stay calm and focused throughout the day, while anchoring our mind in the present moment. Our breath is the only part of the autonomic nervous system that we can control. It’s one of the few things we can easily access to shift the way that we’re thinking or feeling and calm and restore ourselves. In fact, research shows conscious breathing has a deep restorative impact on our physiology, and it is one of the simplest ways to reset and can have many other benefits. Even one deep, conscious breath can serve as the mini-meditation that we need to slow down and reduce tension. Pausing to take a few deep breaths can allow us to let go and restore, and enter the next activity or interaction with fresh eyes, energy, and enthusiasm.

Beyond using breath in moments throughout the day, the daily practice of formal breathing and meditation techniques allows us to reset and restore so that tension and stress doesn’t accumulate. Research suggests that the rhythmic breathing practice Sudharshan Kriya, for example, reduces anxiety, depression, and increases optimism on a physiological level. By practicing letting go every day, and using the rhythms of our breath, we can learn to observe and manage our thoughts and emotions. These skills translate when our eyes are open, allowing us to engage with the world and other people with clarity, centeredness and intentionality.

While Sudharshan Kriya is an advanced technique, there many effective beginner breaths like alternate nostril breathing.  Explained below, alternate nostril breathing is a simple, effective technique for both calming and focusing your mind, and regulating your emotions.  

One client that I worked with for years, Peter Cooper, founded Cooper Investors in 2001 – now a $10 billion wealth-management firm. For Cooper, learning self-care techniques such as meditation and conscious breathing have helped him navigate the pressures of money management by lowering his stress and anxiety to increase his ability to focus on what really matters.

When several analysts left his firm in short succession, for example, Cooper was able to deal with this potentially destabilizing occurrence calmly, confidently, and with a clear intention to turn a potentially negative situation into a positive opportunity.

“Before my daily morning breathing practice of Sudarshan Kriya ” Cooper said, “I would have responded with blame, anger, and negativity. With my state of mind turned to learning and growing from challenges with minimum stress, we were able to attract very talented replacement analysts.”

Successful leaders like Cooper know that it’s essential to cultivate mindsets that help us thrive in that space of uncertainty and unrelenting pressure. This means building our physiologies so that we can respond – rather than react – when the stakes are highest.

In our increasingly complex environment, leaders must embrace the idea that pushing ever harder may be a necessity sometimes, but the more restored, resilient and healthy we are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, the more we can draw on that when the pressure kicks in – to be as productive as possible for years to come.

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When the going gets tough, we’re told the tough get going – do more, do better, and tough it out. We believe that the more time, energy, and focus we put in, the more we’ll get out of it on the other side.

But as leaders like Ariana Huffington, CEO of Thrive Global, shares, this belief in performance at any cost simply isn’t worth it in the long run. The indicator that her life was out of control came in a collapse of exhaustion that brought her to the hospital with a broken cheekbone.

“We founded The Huffington Post in 2005, and two years in we were growing at an incredible pace. I was on the cover of magazines and had been chosen by Time as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. But after my fall, I had to ask myself, Was this what success looked like? Was this the life I wanted? I was working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, trying to build a business, expand our coverage, and bring in investors. But my life, I realized, was out of control.”

If you’re trying to get ahead by working yourself into the ground, at some point, it’s going to be counter-productive. This performance-at-any-cost mentality actually decreases productivity – not unlike an athlete training all day without taking time to restore. We all want to come through in those moments that most impact our lives, the people we lead and the things we care about. While hard work plays a key role, focusing exclusively on effort to the exclusion of mental and emotional restoration isn’t serving leaders or organizations well.

Peter Cooper founded Cooper Investors, a $10 billion investment management firm in 2001. One of the firm’s core values is to be “In the Moment and Present,” and it’s an important tool in a business where there is a sense of urgency to react to endless distractions, predictions and perceived risks by the media, clients, brokers and the human desire to belong and be part of the pack.

For Cooper, techniques like meditation, yoga and restorative breathing have helped him navigate through the pressures of money management by lowering his stress and anxiety and increasing his ability to focus on what really matters – serving his clients. In challenging times, both clients and employees are looking to their leaders for signals on how to react. The more we’re able to regulate our emotions, stay calm and centered, the more we’ll elevate confidence in those around us, and the more clarity we’ll have to move forward.

When several key analysts left his firm in short succession last year due to a lack of culture alignment with the CI values, Cooper’s self-awareness techniques made a material difference. He was able to deal with this potentially destabilizing occurrence calmly, confidently, and with a clear intention to turn a potentially negative situation into a positive opportunity.

“Before my meditation practice,” Cooper said, “my internal experience would have been quite different. I would have responded with blame, anger, negativity, and would have been concerned about the client reaction. Instead, my state of mind turned to learning and growing from challenges with minimum stress, and we were able to attract very talented replacement analysts. We were also able to use this circumstance to cement the firm’s foundational values of humility and authenticity.”

Training for defining moments

How we deal with those make-or-break opportunities that require us to perform at our absolute peak often has a far-reaching impact.  Whether it’s delivering a major sales presentation, making an investment decision or coming up against an impossible coding deadline, our ability to “show up” at those critical moments can shape our business results, impact the effectiveness and health of our organizations and define our careers forever.

Successful leaders, like Cooper, know that it is essential to cultivate mindsets and cultures that can thrive in that space of opportunity, uncertainty, and unrelenting pressure. But getting to that kind of culture requires commitment, and just as important, an openness to trying new techniques that help build resiliency. We learn the technical skills of our professions, and we learn how to get ahead in life through trial and error. But to truly thrive in these moments requires a high level of self-mastery. This means building our physiologies and emotional agility so that we can respond – rather than react – when the stakes are highest.

Approaches individuals and organizations can turn to:

In the same way we cultivate our physical muscles, there are ways to stimulate greater mental hygiene and emotional regulation. A big part of that is proactively creating space for using restorative techniques before those high pressure moments happen. We’ve all experienced that tunnel vision that comes when we’re working nonstop and there’s still more demand than capacity. When the big pressure moment comes, can we respond well if we aren’t in good condition?

Here are just a few of the techniques that leaders and teams are using to mitigate burnout and performance in high pressure situations:  

Breathing. Different breaths have different effects (calming, stimulating, etc.), but in general, breathing is one of the simplest ways to reset. Breathing is the only part of our autonomic nervous system we can control, and breath is always grounded in the present moment. Not only do certain emotions have corresponding breath patterns, but different breaths can actually change your emotions.

Meditation. As counterintuitive as it might seem, allowing the mind to unfocus through meditation can help us focus when we need to. Research suggests that meditation improves creativity and cognitive functioning, emotional stability and regulation, and response to stress – with enduring effects on brain functioning. 

Awareness. To combat a negative stress response, we must learn to be aware of the cues. When the pressure moment comes, you may notice that you’re feeling an emotion, or your mind looks for the negative in the situation. The minute you notice, you have a choice and an ability to respond. Knowing your triggers in advance can help you see the cues coming. The goal is to build up your resilience so that you don’t get caught in a stress response with won’t serve you in the moment.
Showing for the things that matter most

The quality of our mind and emotions not only defines our ability to show up but also can determine the quality of our lives. In our increasingly complex business environment, a growing number of leaders are learning that pushing ever harder may be a necessity, but the more restored, resilient and healthy we are mentally, and emotionally, the more we can draw on that when our defining moment arrives. 

 

Business culture starts at the top, and it has a profound effect on everything from employee engagement and customer satisfaction to long-term performance.

But according to a recent Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace, 70 percent of employees in the workforce are disengaged, and 87 percent feel emotionally disconnected from their workplaces.

Whether you’re leading a small team or running a global enterprise, you are setting the emotional tone for your organization. In fact, it’s one of the most important roles a leader plays.

So what would happen if you based your culture on love?

Love means belonging and psychological safety

Talking about love in the context of business may feel odd — even uncomfortable — but more and more leaders are making the connection between emotionally safe (i.e. loving) environments and measurable success.

Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson is one such leader, recently revealing in an interview that his employees — not his customers — are the company’s highest priority. Branson explains, “It should go without saying, if the person who works at your company is 100 percent proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job and they are treated well, they’re going to be happy.”

That sense of happiness occurs in when employees feel safe — even loved. A recent Google study to identify how to create the “perfect team” found that the single most important dynamic in an effective team was psychological safety.

This doesn’t surprise me. When team members feel safe enough to admit mistakes, partner and take on new roles, they are far more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates. Psychological safety on teams allows for growth mindsets that can play with ideas, collaborate and iterate off others, and lets the team either fail fast or evolve into something more powerful.

A tale of two cultures

According to Louis Gagnon, advisor to investment fund TPG and a former senior executive with Amazon, a famously intense workplace, cultures can be driven either by desperation or by aspiration. In Gagnon’s experience, a culture can either foster or hinder an organization. 

“As a leader, you need all of your team’s energy to be mobilized, right here and right now,” Gagnon says. “For that to happen, you need them to do more than just go through the motions, you need them to use all of their creativity and energy in the moment. That doesn’t come out of fear, that comes out of love. That comes out of ‘I want to give,’ not ‘I want to protect.’”

Underlying desperation-driven cultures is a fear of losing our job, promotion, bonus, status, or privileges. It’s that powerfully human terror of being judged inadequate or getting rejected. These cultures encourage insecurity, and as a result, team dynamics are closed, driven by (sometimes hidden) agendas and politics.

In these environments, employees are in survival mode rather than creating and moving toward the future, and projects need to be tightly managed with strict accountability. It’s easier for employees to just “chug along,” rather than sticking their necks out with a new idea.

Love wins

Aspirational, love-based cultures, on the other hand, are grounded in a desire to make great things, to feel one belongs, and to be part of something bigger than oneself. This type of culture drives authenticity and explicitly encourages the kind of risky behavior that leads to big break-throughs.

Gagnon often tells his team, “Don’t meet your goals all the time, because it means you’re not stretching. You own success. I own failure.” This type of psychological safety net can allow us to lean into the uncertainty necessary for the adaptation, innovation and risk.

Global humanitarian and spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has developed a network model rooted in an aspirational, love-based culture. Sri Sri has built one of the largest growing global networks of inspired volunteers, a pipeline of tens of thousands of fresh and dynamic leaders committed to social change. His model of engagement is less about the perfection of outcomes and more about growing his leaders’ capacities to think big about solving the challenges they face in their communities and their work. This culture creates a safe space to learn and respond to their mistakes, which encourages experimentation and innovation.

“Money is supposed to bring us comfort, but if it becomes the cause of insecurity, and you don’t even trust your close ones, then we’ve gone down the wrong track. Greed has no end. There is a joy in getting, but the joy in giving is a more mature joy.” In a story about Alexander the Great, Sri Sri shares “all that you do for gold will not satisfy your hunger. The hunger can only be satisfied through wisdom and love.”

Added benefits of a love-based culture

For any organization, culture is what attracts and keeps talent. A desperation-driven culture attracts second-rate talent because playing it safe is implicitly encouraged. And great people in those cultures typically don’t last because the growth opportunities they seek are elsewhere, that is, in the kind of love-driven culture that attracts and retains the best talent by promoting strong feelings of self and collective achievement.

But culture’s impact goes beyond talent. Culture can permeate management style, processes and vital interactions with customers and suppliers. Love-based cultures create people who are there to connect both with the team and with the organization’s mission — and that’s the kind of commitment that drives sustainable results.