”When you put two or more people together, it gets messy!” Diane Marentette pointed out as an introduction to the subject of how to be and do your best in the workplace.

Rich Trafton and Diane Marentette spoke to the OD in LA group on June 29. They talked to the group about their approach, the difficulty of effecting change, how to break out of silos, the issues of territoriality, and how to elicit as much New Brain behavior as possible in the workplace.

Rich, who along with his doctorate in psychology has studied brain and behavioral science for many years, believes that, “If we can shift the work environment, we can have a lot of impact.” Rich and Diane’s recently released book, A New Brain for Business, arose from their science-based work in organizations. Although they noted that real change is slow, incremental and painful, it can be done!

Why is change so hard? We all realize that the quality of the work experience hasn’t changed a lot in 20 years. It seems that companies don’t change (or don’t like to change) very much. Yes, there are the “trends du jour,” such as team building and “lean,” but they generally don’t make a large or lasting impact. In our everyday lives, we see these change efforts time and time again. Rich noted that we need to remember that we as human beings have millions of years of momentum and history behind us, and in comparison to even a year-long change process, the history of humans and their brains will trump change any day, unless we can change our fundamental thinking, and therefore our behavior.

Our Old Brain ways of thinking, which are fear-based, get in the way of optimal business performance. Human beings are very responsive to threat and to things that happen around us without even thinking about it. In fact, we are hyper-vigilant when it comes to threat, even though we no longer have to look out for lions or tigers in our backyards.

Nowadays, the fact that the old brain can interrupt the new brain at any time to respond to real or imagined threat is a problem, because it means that our emotions trump our thinking. That problem can and does happen at work. To elicit the best from people at work, leaders want to stay away from activating fear, which is about 90% of our emotional wiring. When a leader stays in the new brain space as much as possible at work, other people feel safe and also stay in the new brain space.

The Trust Formula – Steps to Gain and Keep Trust

1. Be predictable (unpredictability activates old brain behavior).
2. Be safe (don’t inflict pain physically or emotionally, which includes shaming, blaming, or leaving people out of the loop).
3. Make a lot of deposits into people’s emotional bank accounts.

Rich and Diane also discussed territoriality. We know how impinging on people’s personal space makes them uncomfortable and even defensive. People have psychological spaces too, which often translate into their attitudes. It’s easier to change somebody’s behavior than their attitude – just look at teenagers. One way leaders can approach this issue is to not use “should” or “need to” when talking about goals, next steps, or your team’s actions. Imperative language, like “must” or “have to” invites resistance, is a curse in the workplace. Use more tentative language and the language of consequences – “If you do X by this date, then Y….” As long as you don’t use this as a threat, these efforts will help your team make better decisions. (And in any case, a person’s actions are more important than attitude.)

Rich and Diane had a laundry list of signs that the old brain may be in ascendancy at work, including:

• The curse of certainty: The more certain you are, the more likely you are wrong.
• Profanity - as soon as it begins, the meeting is over.
• Managing by tirade - not only are you scaring people in the moment, you are breaking down trust for future interactions.
• Calling people jerks or other names - name-calling is no different from profanity.
• Gossip. Where there’s gossip, there is no compelling mission/vision in the company. People need to be able to forecast upcoming events to feel safe. Gossip can make us more comfortable, since in the absence of the mission/vision, gossip allows us to anticipate what other people are thinking and doing.

Members of the group talked about several ways to break out of siloed thinking at work (another kind of territoriality), such as:

• Share info freely. More information makes us all feel safer. Transparency is powerful.
• Encourage people to share their own version of things/their own stories.
• Collaborate across boundaries.
• Social interactions outside of work, such as softball teams, can be powerful.
• Use incentives like profit sharing – where the success of company as a whole will benefit the individual.

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