One sentence that cost 1,500 people
I once watched a new board member start. He was responsible for IT and came from another company and another country. Shortly after taking office, he explained his strategy to all 2,500 employees in a virtual town hall. In passing, he mentioned that anyone who had worked in the area for more than five years was probably “blind to the organization’s flaws” and that he did not need them for the planned transformation.
Eighty-five percent of the employees present had worked in IT for more than five years. He had lost them before he had really begun his work.
It would have helped if the board member had been aware that people at work hate two things like the plague:
- the feeling of being excluded
- a lack of orientation and clarity about how they can contribute to overall success
When people feel isolated or excluded, exactly the same region of the brain is activated as with physical pain: the anterior cingulate cortex. For in human history, isolation often meant hunger and existential hardship.
With his remark, the IT board member had given 1,500 listeners a collective slap in the face. And that is exactly how they felt. No wonder he never managed to bring the employees behind his strategy and gave up, unsuccessful, after a few years.
Eighty percent happens between people
Human beings are social creatures. Since time immemorial we have been used to living in clans. And so our greatest need is to belong to a strong community and to feel that we are a valued member of it.
When the mood is good and every person feels valued, the group is motivated as well: conflicts are addressed openly, and solutions are sought and implemented together. When the mood is poor and worry or mistrust prevails, the group is insecure, conflicts are swept under the carpet, and members hold back and stay passive.
People in leadership roles hold an exposed position in shaping such social dynamics. It has always been the figures at the top of the hierarchy who distributed resources and tasks. That is why employees orient themselves strongly toward their leaders, and why their behavior has a direct influence on how employees feel.
What is neuroleadership, and what is neurosocial leadership?
Neuroleadership applies findings from neuroscience to leadership. The term emerged in 2006, when David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz described how leadership behavior affects the brain’s attention and threat systems.
Neurosocial leadership is the further development we worked out between 2013 and 2023 in the Future of Leadership Initiative. It goes beyond the structure of the brain and adds two further levels: the biochemical — that is, neurotransmitters, and the social dynamics of an organization, its ability to adapt to internal and external change.
The approach rests on a testable hypothesis: leadership behavior influences the neurochemistry of those involved and thus the mental performance of the entire organization. Unconscious patterns of behavior and group dynamics can largely be explained by a primal fear — the fear of being excluded from a community. Social rejection is processed neurologically much like physical pain.
Four messengers as a leadership instrument
Have you ever talked about neurotransmitters in the context of leadership or strategy execution? Usually, hormones come up when the conversation turns to puberty or a thyroid disorder. Yet they play a central role when we want to win others over as active supporters of our ideas and goals.
The word hormone comes from ancient Greek and means to set in motion, to excite. Hormones are biochemical messengers that trigger specific effects and regulatory functions. They control not only our bodies but also our emotions, our perception and our thinking. The fascinating part is that the regulation of neurotransmitters depends on how people perceive and interpret their environment.
Four substances shape vitality and mental performance in particular — of individuals and, in combination, of the team.
Serotonin, colloquially the happiness hormone, stands for the need to be a valued and needed member of a strong community. It gives us a sense of zest for life, joy and composure, dampens negative feelings and reduces impulsive behavior. In a leadership role, you strengthen this feeling by distributing roles and responsibilities clearly and by giving every member of a group attention for their specific role.
Dopamine, the reward hormone, stands for the need for orientation, reward and progress. It is released when we feel that our actions serve a higher goal and that we are mastering steps along the way. Leadership influences it through goals worth striving for, an appealing picture of the future and clear, tangible milestones.
Noradrenaline is chemically closely related to adrenaline and stands for change and stepping out of one’s comfort zone. In acute situations it prepares the brain for rapid action, mobilizes energy reserves in the short term, sharpens the senses and heightens attention. In a leadership role, it matters to shake people up at times — while also showing a path into the future so as to avoid insecurity.
Cortisol is the long-term stress hormone. It is released when the body prepares for a long, grueling fight. A high cortisol level shows in mild aggression, nervousness or reduced attention. Over time it drains the body’s energy reserves. Leadership can reduce stress levels by preventing overload, unclear goals and unfavorable working conditions.
The neuro traffic light
The neuro traffic light is a leadership instrument that can be used as a check-in in team or project meetings to understand what state a group is in. It measures whether team members are currently in a green, yellow or red state. Green stands for serotonin and dopamine — the two messengers that create a state of lasting performance.
At the check-in, team members are asked to rate how they feel right now against given statements on a scale from 0 to 10:
- Serotonin: “Right now I feel energized and valued.”
- Dopamine: “Right now I feel that I am on a good path.”
- Noradrenaline: “I am positively excited and curious.”
- Cortisol: “I feel I am in fight-and-survival mode.”
You can first have people vote anonymously and then invite each member to comment briefly on their state. If the cortisol level is high, the motto is: disruptions come first. No one engages with a new topic while in survival mode. Often, though, it is enough to say out loud what is weighing on you. The attention of colleagues alone is then a great support.
Four levels
MLI’s neurosocial leadership approach was developed between 2013 and 2023 within the Future of Leadership Initiative. It was formulated chiefly by the neuroscientist Dr. Markus Deutschmann, MD, and Sebastian Morgner. It works on four levels.
Leading oneself. Only those who can deal with uncertainty as a person and still have an inner compass of values and ideas about the future can radiate confidence and clarity in a leadership role. The approach helps to recognize cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic or confirmation bias.
Leading a team. A leadership role needs trusted people with complementary strengths. To make the right personnel decisions, one must be aware of biases such as the halo effect or the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Leading people. The Team Performance Radar makes transparent how all team members perceive eight scientifically relevant success factors, reveals gaps and opens up a peaceful dialogue about collaboration.
Leading the organization. This is about handling complexity, strategic problem-solving capability and activating the strategy in everyday work, including avoiding the planning fallacy and creating, among those affected, an emotional understanding of their own contribution as well.
Seven social dynamics that decide adaptability
Leadership behavior has a decisive influence on how adaptable an organization is:
- Dealing with conflict. How strong is the psychological safety to address conflicts of interest openly?
- Decision processes. Is collective experience drawn upon, or do people proceed on the basis of individual work?
- Status. By which criteria are members judged? What role do outward status symbols play?
- Distribution of power. Is decision-making power concentrated in a few hands or distributed?
- Diversity. Are members interested in other perspectives, or are they held together by inherited beliefs?
- Norms. Which norms of behavior create identity and are followed unconsciously?
- Identity. What self-image and which shared goals connect the members?
What you can do tomorrow
Make the sphere of influence explicit. Make sure that every person in your area can answer three questions: What do I control myself? What absorbs my attention without my being able to influence it? And what can I move together with others through active effort? Whoever cannot answer the third question slides into the role of victim, and that costs you the person.
Use the neuro traffic light as a check-in, not a survey. The value lies not in the number but in the sentence that follows. When someone rates their cortisol at eight and explains why, the team has information that appears in no employee survey.
Separate the subject-matter discussion from the discussion about collaboration. Most meetings fail because both are negotiated at the same time. If you argue about the issue while the pecking order is being negotiated unspoken, you make no progress on either.
In times of change, say first what stays. Noradrenaline wakes people up; cortisol paralyzes them. The difference between the two is whether the person affected can see a path for themselves. An announcement without a visible path creates not a new start but paralysis.
What was measured, and how
In the merger of a telecommunications provider with a network operator, we first compared the leadership styles and social dynamics of both companies and developed a shared mission from them. All leaders clarified their team’s contribution to overall success; they then ran the activation workshops with their teams themselves.
The result: employees’ understanding of the strategy rose by 56% within three months. On top of that, a sense of unity in the leadership circle that had not existed between the two companies before.
Three months is a short period, and that is intentional: what was measured was whether people can explain the strategy, not whether the business result changed. One is a prerequisite for the other, not a substitute for it.
Where the approach reaches its limits
Neurosocial leadership explains why people in organizations behave the way they do. It does not replace the question of whether the strategy is right. A well-led team running in the wrong direction simply arrives at the wrong place faster.
The neurotransmitters are a simplification. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline and cortisol serve here as metaphors for states, not as measurements. Anyone expecting blood values will be disappointed; anyone looking for a shared language for states that otherwise go unnamed will find it.
And the approach cannot be delegated. It describes the behavior of leaders in concrete situations. A program that does not involve the level above the target group improves the vocabulary, and changes nothing about what people actually experience.