the brain, leadership and change

If you want leading edge research and implications about how the brain works, check out the offical site for the emerging NeuroLeadership field, The Global Neuroleadership Summit .   What is Neuro Leadership you ask?   It is a new field of study fo­­cused on bringing neuroscientific knowledge into the area of leadership development, management training, education, consulting and coaching.  David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership , Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work and Founder/CEO of Results Coaching Systems, is one of the key people leading the charge to marketing and promoting Neuroleadership worldwide.  Good on ya David! 

Hear interview with David Rock on NeuroLeadership and the Global NeuroLeadership Summits. Learn how to apply the latest in neuroscience to the art of coaching and leadership Brain-Based Coaching and Leadership.  Listen to why change is so hard from a physical perspective from the teleseminar Insights about the brain that change everything.   Learn about companies that brought in and built a coaching culture report significantly reduced staff turnover, increased productivity, greater happiness and satisfaction at work.

And just to keep things a little in balance, here is a healthy dose of skepticism on the value of Neuroleadership….Is Neuroleadership More Than Reinventing Wheels?

Time and Change and Free Won’t

Time and change are two words we hear a lot in our lives.   With time, there never seems to be enough of it or the quality of it poor.    With change, it seems the opposite is true – it is happening everywhere with everything all the time and we wish it would stop.   That said, time and change have a great deal in common.  Both time and change are constants that we no ability to control and both can result in the same feelings of being rushed, overwhelmed and stressed.  

So the next question is given that we can’t increase time or stop change, what can we do to help ourselves maneuver the turbulence and stress created by the uncontrollable constants?

My own experiences have taught me that the answer lies how I respond to the limitations and challenges presented by time and change.  And how I respond is about making choices.   Choosing carefully how I spend my time and who I spend it with.    Choosing my response to change.   Accepting those things I can’t change, courageously taking action for those things I can and using the wisdom I have learned or am given to know the difference.   

Integral to the process of choosing is exercising ‘free won’t’ as much, or perhaps more, than ’free will’.    I recently learned more about ‘free won’t’ and how to effectively use it during recent coach training from Results Coaching Systems (www.workplacecoaching.com).   Free won’t is our ‘veto power’, the time it takes for our mind to determine how we are going to respond to the consciously registered desire to move.  It is about 0.3 of seconds out of a 0.6-0.7 second time between thought and action.   I use free won’t as a 0.3 second opportunity to tell myself to “STOP”, take a deep breath and choose to give myself more time to think about and decide how I will respond.   I am amazed how effective it can be to simply tell myself the word ‘STOP’ outloud as a means to interrupt my impulse to react.  Having discovered this I now use the same tool to give myself more time in my decision making.  The result – better choices and less stress. 

With this in mind my questions out to the world are:

How do you respond to the pressures from time and change?

What and how can you do things differently?

What areas of your life can you exercise ‘free won’t  to free up time and make change easier?

What other techniques and tools have you found to help with managing time and change better?

tiltability

Essentially everything in our universe strives to reach a state of   equilibrium or Homeostasis.   This principle applies to single individual entities to massive complex systems either metabolically, physicaly, socially or psychologically.    Paradoxically, while the drive or equilibrium is ongoing, there are always some other forces tilting the system off balance into a state of disequilibrium or change.  The result is a dynamic interconnetion between these two opposing yet complimentary states of equilibrium and change.  They are two sides of a same coin where one cannot exist without the other where the purpose of change itself is to reach a new state of balance and harmony. 

When it comes to poeple, by and large the preference is for the known or equilibrium over that of change.  In fact, it is fairly safe to state that people generally have difficultly with change.    It is part of why there is so much focus and time dedicated to the study for effectively managing change.   It is relatively simple to change situations when people are not involved, but the more people are impacted by a change, the more difficult change becomes.    Ironically, while people and beliefs, expectations, assumptions, concerns and hopes can present a significant obstacle to change, they are also the solution.   for withiout them, realizing successful sustainable change would be impossible. 

As a business and organizational development consultant and coach, I am acutely aware of the challenging phenomenon change presents for people.   It is for this reason why my my passion and primary area of practice is focused on facilitating positive change within and through people and people-driven systems.   Driving change, whether it’s personal, professional or organizational, requires some form of catalyst, either internally or externally imposed, to overcome the inertia inherent in people’s homeostatic circumstances.  The catalyst may be some political, environmental, sociological, technological, market or other force that inevitably tilts people and organizations out of their comfort zone and into wobbly uncertainty.  By empowering people with the necessary functional and soft skills of leadership, emotional and social intelligence, they are better equipped to positively manage change.   The best of who they are is expressed and shared, enabling a collaborative search for and implementation of sustainable options for transitioning more easily to a new changed state of equilibrium.