Technology has advanced exponentially over the last few decades, and our brains are getting left behind.
July 14, 2023
One of your highest performers, Pankhil, is slipping.
He’s spent his 10-year career with the company rocketing through promotions and cross-functional assignments. He’s your go-to guy when you’re struggling with a complex problem that needs a creative solution. But lately, Pankhil has been off.
At first, the signs were subtle. He made a few minor mistakes on projects — mistakes anyone could’ve made, but they were, admittedly, out of character for Pankhil. You’ve noticed that he sends emails at all hours of the night. Last week, he made a big mistake that couldn’t be ignored — he missed a major delivery date, which resulted in a significant financial loss for a key customer. You’ve decided that it’s time: You need to address whatever is going on with Pankhil.
Here’s what you don’t know. Pankhil and his wife, Elaine, have three children — the youngest of whom has a complex medical condition. Elaine left a career she loved two years ago in order to manage their child’s many medical appointments and therapies, leaving Pankhil as the family’s sole breadwinner. Last month, Elaine’s father had a stroke. Elaine and Pankhil learned he would require care from someone who can be with him all day when he would be released from the hospital. Elaine’s siblings have suggested he move in with Pankhil and Elaine for a while. However, they don’t have an extra bedroom in their home, and with the current mortgage interest rates, they can’t afford a bigger house in their community.
In the face of his family’s overload, Pankhil has thrown himself into work as an escape. Raised by immigrant parents who instilled a strong work ethic that involved a mentality of keeping your head down and being thankful for what you get, Pankhil hasn’t shared any of his family struggles with his coworkers. He’s terrified of having a major meltdown, but he doesn’t know what to do other than to keep working as hard as possible.
The company has expressed its care and concern for its workforce in its value statement. Mental health counseling is fully covered by the company’s employee assistance program, and there are a variety of resources available on campus, such as daytime yoga classes, onsite massages and paid time off. But for Pankhil, all feels out of reach. He can’t see himself making time to take advantage of any of those benefits.
Pankhil is a fictional employee — but how many of us can relate to the pressures in his life? How many members of our workforce are in similar situations? Whether we’re aware of it or not, today’s hybrid, hyper-competitive, rapidly evolving, multi-generational, omnichannel (feeling stressed already?) workplace environment is putting a strain on our brains and affecting our mental well-being. Excessive workloads and work pace, conflicting demands between work and home life and long, unsocial or inflexible hours can result in feelings of resentment, exhaustion, disconnection and disengagement. These feelings lead to poor physical and mental health, unsustainable health care costs and reduced performance potential across our workforces.
Public discourse has abounded with demands that companies do more to support people’s mental health, and many organizations have added great programs to their benefits packages. But we’ve yet to see any of those efforts lead to measurable improvements in employee well-being. As the number of workers grappling with mental health issues continues to rise, learning and development leaders are facing a critical question: How and why are our employees struggling to cope?
Our brains were not made for this moment Technology has advanced exponentially over the last few decades, and our brains are getting left behind. Take a look at the nature of work, for example. Two hundred years ago, we were bound by the natural cycles of daylight and darkness. A person had no choice but to stop working when it got dark, a fact of life that left more time for human connection and intimacy with family and friends. Around 1900, organizational and technological innovations in electricity ushered in a new industrial revolution, as electricity allowed factories and businesses to stay open through the night and facilitated more rapid communication via the electric telegraph.
Skip forward to the early 1990s — computers were becoming mainstream in the workplace, and Microsoft launched Windows 95, a significant progression from the company’s previous Windows products. Still for the most part, when people left work, they left work behind.
In 1996, everything started to change when Nokia introduced the first cell phone capable of internet access, revolutionizing communication. Suddenly, technology could enable people to be available 24/7/365 via phone call, email or instant message. Then, in 2007, Apple released the first smartphone, and we’ve been staring into its seductive screen ever since.
Amid this rapid revolution, no one taught us how to develop boundaries. Our brains are not equipped for multitasking, and our working memory capacities (and subsequent situational coping capacities) are exhausted by constant communication. Today, our time spent in front of screens and the ways we interact with technology significantly impact our brains, affecting our attention spans, memory and recall, and behavior. All these changes have societal implications that go beyond the demands placed on individuals.
L&D and talent leaders know the brain can change with coaching
Simply put, we know the brain was not made for the current demands of society. The good news is that it has the ability to change and meet this moment — we are not confined to our learned and acquired patterns. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Norman Doidge’s book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” introduces the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity (physiological changes in the brain resulting from our interactions with our environment) and the people whose lives they’ve transformed. The book highlights how neuroplasticity allows us to learn from and adapt to different experiences — like stroke victims who have learned to walk or speak again.
That same training that helps people to recover from strokes can be applied to transform behaviors from counter-productive to productive. Incorporating the science of neuroplasticity into a learning or coaching experience helps learners to alter the ways their brains react to certain stimuli and program their neurons out of default negative responses. Achieving functional change at the neural level can make it easier for a high-performer to experience healthy behaviors and positive emotions — doing so takes time and a great deal of work.
How do learning and talent leaders incorporate neuroscience into performance improvement?
Helping a leader’s brain adapt more productive patterns starts with awareness. By understanding that the brain is a highly active and malleable learning machine, a leader is primed to work one-on-one with a coach to persevere through the often-uncomfortable process of making significant, lasting changes.
L&D and talent leaders can use four key actions to help their leaders improve productivity and change counterproductive behaviors:
Partner with the leader to identify life and work patterns — are they helping or hurting?
Identify the automatic responses that are impeding the leader and choose more effective responses.
Create a productive story by reframing things positively and being aware of the negative defaults.
Coach the leader to train their brain to lower the incidence of negative responses (such as anxiety, impatience and anger) and provide the leader with the mental toughness, fitness and resilience to face challenges, achieve goals and perform at a higher level.
The next chapter in performance improvement and leadership development To date, the brain science of neuroplasticity has had a very limited impact on the fields of executive coaching and corporate training, but that’s about to change. Neuroplasticity, grounded in research and proven practices, will be the main character in the next great chapter of performance improvement, both personally and professionally. The countless high-performers and future leaders facing life stresses, like Pankhil’s, will be equipped to excel at work and drive organizational success without sacrificing their physical, mental and family health. L&D leaders are in a prime position to bring the future of performance improvement into their organizations — and, as we’ve seen, the members of the workforce are ready and waiting.
Here’s our challenge to you: Keep learning about this topic so you can keep your organization ahead of the curve.
Diana Thomas Diana Thomas is a Certified Executive & Team Coach with Marshall Goldsmith's organization and a member of the ICF (International Coach Federation). She held the position of Vice President of Learning & Development for McDonald’s Corporation USA. Thomas is the co-author of Be More Strategic in Business and the host of Talent Champions. She holds an MBA, a master’s degree in Human Resources Development and Business Management, a BA in Education and Economics, and is also a certified 500 yoga instructor. As a proven, successful Fortune 100 Executive, Thomas partners with business executives to help them become better leaders and find more happiness in their lives. Dr. Jack Groppel Dr. Jack Groppel is an internationally recognized authority and pioneer in the science of human performance. He began studying high performance in the 1970s and has coached countless world-class athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs, senior business leaders, healthcare leaders, military officers, and law enforcement officers. Dr. Groppel is the author of The Corporate Athlete and cofounder of the Human Performance Institute, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2008. He is also a Hall of Fame Tennis Coach. Due to the advances in Neuroplasticity and his current efforts is why he has joined forces with two corporate learning executives/industry leaders, Diana Thomas and Dr. Mary McNevin. Dr. Mary McNevin Dr. Mary McNevin is an executive coach, talent advisor, and former CLO and award-winning talent executive. She is a growth-oriented talent management executive with 20+ years of experience in learning, talent management, succession planning, and strategy development. Dr. McNevin earned her doctorate (EdD) from the University of Pennsylvania through an interdisciplinary program with GSE and Wharton School of Business. Her dissertation focused on Executive Coaching in the C-suite. Dr. McNevin also holds an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MS in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
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