Bruna de Palo (00:00)

People often don't have a clear idea what is the number one job of the brain. They think it's thinking, decision making, collaborating, and so on. Understanding this is key. The number one job of the brain is survival. And survival means two things: predicting potential danger so that we can prepare for that and also distributing energy – the right amount of energy at the right time to the right organ so that we can achieve health.

Siân Harrington (00:29)

Hi, I'm Siân Harrington, and today we're asking what if work is built around a faulty model of human beings? For years, leaders have been told that the brain has a rational bit, an emotional bit, and a fear centre that occasionally hijacks the meeting. It's a neat story, it's memorable, and it turns up in leadership training, coaching, wellbeing programmes and change management models everywhere. 

But it's also increasingly out of date. Modern neuroscience tells us something much more interesting. The brain is not simply reacting to what happens around us, it is constantly predicting what might happen next, working out how much energy we will need, and deciding whether to spend that energy on protection, thinking, collaboration, or creativity.  

And that has huge implications for work because we've built organisations around assumptions that people can leave emotion at the door, absorb constant change, perform under chronic stress and respond to pressure with resilience. And then we wonder why people become defensive, disengaged, resistant, burnt out or silent in meetings. 

So what would work look like if leaders understood the brain more accurately? Well, in this episode, you will learn how I out how outdated how outdated brain myths are still shaping leadership in HR practice. Why resistance, procrastination or disengagement may be less about attitude and more about energy, uncertainty and threat. How leaders can create conditions where people spend less energy protecting themselves and more energy thinking, learning, and contributing. And why your brain may be less like a motivational poster and more like a slightly anxious chief financial officer trying to manage the body budget. 

But first let me introduce my guest. Bruna de Paolo is a neuroscience-based executive coach and leadership strategist with over 3,000 hours of experience helping leaders in Fortune 500 companies, including Google and American Express. Italian by birth and global by choice. She blends solid science with humour and a practical style that makes learning stick.

Bruna is also a faculty member of the Neuroleadership Institute, a leading global research organisation pioneering the integration of neuroscience into leadership. She speaks internationally, helping leaders across cultures and generations transform how they collaborate and lead. Because work's not working when we keep treating human beings like rational machines, with a few inconvenient emotions attached.

 Bruna explores this in her latest book, The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders. So I start by asking her, in what ways have we built workplaces around a faulty model of how human beings actually think, feel and behave?

Siân Harrington (04:02)

Thank you for joining me today, Bruna. So let's start with the very big premise here. In what ways do you think we've built workplaces around a faulty model of how human beings actually think, feel and behave?

Bruna de Palo (04:17)

Thank you for the question, Siân I think we built workplaces based on ideas that we thought were realistic and truthful in the past. So I wouldn't say that today we're doing things in the wrong way. I would say today we're doing things perhaps in the outdated way. And that is because science has evolved, especially in the last 20 years, quite quickly due to technology advancement. And that means we need to then go back and look at, okay, well, what did we do before based on the old ideas and how can we upgrade it? This normally doesn't happen because neuroscience and psychology are not necessarily part of the HR conversation, but I think they must become. 

So to answer your question, I think what is necessary today is to review how things have changed, there have been some big shift in paradigm or how we understand behaviour. And if the HR world or in general companies would look into that, they would probably understand why many changes that they tried to make or many leadership development programmes that they try to deliver didn't actually bring the result that they were expecting. The answer is not that they were not good enough, is that they were based on outdated ideas. And it's probably time to look at those ideas and build new things based on that.

Siân Harrington (05:46)

Well, yeah, great. Well, let's look at one of those ideas. So something that people in HR love is neuroscience. And there's nothing wrong with neuroscience as it is, but we've got a lot of old ideas, things we've clung on to for a long time. And your research, your book is showing how some of these are areas that have moved on. So what ideas do you think from that older neuroscience have had the greatest influence on leadership and management, which have been difficult to let go of.

Bruna de Palo (06:19)

Quite a few first two come to mind. One is probably the most obvious, the one most known, even though it kept persisting and is still very alive and kicking, and is this idea that we have, you know, a rational brain and an emotional brain, and the right hemisphere does this and the left hemisphere does that. Well, it is absolutely true that we have two hemispheres, and that's an example. it's important to understand that they are constantly talking and cooperating.

 It's not true, no longer realistic to think that one side of the brain does something and the other side of the brain does something else. And the other idea is on top of left and right, which goes with creativity and logic, is the idea that we have a prefrontal cortex, which is generally this side of the brain, considered the side of the brain, that is in charge of the executive functions and thinking and rational thinking and the limbic system, which is used to be identified with this area of the brain.

That is in charge of the emotion. Now, this is what we believed for a long time. Now we know it's much more complicated than that. So, what happens with this, Siân, is that those ideas which belong to a modular view of the brain, one side does this, one side does that, was so easy to grasp and understand, and it gave us the idea that we finally understood something extremely complex. That's why they're hard to die as ideas.

The new model, which is the based on the construction idea of emotions, and it it's much, much more complex and much more difficult to grasp. And of course, if you want to replace something easy with something complex, which is even more difficult to explain, this is not going to happen at the mass level. This is one of the reasons why these myths keep you know surviving in the corporate world, and decisions are still made on that. Just to give you an example.

What is the problem? Okay, we might have a few outdated ideas, but what is really the damage? Because if there isn't a damage, if there isn't an impact, what's the point? We can keep the old ones. At least we have the impression that we're getting it. The problem, for example, with the left and right brain is that it gives us labels. And then we act on these labels.

Siân Harrington (08:36)

That left right brain, emotional, rational, mean, we've seen it applied to women versus men. We've seen it in so many ways and a limbic system, as you said, I, I hear that regularly. So it is an idea that's very difficult to shift. So let's talk a bit more about modern neuroscience then. So, you know, one of the things in your book is you talk about

Bruna de Palo (08:43)

Mm-hmm. 

Siân Harrington (09:01)

Brains are not just reactive, they're predictive. What do we mean by this? Tell us in plain English, because we can get very deep and scientific here. So let's talk about it in easy to understand, no jargon. What does this mean and why does it matter in today's sort of working environment?

Bruna de Palo (09:18)

Yeah, that's really good, Siân It's important to talk in very simple and memorable terms. Otherwise, if we make it complicated, we're opening the way for the old myths to survive. So part of my job here is to simplify this topic, especially from a leadership perspective. So this is the biggest shift actually happened in the last few years. and that is seeing the brain no longer as a reactive machine to something. So something happens, my amygdala is hijacked, and that's why I'm reacting like fighting, flying or freezing. 

The biggest shift has been exactly this. The brain is not a reacting machine, it's a predicting machine. And what is predicting, it's not what's going to happen next. It's not like a fortune teller, it's much more subtle. 

Before I explain this, Siân, I would like to just clarify one very important thing that makes this shift much clearer. People often don't have a clear idea what is the number one job of the brain. They think it's thinking, decision making, collaborating, and so on. Understanding this is key. The number one job of the brain is survival. And survival means two things: predicting potential danger so that we can prepare for that, and also distributing energy, the right amount of energy at the right time to the right organ so that we can achieve health.

So, what happens is the brain requires so much energy to do that and its job like a good CFO in an organisation is to decide where this body budget, this energy, goes to. If we are in a healthy state, we could say that the energy is distributed correctly to each organ. Result balance equal health. If something goes wrong, so for example there's a continuous predicted danger, what does a good CFO in an organisation do?

Well, a good CFO doesn't invest in innovation and growth when there is a real risk, when there is a crisis. So I think it's helpful to see the brain like the CFO of our internal company and realise that its job is not to make us happy, it's to keep us alive by distributing energy according to what is happening, and also somehow predicting if our life might be at risk. So to answer your question, what does it mean that the brain is not reactive, is actually predicting is not that something happens and then he reacts to that. He's constantly trying to understand not what will happen next, but how much energy will be needed to face what might happen next. So the focus is always on energy, not facts.

And what that means in practice, for an organisational perspective, is that if you think that the brain is reactive, you might just try to do things better, talk more nicely, be more positive. you know, when you deliver feedback, do it in a nicer way. When it is about predicting, it's none of that. It's something that happens before the feedback is delivered, before the bad news is delivered. It's about creating the conditions so that the brain will predict better what will be next.

And prepare accordingly without basically wasting energy in preparing for troubles that are not actually coming or uncertainty. So the whole shift is it's not reacting, which means doing things better. This is helpful doing things better, but that's another point. Predicting means the job of a leader and an organisation is to create the conditions, shape the conditions for brain to make better predictions waste less energy that can be actually devolved to better thinking and better collaboration and better communication.

Siân Harrington (13:18)

I absolutely love that body budget. I think that's a really great way of seeing it. And the implication of this is really big for businesses and for leaders. It changes the way we can interpret a lot of behaviour. And at the moment with so much uncertainty out there, everything from AI to financial crisis to all manner of things, you you've got to work a workforce that's constantly almost in this state of survival. How do we utilize this new understanding to think about how we interpret these sorts of behaviours that often leaders will see as very negative, like defensiveness, procrastination, resistance, resistance in change. know, often they'll think people are just not embracing change, they're lacking the right mindset. I mean, this seems to have an implication for all of this.

Bruna de Palo (14:15)

Exactly. It does. thanks for this question, Siân. I think it's really interesting to see things from a very practical perspective because this is this has been the narrative. 

Let's say that you have your team member John, I'm using the probably the most common name. you have your team member John that is resisting to change, he looks disengaged, perhaps even lazy. If you see things this way, that's say it's the traditional leadership model, what do you do?

Well, you talk to John about the importance of embracing change, about the importance of being engaged, perhaps you even invest energy in motivating John. And if you want to push a little farther, perhaps you even give him a little bit more money or a quick promotion just to re-engage him. That's the problem that we haven't solved with the previous approach, the traditional approach, it doesn't really work unless it's a purely a money issue.

You don't solve a problem of disengagement or resistance to change just by talking about that. If he is resistance to change, his brain is doing something really specific that is allocating energy that normally would make him perform at his best somewhere else. Your job is to understand this dynamic by understanding how the machine works, yours and others, because from a biological perspective, we all work in the same way in every corner of the world. And this is crucial, Siân, because if we everyone biologically is built in the same way, that makes it much easier to understand each other when we lead multicultural and multi-generational teams. So this is really important. 

But let's say that instead of going with the traditional approach, you understand that the brain is predictive, it's not about reacting. So what? What does it mean? Shaping the conditions so that John can perform at its best. Well the question needs to change. It's not about why are you disengaged? The question is what might his brain predict right now? If he's disengaged, if he's resistant to change, there might be many reasons. But let's say, from a leadership perspective, your job is trying to understand what might make him feel threatened. Not necessarily physically threatened, but maybe he his brain is perceiving a threat somewhere and very often that threat comes from common things, as you mentioned, like uncertainty. Uncertainty, loss of status, for example, lack of connection with others. So when I talk about creating the conditions, means understanding how the machine works and then prepare the environment in a way that responds to those vital needs of the brain. 

Because I can promise you, if change, you know, you mentioned the revolution that is coming with AI or the change due to the geopolitical situation is such a crisis right now, continuously. So the brain is constantly fighting with uncertainty. Maybe it doesn't depend on you as a leader, but there's still something that you can do to counterbalance that. So adding as much certainty, structure, predictability is part of those shaping the conditions that we mentioned before that might help John way more than having a conversation about the importance of being engaged in a team and being a good role model. This is motivating. It's too expensive for you as a leader, metabolically speaking, it's not sustainable. So I think an important point here is sustainability of actions. What is an action that I can take that is sustainable, that doesn't cost me continuously energy, for example, in motivating each person on my team.

Siân Harrington (18:04)

Yeah, I think, Bruna, that you're touching there on something that we really underestimate, not just in the workplace, actually, but in society as a whole with your research into the brain and neuroscience, what's happening in people in terms of their thinking, their creativity, their collaboration, decision-making, et cetera, when they're in a sort of a state perhaps of threat because of uncertainty, because of AI, whatever it may be that's also happening at this financial, you know, issues, whatever else in their life is happening, they're in that state. What does that mean for the things that we're all saying we want out of our employees today? Great creativity, great collaboration – these are the human skills that are going to survive the AI revolution.

Bruna de Palo (18:57)

Yes, all this clearly has a cost, especially in terms of energy. So once again, the more the CFO perceives that there's a threat somewhere, boom, it redirects all the body budget towards defence and protection, which it comes without saying is not exactly the ex the perfect place for creativity to flourish, decision making to work at its best, and so on. 

So when the brain is in a state of threat a few things happen which you can immediately see if you think about the times where you've been in a state of threat, you can see that you tend to have a tunnel vision on the problem. Well, when if you have a problem, what you need to have is a mindset that is focused on the solution. But the solution is very much more metabolically expensive than the problem. So that the tendency of the problem is to stay on sorry, the tendency of the brain is to stay on the problem because it's tangible and therefore easier to manage, even though it is unpleasant.

So everything that is happening around us creates this sense of not only uncertainty but perceived threat and constant fight against an invisible enemy. So it's a fight that you will never actually win. Now, what you can do as a leader is to reduce as much as possible or counterbalance that sense of threat with something else, at least in your small environment. You can't solve the problem that, you know, the sense of threat that people are having from what is happening around the world. But at least in your small environment, in your small team, you can create those conditions, for example, again as we say, by adding more clarity to counterbalance that uncertainty. But also, I think crucial to all this is to create psychologically safe conditions for them to even express what they are feeling. So their emotions, but also their concern and at the same time their ideas and so on. So we can't solve the problem, but we can counterbalance a little bit how people feel. 

But in order to do this, the leader has to have an understanding of what is happening inside the machine. So what I argue in the book, and this is perhaps the most important point, is that if a leader and an organisation want to embrace, let's say, the new theories about the brain.

Then it's not about learning new techniques. Techniques are amazing, tools are amazing, biohacks are amazing, but they are not available when there is a crisis. When you are in crisis, the last thing you remember is, what did that guru say three months ago during you know the presentation? Techniques, sorry, are a good thing only if you understand the machine first.

So, as a leader, you can counterbalance all the problems coming from this level of uncertainty only if you own the machine. So that in the moment when there is a trouble, you are so confident in what is happening underneath the surface that you will find your own answer.

The more you understand, for example, that we have a box inside our brain that helps us interpret things, the easier it will be to face again that difficult conversation about performance because you know what to leverage. If you don't, you just do what you've been doing for years or what you received from the previous leadership model, which is clearly outdated with the world that has changed so much. Or you will just rely on the techniques that you read on books, but if you don't have the book next to you, what will you do? And that's how I think we kept repeating the same mistakes again and again.

Siân Harrington (22:48)

So we want leaders to stop saying things like leave your emotions at the door and all those types of things. So those are things leaders need to do. But what behaviours do you see or have you come across through talking to people that leaders are showing maybe without realizing it, the sort of behaviours that are pushing teams towards a more protection, a more threat sort of feeling rather than feeling like they can be more open, safer, et cetera. What sort of general day-to-day behaviours do we see leaders doing?

Bruna de Palo (23:31)

Many because now I'm divided between two groups of people, like the leaders before they come to me and leaders who are, you know, already work with me. So let's talk about those who haven't been through this approach yet, which of course it it's the majority. I see there's a lot of willingness to do better in leader anyway, but there are a lot of failures as well, because better means nothing. What does it mean being a better leader? Well, you know or doing the right thing, right or wrong, better or worse, is all very relative. It's a matter of effectiveness. So let's say that I see a lot of leaders wanting to be effective, but not really capable, because again, they don't really know the machine that they are operating. So some of these common ideas that they have, especially you know, more senior leaders is that tough leadership gets result.

The question is, what's the price of all that? Firstly, today this attitude no longer works because, as you know, we have the new generations expecting something else. They're not as willing as us to, you know, head down and keep working hard.

But secondly, there's a huge expenditure of energy that we can no longer afford because, as we say, there's so much pressure coming from the outside world. I argue in the book that energy management is the number one skill we need to develop. If it's true that the brain is in charge of the redistribution of the energy in the body, how we protect that energy becomes key. 

Now, the tough type of leadership it works, but at a very, very high cost. So the return on investment is not that proportioned in the end. So one of the most common attitudes is this is thinking that, you know, you need to push, you need to expect more of them, you need to keep, you know, if they're doing something well, they're just doing their job. Keep pushing, pushing, pushing. You can. What's the price though? And that's why burnout is becoming so common. It's no longer what we did before, we need to factor in the pressure that is coming from the outside world. So it is no longer an option. 

And there's a case study in my book of a tough leader who only understood this when in a team coaching session, his chief marketing officer admitted in front of everyone that his last explosion, he thought that his explosion was the reason why people were following him actually cost her two hours. Mentioning these two hours of energy lost because her heart was pounding, her mind couldn't think, and so on, you know, cost her two extra hours at night, time that she took away from her child the night before the presentation. That was the moment when he realised, well, I get results, but that's the cost. Two hours lost. Was it convenient for me?

And then he started realizing that the same cost happened in himself as well. So, yes, he broke results until that moment, he never factored in what was the cost. And I tell you, Siân, this is a very appealing topic for tough leaders. Because when you connect the cost of all this with their private life and what that means, for example, at home or their ability to connect with their children or their spouse or their ability to perform in sport, that's the moment where they go back and they realise, but maybe there is a different way. So I can't help them change attitude just by telling them, you know, this would be more effective. I need to explain them what happens inside the body, show them the real cost in a physiological and then performance perspective.

That's the moment where they're able to connect the dots and then are more willing to change because they understand it.

Siân Harrington (27:39)

And there's a difference here between taking difficult decisions in the right way and understanding the impact and what that’s going to do with your workforce and the way they use their energy versus just like being, really tough.

Bruna de Palo (27:57)

Exactly. It is a mindset, but we want to develop a mindset that is based on how the internal machine works, which ultimately is the key, my view, to go back and live again as human beings. 

You know, I talked in the book about the fact that the reason why we are in this constant crisis in the world is that because we've lost the ability, at least in the Western side of the world, to live as human beings. We're living more like human doings. 

And all this focus on the to-do list, forgetting our to-be list, makes us work as a machine. And that's where we lose touch with ourselves and others. And that's where we think that tough leadership brings results. Not realising that this is a biological machine that is designed in a different way. And if you use it in the way it's been designed, it's naturally more efficient. That's the argument that the tough leaders I work with actually totally understood. It's a matter of machine efficiency. When you put the two things together, it's much easier to let some old ideas and practices go.

Siân Harrington (29:06)

Yeah, it's interesting. I recently did some work with an organisation over here called Investors in People and they were asking employees, they did some research with an external search company asking employees about trust. And generally, in a nutshell, overall, most people were saying they trust their organisation, they trust their leaders. But then the other questions were asking about their everyday behaviour, in terms of things like, you take screenshots of every email that you do. And actually the outcome of that was nearly two thirds of people were actually protecting themselves every day by just taking time. We were talking about the energy level of that. They're spending energy protecting themselves. So that fits very well with what you're saying – on the one hand they feel like they're trusted, they've got bit of empowerment, but that actual behaviour, their brain is more in that prediction and that's a slight threat because this could happen. So I better keep a record. I better use energy on that.

Bruna de Palo (30:20)

And waste of money. Because you pay these people. So what's the point of paying a hundred percent of a salary? And then instead of getting a hundred percent of their brain, you get only perhaps seventy percent. Because thirty, it's gone to protection. But I like to think in practical terms. So okay, but who's responsible for that? Nobody, to be honest, Siân, because if we haven't been thought, if we haven't received a brain instruction manual so far, it's nobody's fault. The point is, yesterday we didn't know many things of how we work. Now we do. So if we keep making mistakes now and that we also have a brain instruction manual, then it's really our fault. But so far, I would say everything is kind of fine because we try to do our best based on what we received, what we observed, what we've heard, and there's so many conflicting ideas and so many different leadership styles. 

But now that's why my focus was not on creating a new leadership style, which of course comes out of this. I call it brain enhancing leadership style. But it I don't want people to focus on a new leadership style. I'd love for leaders to focus on how do we work and what is the most efficient way to leverage that design. That's the whole point. Because that will solve naturally in many problems, including burnout, low trust, miscommunication, problem with collaboration, working in silos, and so on.

It all comes down to making the most of the machine. So you don't have to remember a lot of things. You just have to remember four, five, six concepts and then leverage them in your own way. So we're not asking people to change. We're asking people to leverage how we function. It's a different approach. It's less it triggers less resistance. No, I'm not asking you to change your personality. I'm just asking you to be smart, learn how a car works and then drive a car as a car. If you try to drive a car as a bicycle, you can. It's a lot more effort. So that's the revolution I'd love to see.

Siân Harrington (32:22)

Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask if, you know, if leaders took this new science seriously, and they, you know, they wanted to read the new brain instruction manual to understand it, would they be designing work differently in your mind? But actually, what I'm hearing is that, you know, you don't have to have like a template in that respect or even change your own style. Particularly as said, you just need to understand this. But I guess there is some things that can be done to help design that work better to protect your people, stop them spending so much energy on all these things and using energy in a more positive way. And you've touched on that with environments where people feel safe, et cetera. Are there other areas that leaders can help to look at.

Bruna de Palo (33:16)

Yes, I would say clarity on ever at every level, it's fundamental. clarity, structure, predictability, everything that reduces the cost of prediction. Because the moment the brain predicts that, you know, troubles are coming or uncertainty equals trouble, all the energy goes there. But there are other things as well that are important. So for example, transparency, or at least a certain level of transparency. You are an organ an organisation. You can't be transparent all the time with everyone. But whatever you can, push on that a little bit more because that helps with that level of trust that you mentioned before. 

Another important, crucial thing that I think is highly underestimated is coherence. Trust is the result of coherence. If I see you behaving in a nice way today, but then you know you shut the door and you behave in a nasty way with a colleague, I'm still the safe one. That doesn't help me develop trust. So coherence is important. Now this is important about coherence though. Again, trying to follow techniques or trying to be coherent is not sustainable. Because the moment pressure hits, you're going to forget it. So the best way to be coherent is to be yourself. When you're being yourself, you're naturally coherent in every situation. You don't have to worry how you appear, how you are perceived, because you are being always the same. 

So, in this sense, if you want to develop coherence, it's not a matter of effort. It's a matter of understanding who you are, how you function, what are your values, and commit to just be yourself.

So if you are an extremely sensitive and empathetic person, yeah, you can make a lot of money there, perhaps. You can have perhaps also lots of benefits and so on, even a brilliant career to a certain extent. But you can't be yourself. What's the cost of that? Well, I tell you, this is the straight route to depression. When you detach yourself for so long, for so many hours every day, this is the result. That detachment really has a cost. So it I think it's fundamental to be coherent, to put yourself into your element where you can naturally be yourself. And because you're being coherent people will trust you. So this might be not, you know, applying a principle or a technique, it's more a discussion that you want to have with yourself. 

But there are other things that leaders can do. Again, inviting different ideas. In the book, I argue that one of the greatest enemies of the corporate world is groupthink. That is when everyone thinks in the same way. It might feel easier in the moment, but that's exactly the cause that you know killed very famous and successful businesses when everyone thinks in the same way. And inviting dissent is not like have I been clear here? It's you know, do we all agree on that? If you ask, do we all agree on that? The natural answer is yes. You're making it difficult for someone to say, Well, no, actually I think it differently. That might be a very brave or confident person to do that. 

A much more powerful question, and I'm saying this, Siân, because I want to clarify that when I talk about creating the conditions, it's not such a big revolution. It's just small things done in a consistent, sustainable way that can make a difference, as simple as asking, what am I missing here? What haven't we touched upon? What would our competitors say here? What am I wrong here? Normalising being wrong. If you model this consistently, people will naturally feel, it's safe here to disagree.

Siân Harrington (37:00)

Interesting, So before we get into some sort of practical takeaways, again, tell me a bit about your own story. there something that happened in your own experience, in your own career, your own life that made you realise these conventional explanations of neuroscience, of what we think about our brain, of how we behave because of it, isn't true?

Bruna de Palo (37:22)

Well, I can tell you, I've been stuck for a long time because I had the wrong idea, which I know is very common on how human beings work. And also I've been told many, many, many times since I was very young, you're too right brainy. what did that mean at that time? You're too rational and too pragmatic. firstly, it's perceived as an accusation. No, you're too right brainy.

Secondly, it's not even true and I'm extremely creative person, but I do things in a very pragmatic, practical way. Now, labelling me that way certainly didn't help. Today would be a very different understanding. As I said, I have my  creativity is leveraged in a very pragmatic way, which happens to work really well with finance, banking, tech, pharma, which is the other industry where I'm flourishing. So that wasn't a problem. It was actually something that if I understand it, I can leverage it. 

But I'd like to share this experience because I know Siân is very, very common of being stuck in the wrong career. So before I did my revolution more than 10 years ago, I was in tech my whole life since I finished school was in tech. And I didn't like it. I really didn't like it. It wasn't for me, but it became for me kind of a golden cage because I had amazing colleagues, a great company, it was kind of security. The job was kind of near my home. Everything was fine. It's really difficult to live an environment like that, especially if you don't know what else you want to do. 

So one of the wrong understandings that we have about human behaviour when it comes to career is that you have to do what you're passionate about. Yeah, that's amazing. Except that firstly, I was passionate about many things and it was difficult to choose. Secondly, I had no real experience. So I can be as passionate as I want, but if all I did in my life was being in front of the laptop, laptop coding, how can I ever persuade an employer, whoever he is, that I can do something different just because I'm passionate. So that kept me stuck in the wrong career for a long time.

To cut the story short, at some point I realised that what I wanted for my career is not feeling happy. This is the other thing. You want to be happy because if you're happy, your brain works better, and then it's not about happiness because happiness fluctuates. Technically, happiness is a cocktail of neurotransmitters and they fluctuate according to many factors. So it's not sustainable to chase happiness or to use that hook to find what is the right career for you. So in my journey and studies and so on, what I realised, what I needed, what we all need to succeed, is to feel alive at work. And feeling alive, I realised, generates that cocktail of neurotransmitters that is much more solid and stable than happiness, because it's also the same balance of neurotransmitters that you find in the brain of a person

During the peak performance. So when I realise this, that's what I want, because that's where I have more chances to succeed. And that's how I made the choice about my career. And yes, of course I'm truly passionate about what I do. But passion wouldn't have helped me identify this type of career. 

And just to conclude on this topic, how do we find what makes us feel alive? Well, there's only one thing that makes every human being feel alive, and that is self-expression. So if you want to reach that level of big performance in a sustainable way, what you want to do is to understand who you are, how you function, not your skills, not your CV, and then make a choice on where to look for a new job based on the idea that you want to leverage who you are. So passion comes afterward. It's about who you are and where can I find my element. In your element, you will be able to express yourself, bring who you are into what you do. That's when you will feel alive, and that's where you have the highest chances to succeed. So that was my understanding of all this, you know, applied to my own life. 

Siân Harrington (41:47)

So let's just tie up. We could talk for ages and ages on this I know because there's so many areas but let's tie up looking at some practical things we've got the general leaders, from CEOs to a manager. We talked about the working environment, the work conditions. If they are listening to this and they're thinking, okay, what can I do practically to create, to start trying, I mean, you can't fix it tomorrow, but to start trying to create conditions where their people are spending less energy on this protection and on this feeling threatened and, you know, predicting the bad and more energy on the positive things we want them to be doing. What would you say are some practical takeaways at this stage?

Bruna de Palo (42:39)

I would say the first thing is to understand what are the things that most likely might make a brain feel threatened. Again, not techniques, this is not going to be remembered, but understand what are the things that the brain is most sensitive to because how you speak and how you behave in those areas has the power to move the brain towards a threat state or an optimal state. Optimal state is where collaboration is, you know, available, better thinking, problem solving. So, just to wrap up in a practical way, what are these areas? 

Here we can reconnect with the SCARF model from the Neuroleadership Institute developed many years ago by David Rock. This is the simplest way to identify what would be best to do. So the brain is extremely sensitive to five social domains: they are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness – relatedness means a sense of connection – and fairness. How you behave and talk or organise a change in these five areas has a direct impact on how the brain responds. 

So the best way, if you have a team, for example, that is not innovative enough, or a person who's disengaged, or you know, a lot of people leaving the company, or you know, people being there but not particularly active in meetings or not dissenting, you may want to look at these five areas and see how well am I honouring their status, the need of their brain to be valued, seen, recognised. If not, then you can take some actions in that area. Am I giving them enough certainty, structure, predictability so that they feel safe from that perspective? If not, then you will find out what to do. Am I giving their brain enough room for decision, a sense of autonomy, in a container, not completely autonomous, but in a container, do I give that? No, then you will know what to do. Relatedness, as I said, is a sense of connection, is the need of the brain to connect with others. Am I making them feel connected with me, with the team, with the purpose? Is someone feeling excluded? The last thing you want in your team is gossip or anything like that. Go kill it immediately. You know, it can be things as little as that that mess up all the rest. Like you think you're doing everything well, you're following the playbook, and then you have some gossip in your team, boom, it kills all the rest. 

So that's why it's important to understand this. And fairness, it's the natural need of the brain for some level of justice, fairness. Transparency, for example, we mentioned at the beginning, transparency is perceived as fair. Can I add a little more transparency on something without giving away everything so that it feels fair. That's the quickest thing that can be done, actions that can be taken tomorrow, or analysis that can be done, kind of a diagnostic tool to see, you know, we just rolled out this new programme and it didn't work. Well, did you do it in a brain friendly way? Or as I call it, in a brain enhancing way, because you want to enhance those functions? That's probably the quickest and most practical thing that can be done.

Siân Harrington (46:01)

That was Bruna de Palo on why leaders need a more accurate instruction manual for the human brain. What stays with me is the idea of the brain as the CFO of the body budget. It's such a simple way to understand something that leaders often miss. When people feel under threat, uncertain, excluded, micromanaged, or treated unfairly then their brains start spending energy on protection. That means less energy is available for creativity, decision making, collaboration, performance, the things we want in work. So when someone looks disengaged, defensive, or resistant to change what is their brain predicting right now and what conditions have we created around them?

The other point I really take away is Bruna's warning about old neuroscience? The rational brain versus emotional brain story is easy to remember, and that's why it's lasted so long. But easy does not always mean accurate. And if HR, leadership development, and wellbeing programmes are still built on outdated assumptions, well, we're going to be pulling the wrong levers. Because if we want better performance we need to stop wasting so much human energy on protection. 

 So thanks for listening to Works Not Working. Let's fix it. I'm Siân Harrington. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on LinkedIn. For more bold ideas and practical insight into the future of work, head to www.thepeoplespace.com. This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and let's redesign work for everyone.