Building a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) requires more than brand-specific or operational expertise. You have to manage people, understand their behaviour, inspire them, and lead by example.
Neuroscience’s valuable insights can help you, as an SME leader, improve your empathy, communication skills, delegation mindset, and resilience. By understanding and utilising its very basic principles, you will remarkably improve your leadership’s human side and, as a result, enhance your team’s performance as well as your own, today and in the future.
Empathy: Understand Your Team’s Collective Brain
Empathy stems from our brain’s wiring. Specifically, our mirror neurons fire up when we sense and observe others’ emotions, allowing us to “feel” what they feel – the basis for empathy.
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Practice active listening to lead with empathy and stimulate your mirror neurons. Besides, when your team members feel heard and understood, their brain releases oxytocin, also called the “bonding hormone,” which strengthens trust and relationships. If you, as their leader, listen whole-heartedly, you’ll foster psychological safety, boost engagement and reduce stress – all crucial for everyday activities but particularly at busy times and periods of rapid growth.
Communication: Give Clarity to the Brain
Our brain craves clarity and predictability. In their absence, it enters survival mode, which reduces focus and increases anxiety. Conversely, clarity eradicates confusion.
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Communicate clearly, logically, and consistently to alleviate your people’s stress and reduce their brain’s cognitive load. Simplify your messages and give easy-to-understand instructions; it will activate your team members’ prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making) and help them operate more effectively. This alignment will allow your team to focus better and make informed decisions.
Purpose: Activate the Brain’s Reward System
When you understand your purpose and your achievements are recognised, your brain’s reward system activates and dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with motivation and pleasure) gets released.
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Explain regularly the company’s purpose and mission to your team, and celebrate small wins together; you’ll create a feedback loop that increases motivation. Connecting daily tasks to a larger purpose triggers dopamine release, which keeps your team engaged and driven toward long-term goals. Encouraging moments of reflection on contributions to the bigger picture will further boost motivation.
Delegation: Build Trust Through Brain Chemistry
Trust is essential to delegation. When you, as a leader, trust your team, it triggers the production of oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” which fosters loyalty and collaboration.
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Always delegate and give meaningful tasks to your team; it shows that you trust their abilities. In addition, successful autonomy activates their brain’s reward system, motivating them to take ownership and solve problems independently. When you effectively delegate, you build a responsible environment where people feel valued, increasing drive and performance.
Emotional Intelligence: Regulate Your Own Brain
To effectively address the emotional challenges that come with leadership, you need emotional intelligence (EI), an essential aspect of which includes self-regulation.
If you are under stress, the amygdala, the brain’s emotional processing centre, can hijack rational thinking and trigger a fight-or-flight response. As a leader with a high EI, you will more calmly and effectively manage and regulate your fight-or-flight impulses.
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Practice mindfulness, self-awareness, and emotional regulation techniques to activate your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational thinking. Simple breathing exercises can calm the amygdala, allowing you to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively, especially when leading your team through times of rapid change.
Relationships: Give the Brain the Social Connections It Needs
Humans are wired for social connection. Strong relationships are essential for our well-being and effective teamwork, whereas isolation will trigger a threat response in your teams. Meaningful connections between your people will ensure the release of oxytocin, which builds trust and effortless collaboration.
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Regularly create formal and informal team interactions to nurture relationships between your team members and activate their brain’s social circuits. This is crucial for your company’s growth – in companies of all sizes, connected teams are more engaged and productive. Encourage cross-team collaboration to break down walls, improving problem-solving and innovation. Strong relationships enhance performance, trust, and creativity, especially at challenging times.
Resilience: Train Your Brain for Growth
Resilience is vital for leaders and their teams, and neuroscience reveals that it can be developed. Our brain’s plasticity allows us to adapt and build new useful pathways.
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Adopt a growth mindset, a concept supported by neuroscience, to foster resilience. Encourage your team to see setbacks as learning opportunities; it will rewire their brains to become more adaptable and stress-resistant. And be the role model for this mindset; you will create an environment where teams feel safe to take calculated risks and bloom – a critical tool for successful leadership.
Growth isn’t only about scaling operations; it’s also about developing the human side of leadership – fostering connections, motivation, and trust rather than just making decisions.
A neuroscience-equipped approach will help you lead your company through change and grow as a leader, developing your empathy, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and resilience to create a working environment where your team thrives and, ultimately your company grows and succeeds.
So, make neuroscience your transformative tool on your journey to excellence, and you will leave a lasting impact!
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