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4 Leadership Tips for Happy Employees

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: Leading is not simply a cookbook list of "how to's". It is more of an accelerated course for your employees. The better you can mentor and teach, the more you will have loyal and productive individuals who want to work with and for you over the long haul. Information about the social brain is one gift you can give that will keep on giving to your entire staff. What I have found is that once people begin to really understand that behavior does go deeply into the nervous system and create patterns of reaction, there is a shift of responsibility. Once people become pattern aware, it is virtually impossible to revert to old, self-serving behavior. When we realize that what we say and do is registered and remembered in another person's brain, it is almost like a light bulb goes off in our heads.

4 Leadership Tips for Happy Employees

Leading is not simply a cookbook list of "how to's". It is more of an accelerated course for your employees. The better you can mentor and teach, the more you will have loyal and productive individuals who want to work with and for you over the long haul.

Information about the social brain is one gift you can give that will keep on giving to your entire staff. What I have found is that once people begin to really understand that behavior does go deeply into the nervous system and create patterns of reaction, there is a shift of responsibility. Once people become pattern aware, it is virtually impossible to revert to old, self-serving behavior. When we realize that what we say and do is registered and remembered in another person's brain, it is almost like a light bulb goes off in our heads.

Here are four important bits of information that will help your workplace be one with less conflict, and more capacities for conflict resolution:

1. Inclusion--It is one thing to talk about excluding co-workers by talking about them behind their backs. It is another to really see that the part of the brain that registers pain is the same that registers rejection as pain and suffering. What we do to each other matters!

2. Fairness-- It is one thing to talk about fairness like preaching the golden rule, it is another thing to learn that an event seen as unfair registers in the limbic system of the brain and the resulting behavior is hostility. When we were told to "play nice" with our school chums, we were given excellent advice, except it was more words than an understanding that we were impacting each other's brains.

3. Empowerment-- While we all know that micromanaging is a "no-no", we will adhere to giving employees more authority if we are aware that being told what to do without any buy-in causes us to feel threatened. Being controlled, as in micromanaged, makes us feel like captives and the reaction is to pull back, not trust and play it safe.

4. Safety -- We all know the only thing that is certain is uncertainty. Yet, there is a natural craving for certainty that helps us with automatic behaviors, like brushing our teeth or driving a car on a country road. When we can take certain things for granted, it frees up the creative parts of the brain to think new thoughts. Uncertainty registers in the brain as an error and creates tension that must be corrected to feel comfortable again.

Helping your senior team, employees and human resource representatives, everyone at work begins to understand that we truly are connected; that we really do change each other's brains is a big step forward in developing a mature, responsible workforce. Once we realize that "they' impact our brains just as much as we impact theirs, there is the responsibility to develop a culture of fairness, equity, autonomy and as much certainty as possible.

Your employees can take this learning home to their families. They all are excellent ideas for creating cultures of trust and decency at home, as well as at work. Can you just imagine a world where we all really did understand that our behavior has deep and impactful repercussions and we all learned to be more mindful in our interactions with each other?

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Article Tags: cookbook, leadership tips, mentor, productive individuals, social brain



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