Neuroscience And Leadership: The Promise Of Insights
eaders engage and inspire others- that is how their work gets done. For the last 100 or so years, we have studied their personality, intelligence, values, attitudes and even behavior. But seldom has anyone ventured physiologically inside of leaders. Advances in fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), access to people and machines, and interest in more holistic approaches to studying leadership have made this possible. This has become so popular and hot that a special issue of Leadership Quarterly is being reviewed right now on the Biology of Leadership (Senior, Lee & Butler, 2010). In this brief overview, I will use a few of our current studies to highlight some of the areas that seem to hold promise.
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Building relationships
Leaders need to build relationships that inspire and motivate others to do their best, innovate and adapt. In our earlier work, Primal Leadership (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002) and Resonant Leadership (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005), we synthesized a great deal of research to support the idea that effective leaders build resonant relationships with those around them. At the same time, less effective leaders or those that are more one-sided seem to create dissonant relationships. We decided to explore this in one fMRI study.
A study was designed to explore the neural mechanisms invoked as a result of relationships with resonant, high-leader member exchange (i.e., LMX), high-quality relationship leaders, and dissonant, lo- LMX, low-quality relationship leaders (Boyatzis, Passarelli, Koenig, Lowe, Mathew, Stoller, & Phillips, in review). Middle-aged subjects were asked about critical incidents with leaders in their experiences. fMRI scans were conducted, with cues developed from these experiences.
In this exploratory study, preliminary observations revealed that recalling specific experiences with resonant leaders significantly activated 14 regions of interest in the brain, while dissonant leaders activated 6 and deactivated 11 regions. Experiences with resonant leaders activated neural systems involved in arousing attention (i.e., anterior cingulate cortex) , the social or default network (i.e. right inferior frontal gyrus), mirror system (i.e., the right inferior parietal lobe), and other regions associated with approach relationships (i.e., the right putamen and bilateral insula). Meanwhile, dissonant leaders deactivated systems involved in social or default networks (i.e., the posterior cingulate cortex), the mirror system (i.e., the left inferior frontal gyrus), and activated those regions associated with narrowing attention (i.e., bilateral anterior cingulate cortex), and those associated with less compassion (i.e., left posterior cingulate cortex), more negative emotions (i.e., posterior inferior frontal gyrus).
With creative designs, future research can probe the neural activations that various relationships and people have had on us. We can begin to understand how they may be affecting our moods and cognitive openness.
Possible Implications
In Primal Leadership, Resonant Leadership, and a more recent article in Harvard Business Review (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2008), we offered many examples of leaders who build resonant relationships with others around them — many others around them. And dissonant leaders who seem to turn people off, alienate them, and lose their motivation. The neuroscience findings emerging suggest a basic reason why inspiring and supportive relationships are important — they help activate openness to new ideas and a more social orientation to others.
These insights may move the primacy of a leader’s actions away from the often proselytized “results-orientation” toward a relationship orientation. This does not preclude the concern with results, but could show why being first and foremost concerned about one’s relationships may then enable others to perform better and more innovatively– and lead to better results. John Chambers of Cisco Systems and Oprah Winfrey of Harpo Productions are both driven to produce impressive results. But when people who work directly with them talk about their meetings, they walk out of them motivated and inspired by what they are doing and their commitment to each other.
Emotional Contagion and Empathy
While most people will acknowledge the role of empathy in understanding others, few appreciate how quickly impressions of others get formed or the neural mechanisms involved. For this we must look to the research on contagion. Prior research has explained mimicry and imitation (Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapson, 1993). But recent studies, although somewhat controversial, offer three possibilities regarding emotional contagion: (1) emotional contagion spreads in milliseconds, below conscious recognition (LeDoux, 2002); (2) emotional arousal may precede conceptualization of the event (Iacoboni, 2009); and (3) neural systems activate endocrine systems that, in turn, activate neural systems (Garcia-Segura, 2009).
The mirror neuron system has been claimed to foster imitation and mimicry (Cattaneo & Rizzolatti, 2009). This system allows us to discern the: (a) context of an observed action or setting; (b) the action; and (c) the intention of the other living being. They help us to understand the sensing of the goals/intention of another’s actions or expressions, and to link sensory and motor representation of them. Even the most recent approaches to emotional contagion that do not focus on the mirror system claim to show a sympathetic hemo-dynamic that creates the same ability for us to relate to another’s emotions and intention (Decety & Michalaks, 2010).
Relevant to leadership, there are three implications of these observations: the speed of activation, the sequence of activation, and the endocrine/neural system interactions. The firing of the limbic system seems to occur within 8 milliseconds of a primary cognition and it takes almost 40 milliseconds for that same circuit to appear in the neocortex for interpretation and conceptualization (LeDoux, 2002). With this timing, our emotions are determining cognitive interpretation more than previously admitted. Once primary cognitions have occurred, secondary cognitions allow for the neocortical events (i.e., reframing) to drive subsequent limbic or emotional labeling. Our unconscious emotional states are arousing emotions in those with whom we interact before we or they know it. And it spreads from these interactions to others.
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