When I was a kid, my perspective of career choice was severely limited. When asked to write about my future career, I said I wanted to be a doctor. Interestingly, I was quite specific about what kind of doctor I want to become — a neurosurgeon, a specialist on the brain.
As I develop my profession in UX & tech product innovation, how our brains work remains to be a fascinating topic. Until recently, I have the fortune to learn from researcher and practitioner, on what neuroscience could teach us in nurturing high-performance team.
Although the subject of Neuroscience is best left to the experts, there are a few concepts I wish to share with product leaders and corporate innovators, that we might immediately apply in our context of teamwork and innovation.
(1) Social exclusion activates physical pain
Evidence showing that social pain — the painful feelings following social rejection, exclusion, or loss — relies on some of the same neural circuitry that is involved in processing physical pain.
What does it mean to us:
- Your team could feel hurt if you choose to exclude them.
- On one hand, we don’t want our team members to feel “rejected” or “excluded”; But as a leader, no is sometimes the right answer. In that case, we should remind ourselves to take extra effort to communicate the reason behind the decision and not leave the team member feeling excluded.
- Pain-killer such as Tylenol can reduce social pain, too. By training ourselves to be more sensitive in our people and partners, we can nurture a healthier workplace and use less Tylenol.
(2) Teams with more synchronized brain perform better
We belong to a team for different reasons — working on the same project, playing the same sports, or performing music in the same band. Studies show that, when these people’s brains are “on” the same wavelength literally, they could perform much better together.
What does it mean to us:
We could help our team to get onto the same wavelength by:
- Fostering connection and engagement: Eye contact, sharing a personal experience, sharing a space or sensory (e.g. food: no wonder the Chinese ‘hot pot’ works so well as a team activity).
Synchronize with your team through active listening:
- Leaders could take proactive role to synchronize with their team members.
- You could synchronize with the person whom you listen to. Notice it is cognitively demanding because active listening requires you to inhibit your own perspective.
(3) The need to (de)synchronize the team at strategic times
Effective innovation lies in the importance to derive an insightful understanding of the ‘problem space’ (doing the right things), before diving into ideation and delivery in the ‘solution space’ (doing things right). During the stages called for ‘divergent’ tasks, we actually want to (de)synchronize the team to avoid groupthink.
Remarkably, the “Together Alone” principle from Design Sprint, matches so well with neuroscience finding. By asking team member to work alone — allowing no sharing and no discussion, we structure the environment to (de)synchronize the team and facilitate a more divergent contribution. Design Sprint took a step further by keeping all ideas anonymous during team voting. No wonder why the design sprint process has been so effective in team problem-solving.
Fostering diversity is another great way to improve divergent exploration and ideation. Break the functional silos by teaming with people outside of your typical team. Embrace cross-pollination and work with people outside your industry. Leverage analogies by learning how different industry would approach a related problem.
Fostering Human Collaboration and Co-Innovation
Thanks to the advancement in Neuroscience, we get to better understand our own selves. In the days of AI and robotics process automation, machines will get better and faster. However, we could never replace the uniquely human skills of creativity, empathy, agility and teamwork. Our ability to bring out the best in our teams would be the key in building human-centered, technology-powered organizations.
