It’s official, leaders can’t do two things at once – What it takes to be both a technical and people leader.

I am lucky to be at the 2011 NeuroLeadership Summit in San Francisco. The weather is lovely, cool and brilliant sunshine and the food has been just perfect ( if somewhat pricy) so my well being has been catered for but so has my mind. I am buzzing with all the insights gained and my mind is a whirl with the implications for HR and talent leaders. Let me share just one of the excellent pieces of research.

One of the leaders of social neuroscience, Matt Lieberman who runs the social neuroscience lab at UCLA was a speaker at the summit. Lieberman is the neuroscientist who brought us the evidence that as humans we feel the same pain from social distress or hurt as we do from physical injury. The same neuro-pathways are activated in both forms of hurt. This has important implications for leaders. It is more evidence that employees will be engaged in a workplace that provides connection and collaboration and feel threatened in a workplace where their need for relationships is ignored or limited. It is also a reminder to leaders that the command and and control form of leadership will not get the best results.

Matthew D. Lieberman, Ph.D.

Lieberman presented his latest research which suggests that leaders who are poor at managing and understanding social interactions are doing even more damage than we may have thought. But it may not be their fault. Essentially our ability to understand others is a unique human skill. The brain circuitry which helps us do this are the same areas that enable us to think about ourselves. Neuro-scientists believe that the better we are at mentalising about ourselves the better we will also be at understanding others. However this brain circuitry reacts a bit like a see-saw. When we are thinking about ourselves or others and activating the mentalising circuits ( or theory of mind as it is also called) we close down much of the rational, executive functioning pre frontal cortex. So it is not possible to be analysing business strategy, for example and thinking about the impact of that strategy on others.

Not a problem we might think, we can always do these things sequentially. But the brain is hard wired to look for easy ways to work, ways that reduce the energy and effort needed. So much of what we do becomes routine or habit. If leaders are in the habit of thinking about analytical and strategic problems and much less used to thinking about how they impact people it is much harder to switch between the two brain circuits.

Talent strategies that promote those who are good technically and then do little to develop and embed the people skills and self awareness exacerbate this habit of favouring one part of the brain over others.

Add to this research that finds that our ability to understand others and to predict their reaction to events is pretty poor. Lieberman found that when people know something themselves, like being able to recognise a tune or know the capitals of obscure countries they are poor at predicting whether others will know the information too. Only something like 2.50% of people accurately predict these types of questions.

So what can we do to off set this in our talent strategy? Well at one level it is deceptively simple. Have a more balanced understanding of what really makes the biggest difference to success. The attributes which really differentiate the best performance. We use our Success Profile methodology to help organisations find just the right attributes. We usually find that there are four to five attributes that are possessed by the most successful and they tend to be not technical abilities but the mindset and skills that the best use to deploy those technical abilities. These are the attributes that seem to make the most difference. They are of course subtly different in each organisation but understanding them can enable you to build a talent strategy which identifies, develops and hires those people who are most skilled at switching between the two types of brain circuitry. Lieberman is currently researching the best ways to train people to do just that. Whilst he is at the work we can at least use our own prediction skills to identify those that have a natural talent for doing so.