A shot of insight and a different perspective for those leading HR and talent functions. Making time to connect with peers who can spark our own thinking is hard. So we have brought together a series of interviews on the subject of “great talent strategy execution”.
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Is your brain being damaged at work?
If we can secure this agreement it will also help with these other two areas. And so on. When I am not making connections it’s usually because I have too much going on. I’m stressed, lacking sleep and in a negative frame of mind. Nothing unusual there I guess. We have all had periods of time when it gets a bit much.
However could I be creating brain damage? Or at least putting myself at risk. This was the subject of a fascinating talk at the 2011 Neuroleadership Summit ( www.neuroleadership.org) last week. The presenters didn’t actually say I could be damaging my brain in fact they were at pains to say there was no scientific evidence that executives who undergo prolonged periods of stress can be creating permanent damage but they produced some compelling evidence that we are creating a situation where our brain is not functioning well. The presenters Jessica Payne (http://psychology.nd.edu/faculty/faculty-by-alpha/jessica-payne-ph-d/) and Stephen Thomas (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/management/about/staff/st10g09.page), addressed three key areas for optimum learning and brain functioning in business (or anywhere else).
Mild stress, good sleep and a good mood. You will note that these are the exact opposite to what I described above. These three are linked in that a positive in one will tend to help achieve a positive state in the others. Think about it. If you have been up most of the night or had one of those wakeful periods when you lay going over the important meeting or the presentation to the president you know you are not going to feel at your best in the morning and that tends to put you in a bad mood or at least a negative mindset that you will mess up and forget the key message and then you get stressed about that and then… you get my point.
The evidence suggests that whilst we have known stress is harmful to our body it also does nasty things to our brain and in the short term we can overcome the impact with exercise, sleep, as well as a practice of relaxing or meditation. But prolonged stress creates damage in the hippocampus and this does not seem to be completely reversible.
However the other aspect of the stress part of the talk was the need for mild stress or Flow as it is sometimes called. This links to the work of Csikzentmihalyi (you might want to look at this video on TED http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html) who has studied the experience of flow for many years recognises its importance. He has created a formula for teaching people to enter the Flow state. Simply put it is about getting a balance between the level of challenge in a task and your perceived abilities to carry it out. If either is too low you coast if too high you go into panic. So the lesson here seems to be; reduce your stress but only to the point of Flow, have a good night’s sleep even if that means getting some help preferably natural help like aromatherapy and seek out people and things that make you happy.
Etty Hillesum ~ ‘Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths’
So today I have a particularly difficult meeting to attend. In preparation I managed to sleep most of the night despite jet lag, have been for a run, got this task off my list and am about to look up some inspiring quotes.
Lily Tomlin ~ ‘For fast-acting relief try slowing down’