Written by: Catherine Elizabeth Wood, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Familiarity is needed in the workplace, more so now than ever. When your team are familiar with what they need to do, this activates a sense of safety in the brain. Familiarity leads to an increase in oxytocin levels in the brain which will result in employees experiencing a calmer state. Understanding the universal principles of human behaviour for familiarity, will enable you to tailor your leadership approach to avoid triggering stress in your team and enable them to experience a sustained calmer state.
Clarity
Clarity is a leadership behaviour which drives familiarity. As a leader, you need to be clear in the WHAT the WHY and the HOW to mobilize people. You can do this by creating a clear, concise compelling call to action.
An example of a call to action could be a request to have a weekly team meeting on the project updates. The behaviour would be for team members to arrive for the meeting on a particular day at a certain time. If you want each team member to provide a weekly update, set and clarify your expectations from the start on this. Consider how you will ensure team members arrive on time and the motivational driver to finish the meeting on time. Consider how you will communicate details about the meeting and how you will remind team members to attend the meeting.
Begin by being clear in what you want to achieve. Articulate the individual or team outcome.
Be clear in defining the familiar behaviour which is the action you believe will achieve the outcome.
Identify the actions that the employee or employees need to take for this behaviour. If this is a new behaviour, ask the individual or your team to try it for a month and revisit. Begin with small steps before building on this new behaviour to create a habit.
Ensure you make each step as simple as possible.
Craft the call to action by considering the skills and resources required, and the motivational driver involved.
Choose the most appropriate channel for the call to action. Consider how you will communicate and remind people of the call to action.
Test, refine and release your call to action. Ask a few employees what they think about the call to action and test it out. Follow up to identify if you need to refine the call to action.
Transparency
Transparency is about being open and accountable which is to trust yourself and be trusted by others. Your team want to relate to you. Your team want to know you have experienced the same or similar problems and/or know how they have overcome personal hardships. Your team want to evaluate if you are being genuine. It’s time to be more transparent by communicating with your team more frequently face-to-face or via video call rather than email.
When employees experience transparency, there are 5 positive outcomes:
Problems are solved more quickly
Teams are built faster
Connections in the team grow authentically
Increased trust in you as a leader
Higher levels of performance
Strategies to drive behaviours of transparency are as follows:
Be honest
Treat employees fairly
Admit you don’t know everything
Know when to keep information to yourself
Admit when you are wrong
Attitude familiarity
Attitudes are evaluations of people, objects, events, situations, or behaviours. These evaluations are remembered and form our understanding about the person, enabling us to build rapport.
Attitudes are functional. They guide our behaviours, decision-making and information processing.
When two people are familiar with each other’s attitudes, initial research tells us there is greater decision accuracy when working together as well as increased positive interactions. It appears greater knowledge and therefore familiarity of others’ attitudes, may enable employees to better anticipate, influence and respond to their behaviour.
Catherine Elizabeth Wood, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Catherine Wood, is a leader in mental resilience, science-based coaching through neuroscience, and creating new habits for behavior change. After an acute brain injury as an adult left her having irrational thoughts and self-doubt, Catherine developed an interest in neuroplasticity to understand how she could challenge her self-beliefs, promote helpful thoughts and create new habits for behavior change. Catherine has since dedicated her life to helping people to establish their self-belief in who they are as their best self to drive helpful thoughts and create new habits for behavior change in the workplace and in their personal life. - Catherine is the Founder of Life Renewal, the online coaching business combining leadership coaching and team coaching with evidence-based techniques in neuroscience. Catherine helps leaders drive employee engagement by modeling leadership behavior across 7 key leadership skills. Catherine has helped clients through her own coaching programs, workshops, and digital courses including "Mastering Emotional Competence in Leadership." Catherine has been a guest writer for Thrive Global which included an article on "Seeking Opportunities While Navigating Uncertainty", and she hosted a resilience series including "The Neuroscience of Resilience". Catherine's mission: Science-based coaching for collaborative leadership behavior.
