Sue Langley

Cameron: [00:00:00] Flow unleashed, unleashed, unleashed. Do you want to be a good leader? Do you ever get confused about how to be a good leader? If so, I'm not surprised. There are literally thousands of books telling you how you should lead and what to do, but interestingly. New research and neuroscience is also telling us about how the brain operates and how the brain can be a good leader.
Leadership is complex and often troublesome to get right, so stay tuned as we unpack how we can better understand the brain so that you can become a better leader.
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Cameron Norsworthy and this is your [00:01:00] podcast for human performance.
Leadership is a billion dollar industry. Yet, despite massive investment, many leadership development initiatives fall short of driving lasting impact. Why the missing piece might just be a better understanding of the human brain. Leadership is often framed as a set of tangible skills, strategic thinking, effective communication, and good decision making.
But beneath these visible actions lies the less visible, the more powerful foundation, the science of how the brain works in an increasingly complex world, understanding leadership through the lens of neuroscience is no longer optional. It's essential. Our thoughts, emotions, and decisions all originate within the intricate neural networks of the brain.[00:02:00]
But how does this translate to leadership? What happens in the brain when leaders inspire, connect, or innovate? Why do some approaches build trust and engagement while others fall flat? For instance, changing behavior, whether personal or organizational is notoriously difficult. Research has shown that even when faced with life-threatening health conditions, only about one in nine people successfully adopt long-term behavior changes.
If transforming personal habits is that difficult? If someone who has just gone through heart surgery will not change their day-to-day habits, what does it take to inspire meaningful change across teams or entire organizations? Advances in neuroscience and psychology over the past two decades have brought these questions into sharper focus.
With tools like [00:03:00] FMRI and QEEG, scientists have uncovered remarkable insights into the brain's workings. For example, research by Boyer and McKee highlights the power of supportive relationships showing that they can activate. The neural networks that create openness, creativity, and collaboration. He's finding suggests that effective leadership may hinge less on driving results and more on fostering meaningful human connections.
Consider emotional contagion and the mirror neuron system. Two aspects of brain function that underline why emotions ripple through teams and organizations. The limbic system, the brain's emotional control center reacts to stimuli within eight milliseconds, far faster than the neocortex, which handles rational thoughts before we've even conscious of our emotions.
They're already influencing [00:04:00] others Sun scores. The critical importance of self-leadership leaders who consciously manage their emotional states can foster trust, collaboration, and positivity across their organizations. In today's episode, we'll explore these insights and more to help you harness the power of neuroscience for more intentional and impactful leadership.
Whether you're a seasoned executive and emerging lead, or simply curious about how the brain shapes human interaction, this conversation offers practical tools and strategies to lead with empathy, purpose, and resilience. Joining us today is our guest, Sue Langley, the leading expert on the neuroscience leadership as Chair of the Langley Group.
Sue has spent decades teaching thousands of business leaders, HR professionals, and consultants around the globe to harness the potential of the brain in order to create positive workplaces and be emotionally intelligent leaders. Her evidence-based approach [00:05:00] to human flourishing will bring some new perspectives, no doubt, to your leadership toolkit.
So let's dive in.
Flow Unleashed. Thank you, Siri, Sue Siri. Thanks, Cameron. I'm looking forward to seeing
Sue: where our conversation goes.
Cameron: Welcome to the show. See.
Mm. Yeah. It's shame to miss your talk on the neuroscience of wellbeing at the European conference. Positive psychology. Can you talk to me? Oh. Oh, I'm not sure. That always easy. Gimme because I missed, I've been in this space of psychology and
Sue: neuroscience for a number of years and for me. You can't really talk about positive psychology of why it works without understanding how the brain works.
So for me, the neuroscience has always underpinned everything. When I talk about emotions, when I talk about wellbeing, neuroscience comes into it, whether we are talking neurobiological, whether we're talking [00:06:00] even neurogenetics, microbiome and those sorts of things, but also how the brain learns. So really the session was.
If we understood how the brain works when it comes to learning, taking in information, memory, recall, making decisions, uh, what could that look like and how would it help us with our wellbeing? And we had a lot of fun on that session. It was standing ovation at the end, which was kind of lovely 'cause the audience was very much involved in the, uh, in the workshop.
So yeah, it was good fun.
Cameron: So let's dive into the near, if you may. We scientific researchers on the rise. Dopamine, you know, how, how to reduce cortisol in the workplace.
Sue: Oh, I was lucky. I did my masters in neuroscience of leadership where your research, so I, I've always been interested in the brain, but I wanted to do it very much from a real practical perspective, as in when a human needs to make decisions or deal with [00:07:00] change or self-regulate, et cetera, not can I cut a brain open and, you know.
Perform surgery. So for me, the neuroscience, when you pair what we know about the brain with the microbiome and how they communicate. Has given us real insights into mental health challenges, various dis diseases of the body, as well as diseases of the mind. But I think for me, understanding the brain and as I say, making it real, making it practical, like do people really understand, I.
How habits work and why it's can be actually quite easy to change and why it can be quite hard to change. What does cortisol do from a physiological perspective that people recognize and go, oh wow. Yeah, I felt that that's what's going on. So helping people understand through education, through awareness, I.
So they can make different choices and you know, really asking yourself, is this good for my wellbeing? Sometimes the answer of, we get a dopamine hit in a way that's not good for our wellbeing, so how are we being aware of what's going on for [00:08:00] us? We might not be able to see the neurobiology, we might not be able to see the neural pathways in our brain.
But just educating people around how do I increase the neural pathways that are beneficial for my wellbeing and reduce the neural pathways of things that are not so good for my wellbeing can be valuable for people.
Cameron: And just to double click on the dunson important one, you know, to give a sort of a practical example to someone you know, I'm thinking. Way of producing dopamine. Is that kind of, that pleasure Right. Initial, um, reward as opposed to a more dopamine that comes from deep engagement terms. Underestimate Karen
Sue: Cameron.
The, you know, the, the quick hit of pleasure if it's still done through. Useful wellbeing means so if somebody delivers a gift to my front door, I'm gonna get a hit of [00:09:00] dopamine because it's pleasurable. If I go down to the beach as I did this morning and have a cuddle with a dog, that's 'cause mine's a dog beach.
That's a hit of pleasure. That's not particularly deep and meaningful. But it's kind of nice. Um, so the thing that I always remind people is the dopamine is not just this thing that we hear about. It's a chemical that the brain needs in order to think clearly, to make good decisions, to self-regulate, to pay attention, we need to be fueled up just like a car does.
And how I get that dopamine is through either the, what I think of as brain and body basics, which is your eat, sleep, and exercise. And or positive emotions. So to your point is I might get dopamine, get a little dopamine hit from connecting with somebody as I just did. So one of my team happens to be down here today and a caught up with her and even though we're both sweaty and sticky, 'cause it's like 35 degrees out there, we still had a hug, we still had a chat, we had a smile, we had a.
What they call a high quality connection for a few [00:10:00] moments. Now, was it hugely deep and meaningful? Probably not, but it was certainly joyful. But then you might also have the even more deep and meaningful when you've had a not so good day emotionally. You might have had a really challenging day. I dunno, your kids have been driving you nuts, your stress at work or whatever.
But at the end of the day, when your child says, love you, dad, you are like, oh. My day was worthwhile. It was meaningful. So I think to your point, positive emotions can come from a variety of ways, and what we need to understand is what might work for you might not work for me. So I just said, if I go down the beach and a dog comes up to me and I have a dog cuddle, that's gonna bring me positive emotion.
But if you're scared of dogs, that's not gonna work. Equally. When somebody says, have a coffee, that creates dopamine, I'm like, not for me. I can't stand coffee. So it's really important to understand that. What works for one person doesn't work for another. But also there are some more transient ways that we get the hit of dopamine that's not good for our wellbeing.
[00:11:00] So social media scrolling would be an example only 'cause I've just had been interviewed on this. So for instance, if I am getting likes on social media and I'm getting comments and I go, oh. My brain is pulled towards constantly checking, and I'm getting a dopamine here, but is it good for my wellbeing that an hour later I'm still scrolling through social media?
Possibly not. So when we think about different things that are good for us from a dopamine perspective, we know that positive emotions produce dopamine. We know that negative emotions cause dopamine levels to drop. So how do we do things that are giving us those positive emotions, that dopamine production, but in a way that's supporting our wellbeing overall?
Cameron: Yeah. Interesting. And what are other ways of, so when think about how do I get mo dopamine, I always say, say there
Sue: are drugs, both illicit and prescription, but that unfortunately is synthetic. So therefore you're gonna [00:12:00] need a bigger dose over time as you get tolerant. Whereas we don't get tolerant to naturally occurring, you know, positive emotions if you like.
So some of the ways that are not so good, sometimes technology can be a challenge. If we are not using it mindfully or consciously, if you like, we might find that we are getting it from. Things that are not necessarily a dopamine hit, but sometimes are numbing, such as whether it's binge watching Netflix or whatever.
You, even if you think about gaming, gaming is a great way to get in flow. If you think about flow, many games have been set up along allow along the lines of the eight concepts of flow. But unfortunately what it does is it can then take away from your overall wellbeing because you are gaming for eight hours a day, not getting a good night's sleep.
Waking up feeling grumpy, they're not engaging with other relationships, et cetera. So, and again, I'm not against technology. I think technology is wonderful when we use it well, but some technology is actually set up to give us the [00:13:00] dopamine here, but detracting us from things that genuinely bring us higher levels of wellbeing.
Cameron: Hmm. And you mentioned earlier the importance of the microbiome. The
Sue: stuff that we are learning now is just so interesting around how our microbiome, basically what we eat and the bacteria in our gut is, um, serving us or sometimes not serving us. And we now know that within a matter of minutes, messages can go from your gut to your brain through your vagus nerve.
We know that certain bacteria produce certain neurochemicals neurotransmitters, so therefore what you eat plays a part in how you feel. We've got a great paper. Caitlyn Cowan wrote a brilliant meta-analysis of the impact of the gut microbiome on anxiety and depression and other mental health challenges that we've now got strong evidence for.
So I think there's [00:14:00] a lot that we are still learning. It's, it is quite a new area. Um, but it's given us a huge insight into, um, what's playing out. And the thing that I really love, that I often teach people that I think is really useful is if you think about the bacteria that's in our gut, I, I I break it down into three simple categories.
There's a lot more than that. There's about 50,000 strains of bacteria, but let's three simple categories. One is commensal. They are the bacteria that's good for you. One is pathogens, they're the bacteria that's not good for you. And then the other ones I'm gonna put in the general bucket. So they're ones that are not helpful for us humans, they, they don't help us and they don't harm us, but they actually feed one of the other two.
So we've got them in our gut too. So one of the things that struck me and I, I share with people is bacteria are living, living beings. Unlike most living beings, living beings want to live and reproduce. That's what a living being wants to do. It wants to stay alive. Now, the only way that your gut bacteria has of staying [00:15:00] alive is to make you feed it.
They have to get you the host to feed them. So if you've got bacteria in your gut that thrive on sugar, somehow those bacteria to stay alive, have to get you to put sugar in your mouth. And the way I always talk about it is I imagine that the little bacteria in my stomach are basically standing there going, feed me, feed me, feed me, sending a little message through to my brain that makes me go, oh, I need some chocolate.
And, and that kind of makes sense. But then another neuroscientist who came on our diploma, so this lovely lady who's a neuroscientist researcher, she came on a diploma last year and I was sharing this and she said, you do realize that also happens with cortisol. So basically, to your point is if I have lots of bacteria in my gut that like eating cortisol, what they need to do is go feed me, feed me, feed me, send a message through to my brain, which is gonna encourage me to create stress in my life so that they get fed.
And I'm like, oh my goodness, I'd never even thought about that. [00:16:00] So that's the thing that I love about, we see this in nature all the time. You have a host and then you have a smaller animal that lives alongside, like the birds that perch on the back of cows or rhinos or things like that. There's a symbiotic relationship and we have to remember that we have roughly a football sized amount of bacteria in US and on us all over us.
That is potentially having more of an impact on our choices than we perhaps might care to, uh, to agree with.
Cameron: Yeah. It's, it's, um, definitely makes you think twice about what you're getting. Yeah. Which ones are you feeding when you start? Think of them jump, jumping up and down. Yeah, exactly. And, and for a leader listening to this. How can I amplify? So for me, as a leader,
Sue: if I'm wanting to influence other people, I've gotta think of myself as a role model.
It doesn't matter whether I'm a superstar sports [00:17:00] person, a celebrity out there, a leader, a father, a mother, I. Uh, a family member is the role model and we've got all sorts of data. Even that gives us an indication of the ripple effect of the choices one person makes on others that they're sometimes not even aware of.
So I suppose as a leader, I've had leaders often say to me, I haven't got time to take a break. I've too busy. I've got. You know, I'm trying to cover three jobs. I've got stresses, I've got pressure. But then there, especially here in Australia at the moment with the psychosocial risks and hazards legislation that we've now got is the leader is legally responsible for the mental wellbeing as well as the physical wellbeing of their team members.
I. So if you are my leader and you're telling me you don't have time to do this, and you don't have time to do that, et cetera, then what's that telling me? So one of the things when we run leadership programs, so we are often working with clients over a period of time running leadership development. What are you providing for lunches?
What are you providing for morning and afternoon tea breaks? I was just in Rome at the OECD Global Wellbeing [00:18:00] Forum and for morning and afternoon tea. Afternoon tea was sugary biscuits and morning tea was pastries. Now that's lovely, but you're at a wellbeing conference. Personally, I'd be doing bananas or fruit or crues or something.
And again, that's just me. And I'm not saying I'm the most healthy person in the world. I still love chocolate and I'm not giving that up. But if depends on what message we are sending as a leader. Do you block a time in your diary that says, actually. I am not doing back to back meetings. I am gonna do this.
I am gonna take a break. But also from a brain-based perspective, when are you having performance conversations? Are you having them at four 30 after the, in the afternoon when everybody's dopamine levels are so low that the conversation probably isn't gonna go well? Or when are you keeping your decision making for you gathering data one day and then you wake up fresh and make your decision in the morning?
Many leaders are not even aware that the easiest decision for a brain is no [00:19:00] decision, as in do what you've always done. Leave it as it's always. Been. So the easiest decision for my brain is to just keep repeating what I've always done. As a leader, that's important to know, are you fueling your brain up?
Are you keeping your brain at its best so you can make effective choices? So you can see when it's time for innovation, so you can guide people and self-regulate when and there are emotions present in your team. I spend a lot of my time teaching leaders what to say and what not to say around emotions.
Because nobody ever teaches a leader how to deal with emotions. They teach 'em the functional stuff, but we, when we talk about anything to do with performance, I'm sure you will know. Emotions are a huge component of that. If I can't manage my emotions, then I don't drag myself out of bed in the morning because my strategy is to keep my wellbeing up.
I go with the impulse of, no, I wanna lay in and I'm feeling grumpy today. You know, so managing our emotions and being able to have conversations around that is essential to leadership, [00:20:00] and it's the whole oxygen mask on first. If I as a leader am not looking after myself, how can I expect to A, be a good role model, but B, look after you or even know when you need looking after.
Cameron: Hmm. Yeah, I think one of the most wonderful things positive psychology has done in the leadership space is take the focus away from the leading is to the leading of, you know, and having self-leadership. And, you know, if, if we're not, um, walking the walk and have a, a, if, if we're not authentic with what we're saying that come across and distrust.
Comes across beers and teams and colleagues and
Sue: yeah, and then, and to your point, Cameron, as a leader to, I can manage my emotions that when I am feeling stressed and overwhelmed. So if I can't manage that, then all I do is the next meeting. I take that out on somebody else. Whereas at least if I'm aware of my emotions, I [00:21:00] can almost apologize in advance or go and do something to manage those emotions first.
But you'll give me a break for my vulnerability if I'm able to say, look. Really apologize team, if this comes across wrong, having a bit of a stressful morning, this is what I'd like to say, no offense, and actually being able to be honest about that, or get your stuff together first and then, uh, share what you need to share.
But a lot of times we are running from one thing to another without actually considering the impact on our brain and therefore the impact on those around us.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. I guess I also see. Emotions equals weakness a lot. You know, as in the sense the leader doesn't feel safe to be emotional or they don't feel safe to hold the space for other people's emotions and learn through them. There's often this sort of dismissive approach to Yes, yes, yes. Let's keep that.
Keep a lid on that. You know, not a lot to learn there. [00:22:00] That's just a dison and an annoyance. Let's focus on.
Sue: If we think about the intelligent use of emotions, emotions are data. They're information, and they're trying to tell us something. That's all they are. They're data, they're information. They're trying to tell us something.
So if you think about that, if you've got any leaders listening here who are interested in financial data, on performance data, et cetera, if you imagine an Excel spreadsheet with financial data on it, if that data is inaccurate, you are gonna make some very poor choices about what to do with your money.
It's exactly the same with emotional data. If you have inaccurate data, you're gonna make some poor choices, whether it's for you or the other people. So I think for me, as any good leader, if you can understand emotions, if you want more engagement and higher performance, you have to be dealing with emotions because you cannot possibly have engagement without emotions.
'cause engagement is how I feel. It's how I feel at work. Do I feel engaged? Do I feel valued, et cetera. And when people think about, oh, I don't wanna do emotions, you are [00:23:00] missing out on such a wealth of fabulous information to tap into. And again, we've got so much data to back this up, but if somebody has damage to the emotional part of their brain, they can barely function in society.
If they have damage to their IQ side, if you like the cognitive side of their brain, they might not be quite so smart on an IQ test, but they can still function. But damage to the emotional centers, you can't even decide what to eat at a restaurant because you don't know what you feel like. So you have to weigh up the calories, the price, the ingredients, et cetera, takes way too long.
So if we think about it, emotions are critical. And if you think about the way emotions work, emotions, we get the information, the data from our body and from our brain. And if you think about, therefore somebody saying you should leave your emotions at home, I have a saying, is you would literally have to drill out the core part of your brain and cut your head off at the neck to do that.
And therefore there's not much point you're showing up. So embrace [00:24:00] all of your people and to your point, learn to get comfortable with the uncomfortable emotions because you can utilize them, you can support them, and if somebody is emotionally engaged in what they do, you will get far more performance out of them than just the cognitive side of things.
Well, a lot of it comes down to education. 'cause to be perfectly honest, how we not do you go about integrating that team emotions. You've got children. Sometimes when they're little they do the happy face, the angry face, and the sad face. And then after that they're kind of done. You know? That's all our emotional intelligence is.
But one of the things we know from the research around emotional intelligence and also about wellbeing is if you increase literacy. You increase the topic. So wellbeing literacy, we know from work by Lindsay Os and others that if you increase literacy around wellbeing being increases equally, we know from the research over the last sort of 30 years about emotions is if you increase emotional vocabulary.
You increase people's [00:25:00] ability to both perceive, understand, and manage emotions. And we've even got evidence from a neuroscience perspective that simple things like being able to label an emotion triggers an area of your brain just above your, um, your right ear called your right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, which is part of your self-regulation mechanism.
So if I'm having a strong negative emotional response, but I can label my emotion, it acts as a seesaw effect to calm down the emotion. Now, how cool is that? Except if I don't have the language, I can't articulate my emotions. So one of the key things is education is, is learning about this stuff and not seeing it as something you do when you're five and then you're done at six.
Because every relationship you have will have emotions present. And relationships can be one of our single biggest drivers to high levels of wellbeing, high performance, et cetera. And it can be one of our single biggest. Points of pain in both of those as well. So being able to deal with [00:26:00] emotions, part of it's just learning.
I mean, I've been lucky enough to be in this space for 20 years and don't say always get it right, but I have learned so much that helps me understand why people do what they do and how they feel and how to motivate. You can't just give someone some motivation and go, here you go. People have to feel it.
They have to want to be pulled towards something. And so for me, a lot of it is. It's not that difficult really. I mean, there's a massive science behind it and teach you the science and you've got some tools in your toolkit.
Cameron: Hmm.
Yeah. I, I often find the integration of that process complex. Like I, I love the, you know, the ruler process from Stanford or the more neurochemical idea of it. And as soon as the message is heard, we don't need to flood the synaptic connections with lots of neurochemicals and, you know, looking at motions in a way of [00:27:00] the communicator and the messenger and so forth.
But often when we're looking at a culture change or leadership or changing, uh, decades of conditioning and habits, there's this. Transition period. Yeah. Can be, yeah, be a little bit messy or a little bit turbulent or confusing, right. Or like, I like to say complex where we're not sure what to trust and we might be more react than how we would want to respond.
How do you find, you know, often my answer to this is coaching. You know, if you're trying to create the ancient culture. Get some coaches. Yeah. Look, I think there's individual things you said that we need to understand is
Sue: often we throw around, large human beings are resistant to change. It's not entirely true.
I mean, during Covid, pretty much people changed instantly They had to, you know, so it's not necessarily the case. One of the things I find useful is if you understand how the brain works, it can help us understand why things get [00:28:00] turbulent or complex. So if you think about the brain, the brain is a prediction machine.
So its job is to predict the environment. So whether you are walking, I dunno, you're out on a bush walk. Your brain is without you even thinking about it, predicting where your foot's gonna fall. Are you going uphill? You gotta lift your knee slightly higher, you're going downhill, you gotta sit back. Are there roots over the the pathway?
So you're gonna be a bit wobbly underneath, under foot. Your brain is doing that all the while you are chatting to the person next to you. So your brain is predicting. If you take the workplace, your brain predicts simple things like where you click to hit send on your email. It's the same place every time and your brain predicts it when outlook produce new outlook and your send button has moved, your brain can't predict 'cause it goes to click and it's gone.
So this is why we think of it as a brains don't like change. It's actually not that. It's my brain is designed to predict, and when something happens that goes against what I predict, it's like, Ooh, what just happened? So we get a little error. Response if you like. And we have to think, [00:29:00] our brain has to kick in.
So if we think about when change occurs, whether it's culture change, whether it's changing in leadership, whether it's changing in systems, the first thing we have to understand is we, our brain is a prediction machine, and all of a sudden we can't predict things with quite so much accuracy that takes effort.
So if you think about fuel for the brain, just like fuel for the car. I am burning through a lot more fuel when things are changing because it's like, oh, that's new. That's different. I've gotta think. Now, it doesn't mean to say I can't do change, but it's taking more energy, if you like, from a brain perspective.
So if we go back to the conversation we had around dopamine, we know that the brain needs dopamine to work well. But also every time I'm got cognitive overload, I am burning through fuel just like a car would be burning through fuel. I'm using up a lot of that dopamine, a lot of that fuel. But then if you think, well, I'm also stressed, I'm overwhelmed, I'm under pressure, which also causes dopamine levels to drop.
Now I can't think clearly in the first place in order to find a better way. [00:30:00] So for me, again, understanding the brain is okay. Number one, the brain's a prediction machine. So when things goes outside, what I predict, it takes more effort. The prefrontal cortex needs a lot of fuel, just like a Ferrari needs a lot of fuel to run.
And if I'm low on fuel, I can't do that higher order thinking, like good decision making, self-regulation, paying attention, strategizing. I can't do it as well. Anyway, put those two things together. Well, of course it takes more effort for the brain. I did, as I said, a diploma in the last week or so, so it's six days straight and after the first day, all of my participants were exhausted.
Now they're sitting there learning and they had a great time, but I knew they always exhausted the first day because you can do your job. That you do normally quite easily for eight hours because you've predict you've got habits. It's easy, but as soon as you ask people a totally different setting, you don't actually have to do anything apart from Think and Learn.
That's a whole lot of fuel that you are using that you don't [00:31:00] normally, that your brain brain is basically burning through fuel much quicker, so we get more exhausted. So I think with two things into playing the prediction element and then the lack of dopamine, we put those two together. Of course it's complex, but understanding that can help us.
Cameron: Do you want to help others unleash their performance? Do you want an internationally recognized accreditation to stand out amongst the crowd, or do you want the playbook I use every day when helping professionals to be their best and find their flow when it matters most? If this sounds interesting, join others who are training to become a high performance coach.
We are on a mission to train a fellowship of expert practitioners and coaches to work with us and help make the world a better place. To find out more, go to flow coaching federation.org [00:32:00] and check out the Flow Coach Accreditation today. Yeah. I just wanna add to that 'cause it's such an important point.
You know, that process, which I think you're alluding to, that besian inferencing or besian processing where the brain is. Constantly trying to predict the future, and then we cross reference with the past, and we take in the present variables in order to make it think what, how to feel, how to act is such a innate, natural process that we, you know, oh, my brain doesn't work like that.
I'm not that robotic or, or computerized. Um, you know, but in, in essence. Uh, the brain does it as a way of, of surviving it does it as a way of trying to control things, trying to evolve us, trying to get a better outcome, trying to feel safe, trying to be in control and, and. The, the friction that we have around that and the errors that pop up and things aren't categorized way that we presume and so forth.
All that friction, I'm, you know, so glad [00:33:00] you sort of brought up effort there. You know, we attribute, and then soon as that anterior caught it, single it comes in, it's to go, oh my God, this is, there's, there's a potential conflict here. Or My competence is a bit, you know, risky. At the moment. We put in attentional nose and everything feels more effortful.
And when you cloud that with a host of neurochemicals because have been conflicted, there's other messages coming up. It can be this neurochemical cocktail that kind of washes around and we feel overwhelmed because of this friction to the way we're trying to predict.
Sue: Absolutely. We often, and just, you know, we understanding, you, understanding on many different things necessarily.
Judging that a bad last week on. What I call imposter thoughts. Most people call it imposter syndrome, but I will never call it imposter syndrome 'cause that indicates there's something wrong with you. Whereas we all have imposter thoughts at some stage. But I think what's really interesting around this is when you, you sort of talk about that sort of effort and I think of fuel and whatever [00:34:00] you.
Is when you understand it, it makes it easier to understand how your brain is working. And we need to understand the brain wants to be as efficient as possible. So when we talk about habits, many people think about habits of habits of behavior. You know, do I clean my teeth at night? Do I put my F leg in my right leg in my trousers first in the morning?
I dunno, whatever. We all have habits of behavior and sometimes those habits can be really useful for us in our life, for our wellbeing. Sometimes not so useful. But what's important is, as far as the brain is concerned, habits are great because they are really easy. I've got a strong neural pathway. I keep running down it.
It's easy. But what we have to understand is the habit part of your brain, the basal ganglia that's responsible for a lot of your habits, doesn't judge you for your habits, whether they're good for your wellbeing or not. Good for your wellbeing. Its job is just to keep you repeating them. But what sometimes people miss is habits can be habits of behavior, but they can also be habits of thought.
And habits of emotion. So to your point is if I have a habit in my way of thinking of everything's awful, [00:35:00] everything's terrible. Why always me, leaders never do this. Nobody cares about blah, blah, blah. That's a habit of thought. And that's the pathway that my brain goes, yep, I've got this. We run down this every day.
Yep. Because a brain's job is to be efficient, and sometimes to your point, we shortcut things, so when things change around us, it's like, no, no, no. This is the pathway I run down and that's easier for me and I wanna keep doing the one that's easier for me, whether it's good for my wellbeing or performance, or not good for my wellbeing or performance moments.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And in that shortcut we become more rigid. You know, we tend to down on our categorizations, our perspectives, our opinions, in order to make things simpler. You know, because everything's so eling, you know, we naturally default to trying to, you can lose the richness simpler, but in that simplification, we, we ignore the, the naturally and the.
The information and the data [00:36:00] around there and, and those are the times where we kind of, it's a,
Sue: one of the things that I love around around, and there's an interplay of work between whether it's Helen Langer, why categories and things, or whether it's, um, Todd Caston's work on curiosity or even from a coaching perspective.
Christian Van Berg always talks about noticing. If we think about things like curiosity and noticing, noticing the new around here, noticing what's different, noticing the categories I put myself in or other people in. If we can get more curious, we know that, and this is why coaching works. 'cause coaching is usually or should be good questions that I haven't thought of.
Curious questions. So if we think about curiosity, noticing those sorts of things, that's so good for the brain because every time I'm curious and I'm learning something new, I'm creating a new neural pathway. As opposed to your point running down, the one that I've always run down and keep doubling down on that one.
So I love the, the work around that sort of being curious, noticing, being mindful rather than mindless.[00:37:00]
Cameron: Hmm. Yeah. And do, do with age, we often become.
Sue: I'm gonna say, I think it's individuals more
Cameron: rigid, curious, but it's very
Sue: easy to buy into more mindless a category of, uh, the sayings that we have that can't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, that's just an excuse for me to not learn, or it's harder to learn when you're older.
That's just an excuse for me to not learn. So sometimes when we buy into a category, we will then start to play to the rules of the category. And this is the work of Alan Langer that I really love. Is if I have a category of old, there are certain implied rules that go with old, as in I can't do that exercise anymore, or I'm gonna forget things, or, I am not good at technology, or whatever other silly stereotypes that we have.
But one of the examples that I often give [00:38:00] around this when it comes to categories is we've gotta be really careful because I always ask the question, has anybody ever walked into a room and forgotten why you've gone? And most people will put up their hand. Yep, absolutely. I've done that. Now, if you are past a certain age, whatever that age is in your head that you have decided, you are older.
When you walk into that room and forgot where you've gone, you'll go, oops, I'm having a senior moment, or something along those lines. If you are a different age and you've just had a baby, and men use the term, but usually towards women, you will say, oh, baby brain. Now what's interesting is the same thing has occurred.
Two people have gone into a room and forgotten where they've gone, but based on the category they're in, new mom, older, we will describe it differently. So to your point, do I think it's harder to learn? Potentially, but I think we give ourselves too many reasons for it to be hard to learn. Like, uh, the oldest recorded person growing a new neuron was 96 years of age.[00:39:00]
There's research around people in their forties taking up, running, have neurogenesis, not just new neurological pathways, but actually new neurons created, taking up running. So we know that the brain can learn. It learns every day. We groan new neurons, we prune neurons, et cetera. But are we sometimes giving ourselves an excuse not to because, oh, you can't learn at my age, you know, this sort of thing, and we make assumptions that may or may not be true.
Cameron: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Sure. Then become the self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, you know, we'd tell them they're dumb, they'll believe they're dumb, and and so tell them they're intelligent and so forth. And, and I think we,
Sue: of course
Cameron: it's easier to sort of just justify. Yeah, I'm too old
Sue: to do means I don't have to do it.
Like learning in new language, it's so much easier to learn in new language when you're younger. So I go to Italy and I don't bother trying, how do I know if it's difficult to learn? 'cause I haven't actually tried in the first place.[00:40:00]
Absolutely. Yeah, of course. It's the same with anything. Yeah. The brain, whether it's emotions or whether it's a language or whether it's something else is, yeah, everything takes effort. Now, when you are at school, you are learning all the time, so your brain is very plastic, but you're also being given inputs of information.
Whereas when you get to adulthood, your brain has pruned itself and it's decided this is what you need and this is the stuff you don't need. We'll prune that off. But then we keep running down the similar pathways, so therefore they get really embedded, which can be really helpful for us. But maybe we don't take the time anymore to learn.
So if I am learning a new language, am I really putting in the same effort I would've done if I was 10 or 11 or 12 and having a two hour lesson every week? So again, how much effort are we prepared to put into learning to be a better leader or learning to be creative? And also have we decided that there are creative people and non-creative people.
So I'm a non-creative person, so I won't bother. [00:41:00] And again, we know that's a bit of a myth as well, so,
Cameron: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. And, and whilst we know synaptic pruning may decrease, I think a lot of it is habit. Right. You know, and how we approach things and, and, and whether it's up for that curiosity and more synaptic pruning and, and or, or whether we want to shape a, I think something I. Read that you wrote?
Sue: Oh, that was work that I did.
Word twist. Yeah. One of our clients, you said something about, you know, we shape the school and they always remind that it's two way, and that's the same with life, isn't it? We shape our environment. Our environment shapes us, our leader shapes our environment and we shape the leader. Mm-hmm. You know, there are all sorts of things where that plays a part.
Absolutely.
Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. And often I find people are at problem states. We're in one of those scenarios where we don't [00:42:00] have enough empowerment in. Yeah. How, and again, it's one of the reasons that I love the work
Sue: years ago by Nicholas and James Fowler about this sort of ripple effect, and it became boiled down into sort of pop psychology into you are the sum of the top three people or top five people you hang out with.
Which, yes. But if you look at the actual research, when I first read that research, the thing that struck me more than anything is yes, I have a ripple effect, three degrees beyond me to people I don't even know, which is great. That's good to know, and they are having an impact on me. So be careful who you hang out with.
But what I really took away from that research is the responsibility on me. If I'm having a ripple effect, three degrees beyond me, to people I don't even know. How am I choosing to show up, whether it's now on this podcast, whether it's on the accreditation I was doing earlier, whether it's on our diploma this evening, how I am showing up will have a ripple effect far beyond me.
So what choices am I making about how I show up in this moment?[00:43:00]
Cameron: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
That sounds like an awesome place to leave the podcast, but I don't, I don't want to. I do want to ask, you know, what other aspects of neuroscience do you where it's important? So I do a keynote called The Future Human in terms of,
Sue: and one of the things that I'd really love if we could start to be more.
Aware from a systemic perspective. So human beings are systems. We have neurosurgeons that cut into the brain. We have cardio specialists that deal with the heart. We have gastro specialists that deal with the stomach, et cetera. But we are one system. And you can't do something with the heart and not expect it to impact the rest of the body and the brain, et cetera.
So it's the same with systems awareness from a bigger picture perspective, like exactly that sort of quote just mentioned. We shape the school, school shapes us. That's their sort of motto. But if you think about that from a [00:44:00] systemic perspective, where I'd like to see it going is. Each area has researchers that focus on one particular point.
So there are microbiome specialists that focus on the gut bacteria. There are brain specialists, there are positive psychology researchers. Some that focus on flow, some that focus, focus on meaning, some that focus on hope, et cetera. And yet when you put a human being together within a system, there are so many things that.
There's an interplay, I suppose, and we have to understand that like the work by Michael Unger on resilience, a lot of people think of the term resilience is how do I put more tools in my toolkit and I've gotta get myself up when life knocks me down and stuff. And there, there is a part of that. But it's about do I have tools in my toolkit and do I have the resources available to me?
And a quote that he says that I particularly love, he uses John Cabot Zinn's original quote of, you can't stop the waves, but anyone can learn how to surf. And I love that. I think that's a great example of life. You can't stop what comes at you sometimes, but [00:45:00] you can learn to deal with it. That's what we traditionally think of as resilience.
But Michael Unga adds quite rightly, and it's much easier with a wetsuit, a surfboard, and a coach. And I think that's where I would like to see us getting to systemically, not just from a neuroscience perspective, but saying what are all the things that contribute and how do we put the resources in people's toolkits, whether it's through coaching, whether it's through education, whether it's through shaping environment in a positive way, whether it's through our politics or education, our media, our technology.
How do we bring that all together so it's not just about what I do here, but it's systemically, how do I create the best environment for my wellbeing and for the wellbeing of other people, the planet, et cetera, so we can all flourish. That would be pretty cool.
Cameron: Hmm. Yeah. I love Anita. I guess seeing everything through the lens. That everything has a relation, you know, there's a [00:46:00] relationship with everything can, you know, even if it's a performance based scenario, that the relationship I have myself when I fail or make a mistake will dictate how I respond. And it's the relationship my head has with my gut, the relationship, the food with my gut, the relation, it's all, and without that kind of relational lens, you know, we, we don't get that full picture.
And, you know, it's, yeah, it's an interesting one because. Constantly trying to isolate and break things up, reduce the variables, you know. But intelligence kind of comes, there's a level of,
Sue: yeah,
Cameron: inaccurate. It's something I talk about with my students all the time
Sue: is a, a researcher's job is to operationalize something, is to take a piece of the puzzle, to define it, to then look at, if I change this variable, what happens to this variable?
And that's brilliant and that's how we gain more scientific knowledge. But to your point, even if we take things like positive emotions flow, meaning they're all [00:47:00] interlinked in different ways. If you think about subjective wellbeing and how I feel today, if I feel more positive according to Barbara f Fredrickson's, broaden and build theory, I am much more likely to be able to leverage my psychological resources for hope and optimism, or my intellectual resources for creativity.
I. And then when I do that, I might get a sense of meaning and psychological wellbeing at the end of the day that then goes, oh, I've had a, A, I feel like I've made a difference today, and therefore I'm more likely to be more helpful and more altruistic and kind when someone asks me for help. And woohoo, that's my social resources.
Now I'm building relationships. So I think whilst a researcher's job is to operationalize it, real humans are within a system and we are a system ourselves and understanding how all these little things into play. Hmm. And for me, that's why I like to look at, I've had my genetics tested, I've had my epigenetics test, I've had my microbial test.
I've had my brain scanned. I've tried to do so many things of treating myself as a scientific experiment [00:48:00] to try and understand how all these things. Play out together because we are not just one thing, and I'd like to see more of that sort of happen, more of that understanding. And it also means there's way more levers we can pull.
So if you have an understanding of the systemic, you can go, okay, this strategy is not working right now. Let me try this one, this one, this one, this one. So I've got more tools in my toolkit to help.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. I think research also has a responsibility to, when it is reductionist
words there. Well, we're going to slowly come to the end of the podcast. We always ask guest two questions. Yeah, we can't see one book. See on the video you can see me. There's a few books behind, but I've got books on either side
Sue: of me, so I [00:49:00] love books and I could go back to the line, the Witch in the Wardrobe when I was a child.
Uh, had an impact, but I think any fiction book that I read as a child, that takes you to a different world. Mm-hmm. Um, and one of the reasons that I, I kind of love that now is there's wonderful research. If we go back to emotions that shows people who read more fiction books have higher empathy. Because what fiction books teach you is different perspectives.
'cause you always hear the inner thoughts of all of the characters if you like. So you often get different perspectives. I thought that was interesting. Um, I think one of the fiction, the fact books that I really love is Social by Matt Lieberman. 'cause it describes a lot of the social neuroscience. And Matt Lieberman was the one that came up with the Seesaw effect around labeling emotion.
So I do love his book social, but there's probably. I don't know. There's, I mean, I've got in my eye shot probably about 200 books sitting here just onto after one side that I think, oh, that one, that one, that one. [00:50:00] And social is still a favorite, actually. Alan Langer's new one. The Mindful Body is pretty good too.
It's definitely worth a read
Cameron: time to flip the mic. What
Sue: do you hope for? Hope for the future of
Cameron: myself to put me in the hot seat. Turn the tables.
Cool. That's a, that's a question and a half.
My hope is that it's probably becomes more integral to psychology. I. You know, there's the debate as to when do positive psychology start. You can go all the way back to Aristotle or whatever, but there was a definite shift to Seligman in terms of funding and focus and all the rest of it. And I think one argument from more experimental that it's the bit wishy-washy or it's not as rigorous and 'cause there's a reductionist, I [00:51:00] guess, lens coming there.
But yet most of my practice has taught me. That focusing on where we want to go, embodying who we want to be, identifying the strengths inside of us and utilizing them and mimicking. The positive future self or goal, or whatever it is, is far more powerful than picking out the problems, exposing them, furthering that neurological conditioning around, creating them, creating more negative self-fulfilling prophecies and.
I think positive psychology is in a really exciting phase where it's very open to coaching, it's open to all areas, and it's ever increasing in its breadth of what's included. You just look at the conferences or the books or what have you, and I think at the same time it probably needs a bit of consolidating and synthesis as things widen and new.
Reduce you won, consolidate, and then natural process within [00:52:00] that. I feel that it would be nice almost if positive psychology wasn't called positive psychology, if it was just called psych psychology and integrated into the very fabric of psychology and examining human performance so it didn't have to distinguish itself.
Um, I think that would be a nice place for positive psychology to be in in 10 years time.
Sue: I love it. And I agree. I know many people in positive psychology would like to drop the positive at some point. Once the pendulum sort of swung the other way, we spent a hundred years focusing on the deficit. Maybe we still need to keep it for now, but at some point it will just be human psychology again.
Cameron: Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Sue. It's been really enjoyable chatting with you.
Sue: You too. Thank you, Cameron.
Cameron: Flow unleashed. Unleash. I enjoy this chat with Sue. It reminds us all to first understand how the brain works before we try to inspire or change others. It's clear that advances in [00:53:00] brain science are opening new doors to understanding what makes effective leaders insights go beyond traditional approaches, shedding light on the internal mechanisms that drive leadership, behaviors, relationships, and sustained success or lack thereof.
For instance, research by the Kin Show Group and Richard Bois highlights the importance of activating what they call the positive emotional attractor, PEA, to inspire and motivate others Effectively, this process involves fostering social connections and engaging individuals in a positive, hopeful vision of the future.
Discussing purpose, core values and aspirations. Before driving into metrics and performance measures can open minds and create a sense of shared purpose. It reminds us that goals and financials should follow the why not overshadow it. At the neural level, understanding the roles of key brain [00:54:00] regions, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala and the interior cortex singular can enhance leadership practices.
Emotional intelligence. A cornerstone of effective leadership is deeply rooted in these areas of the brain and high emotional intelligent leaders. Demonstrate the ability to recognize, regulate, and respond to emotions, both their own and others by integrating neuroscience into leadership development.
Leadership is not just a set of actions, but a nuanced interplay of purpose, emotions, and connections. By applying what we're learning from neuroscience, leaders can inspire meaningful change, create cultures of trust and collaboration. We can learn to prioritize and harness the brain, can learn how to talk to the brain, how to lead the brain, [00:55:00] and help people to become more open to the dreams and the visions that we have as we continue to uncover the brain secrets, the future of leadership promises to be not only more effective.
But also more human. If you want to find out more about Sue. Please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot until the next time.
Thank you for listening to Flow [00:56:00] Unleashed.