Presence Podcast - Episode 5: Wiring and Hijacks and Brain Beasts, Oh My!

Ali and John continue their discussion on the importance of leaders acquiring Human Awareness, with a discussion of how are brains are wired by the circumstances from our past (and present) lives. They also discuss the impact of what Daniel Goleman called "the Amygdala Hijack", as well as a new concept called the "Brain Beast" --- and about how all of these dynamics play a part in who we have become as a leader. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Presence Podcast. I'm John Miller, Executive Director of the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence, along with Allie Carson, the founder and CEO of Move Air Coaching. Hey Allie, how are things going?

SPEAKER_00 0:39

I'm doing real good, John. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I'm doing good. So in this episode, we're going to continue our exploration of human awareness as the first step to growing our ethos. If you recall, in episode four, we discussed that ethos is all about your unique, inner-driven set of values, strengths, and behaviors that define who you are and how you authentically present yourself to the world. And remember, we said that the real question of ethos is as I show up every day in the organization and with my team, am I effectively building the case for myself as a trusted, credible, and mature leader whom other people will follow to create the greatest level of value for the organization? Then we talked about human awareness as the first step to building our ethos and as a precursor to a fully informed self-awareness. So many times, especially in the organizational setting, self-awareness is reduced to a few lines of feedback from an employee engagement survey or a data sheet from a self-assessment questionnaire, are the results of a 360-degree survey. And while those tools are useful, I believe that human awareness, that understanding where our behaviors actually come from, can provide essential context for interpreting that self-awareness data and turn that feedback into meaningful growth plans.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, John. And part of that valuable context comes from knowing and understanding the six behavioral triggers of the psyche that we discussed in our last episode. And you all get bonus points if you can recall all six of the triggers, right? Are you ready? Say them along with me. They are values and beliefs, our emotional blueprint, our intellect, our communication style preferences, our view of people in relationship, and our motives and motivation. And for a detailed explanation of those behavioral triggers and how they work singly and together to produce behaviors and personality, please listen to episode four of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Sally, let's add another dimension to the discussion of those six behavioral triggers, because those triggers don't just sit there in our minds waiting to be activated in our conscious thinking. We need to understand another truth about our triggers and the behaviors they produce. And that's about how those triggers, and indeed a large part of our functioning brain, are wired. Wiring is the term that we use for ways in which our brain has become predisposed to certain behaviors based on genetics and based on our experiences, good and bad, that have impacted us along the pathway of our lives. This wiring process is much more than just a series of explicit impressions or lessons we've learned growing up. Brain wiring is the very real and dynamic process within our physical brain that forms, strengthens, and reorganizes neural connections, what neuroscientists call synapses, in response to a full range of experiences rather than just a collection of memories. In other words, our personalities and behaviors are shaped not only by conscious memories, but also by the brain's real-time responses to all incoming information. This process happens continuously, where neurons actually fire together little mini explosions to shape our ideas, our views about life and the people we encounter in our life, our emotions and responses and all other kinds of behaviors. As a result of that wiring, we quite literally are becoming a unique human being. And we are becoming that unique human being over the course of our entire lives. And to fully understand how the six behavioral triggers of the psyche actually do their work, we need to understand that every one of those triggers is shaped by two wiring processes in the brain: hardwiring and soft wiring. Hardwing is what we're born with, it's the genetics, the temperament, the baseline emotional sensitivity, and the cognitive capacity that we inherit from our parents and other ancestors. Hardwing sets the initial stage for how we experience the world. Soft wiring, on the other hand, is what happens as we grow over time through experiences and interactions that the brain marks as important. Many of these wiring occurrences might at the time seem mundane. Mom talks about something that happened in the conversation with her boss at work, something that stressed her out, and she shares how that impacted her, and she shares her opinions about her boss. That leaves a conscious or unconscious impact on a listening child. Dad talks politics and how some senator or congressman is crazy for believing this or that. That also impacts a listening child. We hear our older sister talking about how unfair her gym teacher is. More impacts on the listening child. These kinds of moments play out at the dinner table, in the car, and many other regular points of life. Daily interactions, such as those in a loving home, or perhaps one that's not so loving, directly shape how a child's brain develops, reinforcing pathways for thought, behavior, skills, and dare we say, attitudes about life, about the people we come in contact with and the situations and people we embrace or avoid. They come from family, but they also come from culture, school, church, and from success, failure, stress, and relationships. All of these form what we see as patterns that work for us and patterns that don't necessarily work for us. We tell a joke in front of a peer group and nobody laughs. We say something serious and everybody laughs. Those kinds of experiences fire up neurons and create soft wiring. And what we've learned very recently is that the soft wiring process never stops. It slows down as we age, but it never stops. We need to realize that many of the characteristics of the six behavioral triggers of the psyche are softwired into our brain to create our own brand of personality through repeated experience. And a few of them are actually hardwired. Ever notice how you share a lot of emotional makeup with mom or dad or both? So, how does all this impact those behavioral triggers we've talked about? Our values and beliefs are softwired through early messages about what is right, what is wrong, what is safe, and what is dangerous. Our emotional blueprint is wired through how our brain learned throughout our early experiences to respond to happy times and threat, stress, and drama. Our intellect is shaped by how we were rewarded or punished for thinking, questioning, or deciding. Our communication style develops how our voice was received, how it was heard or ignored or corrected, or just shut down. Our motives and motivations are wired through what brought approval, security, or sense of worth. And our view of people and relationships is formed through repeated experiences of trust, betrayal, support, or disappointment. Over time, the brain turns all of that wiring experience into mental shortcuts, patterns that become automatic and that can often happen without conscious intention. In other words, the wiring process develops what we refer to as our default ways of looking at the world. That's why, under pressure, human beings don't tend to rise to their ideals, they tend to default to their wiring. Now, let's be clear: some of that wiring can be very good. It can help us lean into strong social skills, altruistic attitudes, and astute appreciation for learning and for loving. Some of that wiring is just about quirky little things that make us and our family unique and maybe even a little eccentric. But some of our hard wiring can and does take us off target. Our default styles can result in ineffectiveness or bad behavior or even unhealthy lifestyles. Some of these behaviors are outward and obvious, some are hidden just beneath the surface and are brought out when we become threatened or triggered. We'll talk about that more in a minute. And some of those behaviors lie deeper inside and only become apparent in certain life situations. Some of these bad behaviors get resolved as we grow up. We might learn, for example, that throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of an aisle at Walmart just doesn't work. But here's the thing: we bring a lot of these wired strengths, eccentricities, and challenges into adult life with us, and consequently into the workplace with us, and for some of us, into our leadership with us. So just to differentiate the terms here, part of human awareness is learning the fact that humans are wired, and part of it is understanding what is wired, like the six behavioral triggers, for instance. Self-awareness is understanding how we as individuals are wired, both hard and soft. This is crucial because when a person understands how their brain wiring shapes the six behavioral triggers, they can then gain the power to interrupt some of those old patterns, regulate emotion, update beliefs, and respond intentionally. That's when personality stops being reactive and victim-y and starts becoming mature. More on that in future episodes.

unknown 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

And I love the what we're talking about here, which is this idea that just because something is how we're wired doesn't necessarily mean it has to be permanent. It has to be how we continue on going forward. Yes. Absolutely. So we've talked about the six behavioral triggers that our psyche uses to create behaviors. And we've talked about the fact that each of the triggers has hard and soft wiring that creates mental shortcuts and behaviors that are sometimes unintentional. But there's actually another brain process that also works to produce reactions that are automatic and not always wanted. And for this process, we need to look at the interaction between three key parts of the brain: the prefrontal cortex, or you'll hear us call it the PFC, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. So starting with the prefrontal cortex, that PFC, this is the brain's executive center. It is responsible for planning, reasoning, impulse control, and perspective taking. The PFC is a conscious processor. It's where rational leadership lives. So when you pause before responding to someone else in a contentious situation, or you consider multiple viewpoints before making an important decision, or maybe you choose the best way to combat a stressful situation instead of the easiest one, those are all examples of your prefrontal cortex at work. The challenge is that the PFC is slow and very energy intensive. It works best when everything is sunshine and roses, everything's going well, when we feel safe and calm and mentally resourced, we feel refreshed, we've had our coffee, right? We're ready to go. Unfortunately, that's not always the hand that the workplace deck deals us. Right. The amygdala, on the other hand, is an unconscious processor and it works fast, very fast. The reason for the quick response is because the main job of the amygdala is protection. It is constantly scanning for threats, real or perceived. And when it senses danger, it triggers an emotional response, usually that fight, flight, or freeze response you may have heard of in the past. In our distant ancestors, those threats were often physical and environmental dangers, right? They needed to outrun a saber-toothed tiger. However, these days the threats are more often than not psychological, the threat of diminished status, some sort of uncertainty, some loss of autonomy, relatedness, or fairness. As soon as we feel threatened in those areas, the amygdala activates because it doesn't know the difference between a physical threat and a psychological one. It treats them both the same. This amygdala activates usually always before the PFC has a chance to weigh in. And those are the kind of threats that leaders and everyone else for that matter experience in the workplace. Now make no mistake, even though the threats that we face today are mainly mental and not physical, that doesn't diminish the very real harm they can cause. And that brings us to the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the brain's memory storage and pattern matching system. When something happens, whether that's a strangely worded email or a wonky comment during a meeting that we just know was a veil put down on us, or maybe a grumpy facial expression by our VP, for all of those situations, the amygdala immediately signals to the hippocampus to find past experiences that answer a series of questions. Have we seen this before? And if we have, how did that situation turn out? Did it end well? Or were there consequences that made me feel embarrassed or uncomfortable or left holding the bag on something important? The hippocampus then feeds that memory back to the amygdala, which uses it to decide how big the emotional response should be to that email, comment, or facial expression. How do I deal with that? If that comment has left me feeling diminished, how do I re-level the playing field? Should I return fire with my own cutting comment? How do I get my status back? Those are all the questions that your brain is trying to process, again, very, very quickly. If those past experiences were negative, the amygdala reacts fast and strong, even if the perceived threat in the situation is all in our heads, which is what we call that false amygdala narrative or fan for short. This is what Daniel Goldman calls the amygdala hijack, when our emotions override rational thinking. At this point, the PFC may try to step in, but again, it's such a slow processor that often emotion has already taken control. When that happens, when you have that overbaked emotion that meets your false amygdala narrative or that fan, it can quickly drag us into victimhood. And this is where ineffective leadership behavior is shaped in real time. When the amygdala dominates, the six behavioral triggers that we talked about earlier, those values, emotions, thinking, communication, motives, and views of people, run on autopilot according to our default wiring. Biases intensify, assumptions harden, communication deteriorates, and behavior becomes reactive rather than intentional. I talk about this with my clients as kind of their style under stress. That's what how they're showing up, whether they're trying to or not.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, I agree. And that entire process that you just described often activates what we call the brain beast, an acronym that describes a state where biases, unhealthy emotions, faulty assumptions, a false sense of self, and overactive or underactive personality traits take control of our behaviors and lash out, usually against the people we feel are likely threat perpetrators, but sometimes even against those that are on our side, friendly fire, so to speak. We've all been there in one way or another at home or at work. When a leader gets angry and goes on a rant, that's the brain beast coming out. When someone goes into their shell and can't perform well due to the stress, that's the brain beast working. And as part of our human awareness, we need to understand that if left unchecked, this pattern can act as a powerful force to undermine a leader's effectiveness, credibility, and influence. But when leaders build awareness and regulation, the prefrontal cortex stays online longer. When they encounter a stressful or emotional situation, they notice the emotional surge. They question the narrative their brain is telling them, and they choose a rational response instead of defaulting to an irrational reaction. In this sense, leadership maturity is not about eliminating emotion, it's about strengthening the brain's ability to bring emotion and reason back into balance. When the PFC, amygdala, and hippocampus work together instead of against each other, leaders move from reaction to reflection. And that's where credible, trustworthy presence is built. So again, human awareness is understanding that the whole prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus relationship is a real thing that can disrupt the human perspective and interactions and even lead at times to the brain beast erupting. That's human awareness. Self-awareness is how all of that humanness operates within us as individuals. You can see then that our internal makeup, the six behavioral triggers of the psyche, the wiring of the brain, and the PFC amygdala and hippocampus dynamic weave together a story that represents what we talked about in our last episode. The brain is incredible, it's wonderful and amazing, and it can be confounding and confusing and lead us into trouble if we're not careful and focused. But we have one more piece of human awareness to talk about that brings some light into the sometimes gray world of our perceptions and behaviors. If you're following along with the diagram of the psyche that we have on our website, you'll notice that there's an additional function of the psyche that lives at the bottom of the sphere. Recent research and frankly, longstanding human wisdom suggests that there is something that occupies the psyche that lies deeper than the six behavioral triggers that we mentioned. It's an internal operating system composed of what many traditions and researchers refer to as the heart, soul, and spirit, which is the seat of purpose and meaningfulness. This operating system isn't about emotion versus logic or motivations versus values and beliefs. It's about orientation. It produces the internal frameworks of purpose, meaning, and the drive to reach our potential. It's where questions like why does my life matter? What am I here to contribute? Who am I becoming? Where all of those questions and more quietly live. And when this deeper operating system is active, it introduces a whole new dynamic into the psyche. When we develop and articulate the presence of the heart, soul, and spirit, purpose begins to influence motivation. Meaning reshapes how we interpret challenge and adversity. And the drive toward potential starts to regulate how we use power, authority, and influence. In other words, this internal operating system doesn't replace the six behavioral triggers, it informs them, it gives them direction, it acts as a stabilizing force when stress is high and the brain's threat systems are loud. And we will have a much deeper conversation about heart, soul, and spirit in episode seven. So, Ali, in our last episode, you asked why I believe that human awareness is a precursor to effective self-awareness. I think we all know why now. It's incredibly hard to engage in a fully formed and effective self-awareness if we don't have a good idea of exactly what we need to be self-aware about.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense, this understanding of what's happening in your brain that's causing these behaviors that you need to be self-aware about. So makes total sense now. So, in the few minutes that we have remaining here, let's just begin setting up that transition to self management, which, as you mentioned, includes self awareness, self reflection, and self discipline, or what some may call self regulation. And you can see that we're going to move all of the concepts we just talked about in our human awareness discussion over to the self awareness. Column starting with those six behavioral triggers. With self-awareness, the general concept of values and behaviors becomes the concept of my values and behaviors, and all of the features of my values and behaviors that have evolved to where they are today as a person and as a leader. Similarly, our emotional blueprint becomes the focus on my emotional blueprint. Our intellect becomes a focus on my intellect. Our communication style becomes a focus on my communication style. Our view of people and relationship becomes a focus on my view of people and relationships. And I bet you can guess the next one, our motives and motivation becomes a focus on my motives and motivation. When we reach clarity on these behavioral triggers and how they work in us as a unique human being and as a leader, we can begin to see a framework emerge for self-awareness.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

That's right. Remember at the beginning of this episode, I talked about how in the organizational setting, we can sometimes reduce self-awareness to intermittent feedback reports that we get from an employee engagement survey or our self-assessment or a 360-degree feedback report. Again, I'm not saying that those are not useful tools, but when those are the only pieces of self-awareness data that we get, which is quite common in organizations, it's almost like going to a movie halfway through and then leaving before the conclusion. Most of that data that we're receiving is moment in time feedback that we get without much context or any kind of direction on how we're supposed to use that feedback. And I might add, that's a very reactive way of looking at self-awareness in the first place. But what if we took a more proactive approach to self-awareness? What if we truly stepped back and discovered the true context of the feedback that we are receiving? What if we gained an understanding of where our behaviors come from and we use that context to build frameworks for the self-awareness data and feedback we received? And what if that allowed us to build a more informed growth plan that arises out of that data? In other words, what if we knew and understood our personal ethos story? How we've been uniquely wired and built with great strengths, great possibilities, and some very real challenges to become the person with pastice-based leadership presence that we've been called to be. That's where we want to go with all this. That's where self-awareness transitions to self-reflection and then eventually to self-discipline and to make those growth plans a reality. But unfortunately, reflection is not where many leaders tend to go on their personal journey. Instead, they might say, Well, that's just the way I am, and people are just going to have to accept who I am. Or they may try to repress some of that contextual learning that we just described and basically say, Well, what's happened has happened, and I'm just going to build something new on top of that without really understanding or owning or dealing with it. Many others just proceed happily ignorant of who they are, how they got here, and who they could become. By definition, pastisted leadership will not allow you to do that. Understanding and owning one's own ethos story, the unique blend of strengths, challenges, and formative experiences is the cornerstone of developing a paste-based leadership presence. Instead of ignoring, repressing, or defensively accepting personal history, this approach involves deep, ongoing self-reflection to turn past experiences into a grounded, authentic, and inwardly anchored leadership style.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah. And I think the key takeaway from our conversation over the last couple of episodes is that we need to reach some concrete understanding about who we are as humans before we can reach a full understanding about who we are as individuals. Our human awareness informs our self-awareness. And if we don't have a good understanding of how humans operate as a whole, we may miss some really important signals that will help us to become the best person and the best leader we can be. When we begin owning our humanity and everything that comes with it, then we can move from human awareness into self-management, which includes self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-discipline, as I mentioned earlier. And then once we become consistent in self-management, we can move on to self-enhancement, which is where we can really capitalize on our potentiality and move toward what Aristotle called actuality.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, that's so true, Ellie. And in our program presence, we provide our participants with a series of tools and frameworks that help them define what change in ownership will look like in their own personal ethos story. And that's how leaders grow beyond reaction and into maturity.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Absolutely. And now that we've set the stage for a more fully informed self-awareness, we can begin that process of exploring our own behaviors, our wiring, our own brain beasts, and discover how to put the feedback that we get into the context of all of those personal elements. And that's where we're going to pick up in our next episode. Trust me, you don't want to miss it.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yep, that's going to be a great discussion. So once again, Alley, thanks so much for your insights and contributions. I look forward to seeing you for episode six. Can you believe that? That's wild. And if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 27:28

They can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn at MoveAir Coaching or on www.moveaircoaching.com.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Great. And thanks again for all of you listening to episode five. And remember, for more information about what we're doing at the Institute for Optimal Leadership Presence and how we can connect to discuss presence in your organization, you know what to do. Just go out to the Optimal Leadership Presence website at Iolp.net. Reach out to us through the contact link, and we can set up some time to talk. And we hope that you will join us for our next episode of the Presence Podcast. Until then, take care of yourself and eat well.