Using Brain Science to Communicate and Lead Technical Teams Effectively

Transcript

Shane Hastie: Good day folks. This is Shane Hastie for the InfoQ Engineering Culture Podcast. Today, I have the privilege and pleasure of sitting down with Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg. Did I get that close enough, Charlotte?

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Close enough, close enough.

Shane Hastie: Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Thank you. It’s a pleasure.

Shane Hastie: My normal starting point with these conversations is who’s Charlotte?

Introductions [01:05]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: So, I am a mother. I’m a psychologist. I’m co-founder of Bravely. I’m a wife. I’m an enthusiastic marathon and high rocks athletes. I’m a friend to an awesome bunch of people and I’m very passionate about making people more aware of how they can communicate more easily and make their life in the lives of those around them much more easy.

Shane Hastie: So, we are here in the InfoQ Engineering Culture Podcast. We are met because you’ve been engaged with the QCon conferences and you’re talking in those conferences to the engineering folks about the human skills.

Connecting Psychology with Engineering Culture [01:56]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Yes. I love the tone. Why? How do these connect? Yes. So, I think to give you just a little bit of background, I am a business psychologist. I used to work for corporates, global, very large companies, jetting around the world, really nice working with leadership teams, supporting them in how to lead better and more efficiently. And I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about resistance and how to make people as effective as they could possibly be. And then at some point, Jozine, the co-founder of Bravely, the company that I own or we own together came to me. She was working at a scale up binder and she said, “Why don’t you join me in setting up a leadership program for us?”

And we started working with this tech crowd. And I think one of the things I loved the most was to see how open they are to learn, right? They’re always so curious for better ways to do things. They’re very quick, they’re very agile, they’re very curious, they’re hungry to improve. And I saw this massive potential for bringing in very concrete human skills. Things like reading people knowing more about the brain to motivate and engage better dealing with resistance, having tough conversations. These fairly simple, but very effective skills because they would make teams so much more effective in what they do. And of course, we can all focus on what’s the newest tech innovation and that’s highly relevant and I get that.

But if nobody in your team wants to listen, if nobody wants to be on board simply because they don’t get along, all that innovation is going to get you nowhere. So, it felt like this key element that was missing in these very fast-growing scale-ups that was the human element. So, that’s when we thought hmm, this is fun, this is what we should do. And I think one of the most fun things in the programs that we do when we work with engineers, for example, is that after two or three sessions, we always come into these rooms and we see this group of beaming people and all of them always tell us, “It’s not just at work, but my friends or my partner or my parents, they’re so surprised. It’s so much easier to connect with them.

I finally get them, I can read them, I understand them. It just makes life easier on so many fronts”. So, it’s very rewarding to work especially with this group of experts.

Shane Hastie: So, we have, dare I say, the stereotypical engineer who is not renowned for having these people skills and who is possibly uncomfortable about how do I interact with my manager, how if I’ve got a challenge that I’m facing that I need their support, how do I bring them on board as just one example of a real challenge?

Understanding Different Brain Capabilities [05:19]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Yep. And understandably so, the brain is capable of many, many things. I think what we sometimes fail to see is that human skills and being very apt into reading people and being flexible about your skills in human behaviour, being able to adapt and to read that is quite a specific skill. It’s not something that every brain develops equally for every person. It depends on your background, your upbringing, what is triggered, what your talents are. So, it’s not something that I would expect for an individual who is very developed in, for example, a technical area like in analytical thinking, strategic thinking to also be equally developed in human skills, for example.

It’s a very different area, so naturally you can’t develop them all equally. So, I also think that this expectation of making very technically gifted and able people, a leader and expect them without training, without proper onboarding or skill development to just do the job perfectly and manage relationships wonderfully, it’s a massive ask because it’s just a different area of expertise. It’s like asking me, my people skills are well-developed if you ask me to develop software, give me a few years before I can even get close to doing that. And I will need heaps of training to do so because it’s not a natural talent for me, right? So, it’s not fair to assume that human skills are something that’s just naturally there.

That’s just not the way it works. It needs to be developed as well. I think one of the core ingredients to a more easy or less scary communication be that managing up or managing towards a peer that you need to give critical feedback to, or maybe give bad news to one of your team members is to not be as afraid of the emotion that could come back. A lot of the engineers that we talk to daily in our work are worried about the response they’re going to get. They’re worried about hurting someone, or they’re worried about someone getting angry or misunderstanding them or reacting in a way that they don’t know how to handle.

Emotions as Information [07:58]

And I think one of the key takeaways of our conversation today, and most of the conversations I have with very technically gifted people is that emotions are information. You can use them as information to make an informed decision. You don’t have to have a natural reaction to them. You don’t have to give someone a hug because they’re crying or whatever. You can use it as information to make it a strategic and informed decision of the behavior you’re going to use next. So, not to make people turn into robots, that’s not what I’m saying, but emotion is information and that’s the way to use it.

And once you see it that way, it’s not as scary anymore because you’re highly analytical, you’re very strategic, you are problem solver. So, if you use information that way, you can use it in the way that your brain operates best.

Shane Hastie: So, would this fall into what is called emotional intelligence?

Developing Emotional Intelligence [09:05]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Yes, I think you can say that. I mean it’s also emotional intelligence once again makes a lot of people flinch because it’s like, “Oh no. It’s one of those things that you’re able to read the whole room and you read the atmosphere and you almost intuitively know what to do”. That idea of being intuitive about something, almost making an unconscious choice that happens after you’ve consciously learned. So, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. You’re going to give an emotional reflection that really doesn’t align and the other person’s going to say, “What? I’m not angry”, right? So, there are going to be moments where you practice these emotional skills and it doesn’t work. And that is true for every skill that you learn.

Very often when the environment allows us to or stimulates us, we learn these skills as children, right? You react to an emotion and it really backfires, but you learn that throughout life as other people have learned more technical skills, right? So, it’s not something that will just magically happen for no one. So, it’s normal to make mistakes, so to say, and to have to keep trying. There will come a point when you’ve practiced this enough where it will feel like it’s intuitive, but it’s something that you need to learn. So, dealing with rejection, dealing with conflict, dealing with big emotions for everybody is a skill that you need to learn.

Shane Hastie: So, let’s dig into conflict on a team. And it’s not uncommon, we’re human beings with everything that we bring and we’re struggling to align around an approach and two or three members of the team having distinctly different and passionate views. How do I as the team lead, tap into that passion and get the best out of this?

How the Brain Works: Content vs. Emotions [11:10]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Maybe to give just a little bit of brain context first, and this accounts for every conversation or every situation that’s challenging basically. Every time you have the feeling of, “Oh, I don’t know what to do, what’s happening”, or people are getting heated or people are shutting down. Whenever you feel emotions are getting in the way of content, so content is logic, ratio, output, decision making, next steps, right? Everything that basically you could put on paper. Everything that’s about how can we move on. So, work basically, work is content.

Every time you notice that a dynamic, or somebody’s feelings or the way that they handle the situation is getting in the way of taking next steps or finding a compromise, coming to a solution, that means that emotions are at play. Now, emotions throughout evolution have been one of the cornerstones to keeping us as a race. I mean, we’re animals at the end of the day to keeping us safe. Humans are herd animals. Alone, we die. It’s as simple as that. Go back a hundred thousand years, living in caves.

If you were alone, you would be eaten, you would starve or you’d be eaten by an animal, you would die. So, we need to be together, we need to stick together with our in-group herd, so to say.

And what you see happened is that emotion developed in such a way, that’s also why the stem of your brain. So, the part that we call fight, flights, you’ve maybe heard of that before, freeze or fawn. Those are the four survival strategies we know now. They are at the very base of our brain, part of the oldest part of our brain. We also call it the reptile brain or the survival brain. And that part, and this is important to remember, that part always wins because it’s the most important to our survival. That part decides before you can even think about what to do. And it still serves us right?

If you cross the street and suddenly, there’s a car coming around the corner you didn’t expect, you don’t just stand there and go, “Hmm, how fast is this car driving? What’s the weather like? What is the best thing to do?” No, then you would’ve been run over, right? You jump out of the way or you stop it. Or your brain decides before you can rationally with your frontal part of the brain before you can rationally make a decision. So, your survival brain always wins. And when emotions are at play, that part of the brain takes over. Any rational decision is made in the front, in the frontal lobe, the youngest part of our brain, the newest edition so to say. And that is the part that got us to the moon. It’s great, right?

It’s wonderful. That’s where we want to work. That’s where we make our rational decisions on which software to develop next, or what will be the next release or whatever. But that doesn’t guarantee our survival. So, in terms of evolution of our body as humans of our neuropsychology, it’s irrelevant. It’s a nice to have. But even if it’s a meeting and we rationally know nobody’s going to get eaten here, nobody will die here. Our brain doesn’t know that. It’s like a blob in a black box. It only gets information through our eyes and our ears and it interprets things in its own way. Our brain hasn’t really caught up with the reality not being eaten, of that not being such a big threat anymore.

The Survival Brain in Modern Meetings [14:56]

So, we still operate a little bit in caveman mode. So, when emotions come in the way, that part of the brain takes over. So, if for example, you’re in a meeting, like that situation you were describing and somebody is very passionately making their point, it’s very, very likely that their brain has left the rational part and has gone into the emotional, especially when they repeat themselves because they need to feel heard. Their voice raises or they become flustered. You see red spots, or they get a little angry or frustrated. You already know they will be in their survival part of their brain, no longer in the rational brain. So, at that point in time, it makes no sense to speak to the rational brain.

That could sound, for example, well give me some more arguments or give me some more reasons, or give me the data or what do you expect? How is this going to go, right? That is all speaking to the rational brain, to the content brain. And at that moment, you’re speaking Chinese and they do not speak Chinese, but they speak English. They’re unable to understand you. It’s not coming through. Maybe you already know that feeling, right? When you try to talk to someone and you’re just not landing, you’re not coming through to them, that’s because you’re speaking to the wrong part of the brain. You’re probably still trying to appeal to their rational brain while they are in their emotional.

The Power of Summarizing [16:29]

Now what can you do? What we need as humans, because we are group people, because we are live in herds, is that we need to feel understood, heard, and seen. We need to feel like others are taking us seriously. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to summarize what somebody else has said. Because if you are in a full right, you may having this big point about why we really need to choose this method over that method and it’s very important and this is what the team is expecting, and this will give us the best revenue, ladidadida. And I just say, “Yes, yes, whatever. Okay, Jim, what do you think?” Basically, what I’m showing your brain is I’m not listening to you, so you’re not safe with me. I need to reflect that I hear you.

So, it could sound like, “Ah, okay, so if I hear you correctly, you think that we should choose method X because that is what the team is expecting. So, they will perform best, it will be most efficient for our revenue, ladida”, right? So, you summarize their points and then you end with, “Is that true or did I get that right?” So, you check in with them and then you will most of the time literally see the shoulders drop. You’ll see the breath go down and somebody goes, “Ah, yes”. And you will notice the emotion and the stress go down simply because their brain senses, “Ah, okay, we’ve been heard. Cool, we don’t need to run or fight or make a big deal out of this. It’s noted. Okay”.

Now very important in a summary is to be non-judgmental when it’s well, so you think that this is the best way to go about it, I’m not sure, but anyways, that’s what you think, right? Okay, so if it’s judgmental, you get the gist, people notice. And if you want to play into safety, into psychological safety and trust in that relationship, you’re destroying it with that. So, try to be as non-judgmental as you can. Just summarize what you hear. And if there are emotions in their statement, please add them too. So, for example, I hear that you’re very passionate about choosing method X, because you really believe that that’s the best way to go.

Managing Up and Passionate Team Members [19:03]

And by the way, this is a great skill not only for the very passionate team member that you have, this also works when you’re managing up or when you have a client, even though you think they’re wrong. On a content level, if you know it’s not right what they’re asking, what’s not possible or it’s not going to happen or not going to work, just summarize them, summarize how important it is to them, how big of a deal it is. You will notice the emotions go down. And once they do, then we can appeal to their rational brain again. Then we could say something like, “Would it be okay for you if I explained my point of view? Or would it be okay if we went through the data together?”

Would it be okay if I talked to you through the options? And same with when you have three or four team members that are very passionate, you summarize them, right? Notice emotions go down, you ask, is this it? Maybe there’s something they need to add. Okay, let them add it. Just give it another minute and then say, “Right, I hear you. Would it be okay if we now listen to all the other opinions and then put all the perspectives on the board and find a common denominator?” “Yes. Cool, let’s move on”. If you don’t do that, what you will see is people will keep interrupting each other. They will talk through each other or they will completely zone out, which is also an emotional reaction. That’s freeze. People just don’t respond anymore.

The Cost of Ignoring Emotions [20:32]

You’ll clearly notice they’re out. And what you will see that if eventually you get to a compromise that’s very hard fought and it’s taken you hours probably or another meeting, people will not be fully on board. They won’t be committed because they did not make the choice when they were in their rational brain. And what also happens is if somebody is in their survival brain, we know from research that their long-term memory storage is severely inhibited. Sometimes, they don’t even remember what they say yes to. So, we make these arrangements and we make these deals, and then afterwards, people don’t stick to it. And as a leader, you’re completely frustrated. Well, they don’t even remember.

I hear this all the time from leaders that say, yes, and then I get an email with loads of questions. We talked about that two days ago. That’s because people just don’t remember. They were in a survival stage when you talked about it. So, it’s a waste of everybody’s time. So, I like to call this slowing down to speed up. I know it can be frustrating when somebody’s high in emotions and you have so much to go through in this meeting, and there are so many decisions that need to be made and it’s rushed and the client’s pushing and your manager’s pushing. I get it.

The same time, having everyone be in their survival brain and trying to force a decision is going to cost you so much work and time down the road. Rather, slow down in the moment, summarize what they say, double check that everything’s been said, ask if it’s okay to move on, hear everybody’s perspective, structure this process and calm as much as you can. So, you notice emotions go down and people can come back to their rational brain. Any decision you make at that point, it will be significantly more short that it’s actually going to be done and done in a way that you agreed upon. Very simple, but listening that way, summarizing helps in most situations.

Shane Hastie: The other common situation, and you touched on it earlier on, the newly appointed leader. So, I’ve been a great technologist and I’m now put into a position of having to lead. Where do I start?

Psychological Safety and Trust [23:00]

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Yes, tough. All due respect, it’s not an easy position. What is very, very tempting and what we see in practice a lot at Bravely, we work with many leaders that have zero to five years experience. What’s very tempting is to rush into content, right? Go straight into this is what we’re going to do. This is the next release, this is the bug we need to fix. This is the best way to work to dive straight into that. Now, there is a concept that we like to call soft on the relationship, tough on the content, which means that in terms of relationship, if you think back to evolution, we want people to feel psychologically safe. Psychological safety has become one of those cool terms, right? It’s as old as psychology.

So, there is nothing new or woke about it. It’s simply a concept where people feel able to express their opinion, where they feel safe enough to give feedback and to receive feedback. So, really in terms of content where people can work efficiently, if there is no psychological safety, people are not able to be creative. They can’t think outside the box. They are much less effective than they could be, and also they won’t feel very happy to work. So, the chances of turnover of them leaving, taking all their knowledge with them is much, much higher. So, we want high psychological safety and also we want a lot of trust. They go hand in hand.

Now what we see is that if you invest in the relationship, it’s much easier for people to regulate themselves back to a rational brain state. And maybe you know that feeling when you’ve known somebody for a long time. A good friend, let’s say, you meet them again and they say to you, “Hey, what is going on with you? You’re being off. You’re weird. You are short with me. What’s happening?” And you may have a moment of, “Oh, why’d you say that to me, right?” But it’s one of your best friends. You trust this person. They mean no harm. They have the best intentions. So, if they give you feedback that stings, there’s a reason why. And it’s not to put a knife in your back, but it’s because they’re genuinely worried about you.

So, it’s much easier to then be able to reflect and go, “Actually, I think you’re right. I’ve just had a horrible day”. And you can maybe vent about it a bit, and you’re able to regulate yourself back to your rational brain and make an informed decision of how you want to proceed. Emotions can take over, right? They can almost blackmail us into doing things that afterwards we think, “Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Or why didn’t I speak up? Or why did I shout at my team? Why did I do that? It’s not effective, it’s not efficient”. That’s your emotions hijacking you.

Building Strong Relationships [25:59]

And the stronger the relationships are with the people in your team, the more trust there is, the easier it will be for yourself and for them to regulate back because you feel safe. So, when you give them feedback, for example, it’s much easier for them to actually take it on board, rather than give resistance and say yes, but he said, or she said, oh yes, but that’s because sales sold the product and then we have to build it, right? The classics, it’s not done to me, it’s to them or victim blame or whatever. That happens because people just don’t feel safe. So, when you become a new leader, the first thing I encourage you to do is to fully, fully invest into the relationship. And you don’t have to become best friends.

Actually, my advice is rather, don’t become best friends. You also need to work together, but strengthen the relationship. Ask them about where are you from? Who are you? Tell me about what were you like as a kid? Why did you ever start being interested in technology? How did that come about? What’s the first thing you built? What do you love to do in your free time? Anything but work, honestly, anything but work. You already heard me say it. What I love to ask people about is where are you from? So, what’s your past and whatever they want to share about it, right? What were you like as a kid? What’s your family? What did you do during the holidays? What’s your favorite thing to watch as a kid?

Anything that says something about them from their childhood that they want to share with you. Who are you now? What’s your life like? What gives you energy? What makes you feel super motivated? Or what’s something you hate? What’s your favorite food? What are you working on? What is something you enjoy or challenges you? And where do you want to go? And that really doesn’t have to be about work, but more like how do you see your life? In an ideal world, what would you love to do at some point? So, make sure it’s not work-related. And the earlier in the relationship you do this, the more natural it is because it’s very weird when you’ve worked with somebody for half a year and you give them feedback and everything is just about work, right?

And then suddenly you go, “What were you like as a kid?” Everyone’s like, “What?” So, especially when you can do that. So, if you are already leading a team now and you think, “Oh, this is actually quite a good thing to do”, just say to your team members, “Hey, you know what, I feel like on a professional and work level, we’re great, we’re aligned and we work well together. But I would love for us to just know each other a little bit better so that we can solve conflict quicker or that things just become more natural. Would it be okay if we have some chats about that?” “Yes, cool”, right? It doesn’t have to become a very awkward thing, but then you want to frame it a little bit.

Definitely invest in relationship fast because once you do, you can be much quicker, efficient and direct on the content. You will see people are much more happy to hear your feedback, work with your feedback, find solutions together, and also you will see it within the team. So, this is a great exercise to do with your team members together. When you have an offsite, you can even do this remotely. Have them speed date with each other on where are you from? Who are you now, and where are you going with the rule of not talking about work? Just have them speed date. You will see relationships get stronger quickly.

Shane Hastie: A lot of stuff there, a lot of good, real advice. When we were chatting earlier, I asked you for actionable advice, so you’ve definitely delivered on that. If people want to continue the conversation, where do they find you?

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg: Find me on LinkedIn or find our company on LinkedIn.

Shane Hastie: Thank you so much.

Mentioned:

Charlotte de Jong Schouwenburg on LinkedIn