Today we will unpack the basics of the Emotional Brain.
Recall the 3 Brain Model you were introduced to in the last session.
In this Session we are going to start with a focus on unpacking the Emotional Brain also known as the Mid Brain or Limbic System.
The Emotional Brain is our meaning centre (located in the centre of our brain). This actually is the part of the brain that will trigger the Survival Brain and fight flight responses that we learnt about in the previous session. This is because the Emotional Brain assigns meaning to what we are experiencing.
If we have established we are safe and there is no need to trigger the CROC, the Emotional Brain will then also process whether what we are experiencing is meaningful to us in other ways.
Let's revisit our 4 year olds. If you have ever known a 4 year old, you will know that it is very difficult to motivate a 4 year old to do something that is not meaningful to them. To engage in action, the activity needs to be meaningful. So they must have connected very meaningfully to the challenge of building that spaghetti tower! In fact because this was so meaningful and their full focus was on that meaningful outcome, they performed the best.
The meaning we assign to situations, directly impacts our motivations or lack of. Meaning is closely related to our beliefs, which will be unpacked a whole lot more in later sessions.
The Emotional Brain assesses the meaning of
things and social situations – it basically filters 'what is the meaning to
me’. Taking back our thinking to the spaghetti experiment briefly, the low performing business students meaning was not attached to the outcome (even though they probably would think otherwise), their meaningful goal was actually to contribute appropriately and not do anything wrong.
The Emotional Brain also is the 'gateway' to the largest part of our brain, The Thinking Brain where all that creative and innovative processing occurs. If our emotional brain decides 'this is not meaningful to me' then we will not go through this gateway and we will see behaviour that reflects disinterest/disengagement. If one of those 4 year olds decided that building the tower was not meaningful to then, they would likely have wandered off to find something else to play.
For us adults however there are a whole lot of social expectations of behaviour, so we are less likely to do that, especially in a work situation, unless the CROC Brain engages our flee response of course!
Yet internally, our 'brains' have flicked the off switch if we have decided 'this is not meaningful to me'.
So what might we notice if our people are feeling safe but not meaningfully engaged?
And on the other hand, what might we notice if our people are meaningfully engaged?
REFLECTION
The Emotional Brain at Work
When your people are not meaningfully engaged you might see...
Note down some BEHAVIOURS you have observed that may have been governed by the Emotional Brain NOT being meaningfully engaged.
Note down some possible THOUGHTS & FEELS that might have led do these behaviours.
When your people are meaningfully engaged you might see...
Now note down some BEHAVIOURS you have observed that may have been governed by the Emotional Brain being meaningfully engaged.
Note down some possible THOUGHTS & FEELS that might have led do these behaviours.
