Why don’t leaders always show the behaviours they want?

Patrick is a director in a large organization that decided to increase empowerment. Patrick realizes the importance of empowering his team to increase agility, motivation and success. He had a nice workshop with his team about empowerment, and many decisions that he used to make previously are now in the hands of his team. Everyone is happy with this positive change, and the first weeks show good progress.

Then the pressure arrives

Unfortunately, the revenues are not as good as planned and Patrick had a very tough meeting with his boss, who is disappointed. Everyone is under pressure, especially Patrick. He feels bad, he’s afraid he won’t be able to deliver what he promised, and he’s very frustrated. During the next meeting with his team, some issues and small mistakes are revealed. Patrick is now even angrier and more afraid of not delivering. He has a feeling that he knows exactly what should be done, he shows his anger over the mistakes, and he gives firm instructions to his team. He becomes directive and dominant again. Now, the team members feel bad about the mistakes they made and lose confidence. As a result, they are afraid of making mistakes again and instead let Patrick make most of the decisions, even when they think of better solutions.

The result: Back to square one with slow and inefficient decision-making that negatively impacts agility.

This happens all the time. Leaders are convinced that they show behaviours in line with their values or their intentions. But as soon as they are under pressure, the behaviours they show are actually more in line with their fears or their old habits.

Why is that?

The parts of our brain responsible for behaviour are the limbic brain (the center of emotions) and the reptilian brain (the center of body functions and survival needs). The neocortex, our rational brain, is newer in our evolution. It is responsible for organizing, structuring and controlling emotions … but not for behaviour.

As soon as we are under pressure, the reptilian and limbic brains take over, and we may show behaviours driven by emotions, fears or old habits. That’s the defensive mechanism our body developed to keep us safe. As humans, we have been designed to survive, not to be happy or successful. In today’s fast-changing digital world, if we want to be successful, we have to learn to rewire our brain to change our behaviours. But to do that, we have to access the right areas of our brain by including our emotions and our body (or our limbic and reptilian brains).

Here are 4 things you could do to rewire your brain

What are the behaviours you show under pressure? Are these driven by fear and habits or by your intentions and values?

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