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Tag Archive for: Leadership

CEO Advice – Jannie Mouton – “It’s What You Focus On”

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We hear often that the business environment in South Africa is prohibitively challenging. Undoubtedly much more needs to be done to unburden businesses, particularly small businesses, from the bureaucratic red tape. However a less competitive environment is a huge advantage. Jannie Mouton, founder of PSG…

“Yes, we have unbelievable challenges, but as I often tell people, we started a bank called Capitec in South Africa and it’s an unbelievable success. We don’t have a chance at starting something like that in America or Europe. It’s already been done there.”

Mouton feels there are opportunities everywhere. “For me the [RSA] environment throws up obvious opportunities in education, banking, the food sector, and now electricity.”  

Rather than seeing problems, how about we see opportunities. In fact, make a mental note of whatever you complain about next. Could that be an opportunity? If it’s not yours, it’s certainly someone else’s.  

Moutons advice “Formulate your plan, refer back often, adapt as things change and EXECUTE!”

Johannes “Jannie” Mouton, a qualified chartered accountant, is the founder and chairman of PSG Financial Services (now serving as a non-executive director). He is a renowned South African businessman with over 35 years experience in financial management and investment banking.

Why neuroscience matters for business

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It’s imperative that business leaders can create a lasting environment in which creativity, meaning and purpose can thrive. How and why does neuroscience come into this? Harnessing neuroscience lets us embed sustainable behaviour change in existing leadership patterns, in turn leading teams to be more innovative and allowing organisations to flourish within a culture of trust.

Our brains are by no means fixed or set in adulthood: we are all capable of neuroplasticity, changing the way with think and feel about things.  If we want to make a change, say from fixed to growth mindset, we have to do it consciously and deliberately with awareness, focus and attention. In applying ourselves to a new skill or activity in this way, we can retain the capacity for the brain to change, reformat and potentially grow well into our 60s.

We can of course also help the brain by ensuring that we care for it. When working with new clients, the first thing we tackle is not just their surrounding environment, but their internal environment. Sleep is one of the key factors in neurological health that cannot be ignored. Many executives survive on far too little. What they don’t realise is that lack of sleep can have the same effect on your decision-making ability as being drunk. This is not what executives are hired and paid for. Seven to nine hours of sleep is key for the cerebrospinal fluid that sits around your brain and spinal cord to filter through the brain.  We can also help the brain by resting during the day (short naps, for example) if we want to and are able to.

What we put in our bodies as fuel also has a huge impact on how our brain works. Our body is not just a convenient vehicle for moving the brain from meeting to meeting. We receive a lot of information and input from our bodies. In the stomach and gut, you find almost all of the neurotransmitters – such as serotonin and dopamine – that are also active in the brain, and help us make decisions and function in everyday life.The gut is often referred to as the other brain. Caring for both body and brain with a healthy diet, we can improve our brain’s effectiveness at work. Good hydration is equally important; likewise, cutting back on alcohol and caffeine is ideal.

Senior leaders also need to understand the effect that stress hormones – cortisol and adrenaline – can have on our bodies and on those around us. What’s even more interesting is that cortisol can spread around an office. That’s right. It hangs around the body and can be absorbed by others through the skin; this effect is even stronger is if it is the leader that is stressed. Reducing cortisol and adrenaline are key to a happy and creative work environment. It can be sweated out through exercise. Other things that help include mindfulness, meditation, journaling and coaching – where you can release tension and worrisome thoughts onto paper or to another person.

Sometimes it’s not possible to remove the stressors from our lives. In these cases resilience, or an ability to deal with stress, is key. If we are able to use our brain plasticity to reframe and rethink the stress we’re feeling, we will be more resilient to its negative effects.

In sum, neuroscience turns out to be far more important for business than we might first imagine. Neuroscience-based coaching, and drawing on the remarkable plasticity of the brain, helps create the ideal environment and mindset in which business leaders can thrive, enjoy their work, and build happier teams too.
Tara Swart, CEO of The Unlimited Mind, is a medical doctor and neuroscientist. She will be speaking at South Africa’s only ‘Happiness-at-Work’ event this December. Learn more here.

From Sluggish Caterpillar to Exquisite Social Butterfly

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FROM SLUGGISH CATERPILLAR TO EXQUISITE SOCIAL BUTTERFLY REQUIRES A RADICAL LEADERSHIP METAMORPHOSIS

A social butterfly can be described as a socially dynamic, obsessive networker with gregarious flare and engaging charisma.

The BIG client question this month: How do I get people in my organisation to engage with my social media channels?

Doctor’s orders! Neuroscience and the rules for engagement.

To determine a solution and offer advice, I err towards rigorous scientific research on how people think. Currently, we’re working with Dr Tara Swart on the Neuroscience for Leadership and her findings on how to apply neuroscience in order to get the most from your people’s hearts and minds. These are a few of her insights;

  • Acknowledge that people have a deep desire to co-operate.
  • People are hard wired for risk/loss avoidance rather than opportunity seeking.
  • Leaders need to show heaps of authentic empathy to give people a safe place to fail forward and learn.
  • Creating a sense of curiosity, plus frequent moments of surprise and delight helps people to become more creative and excited.
  • Neuro-scientifically, medically, emotionally and spiritually, it always comes down to one thing: a sense of meaning.

In particular, the BTB social media space presents its own unique set of challenges. As in the case of a butterfly’s metamorphosis, the “BTB caterpillar” is a content and time hungry medium that requires deep thought, lots of time and most often, does not show up as very “social”.

Another one of BRGs great Guru thinkers, Dave Ulrich, he suggests we no longer hire hands and need to engage the hearts and minds of our people to achieve extraordinary success. Applying respect, empathy, a sense of meaning can unlock the potential and encourage the engagement of the people you work with.

Whilst we have chosen to apply these leadership insights to social media, they can be applied to any leadership or change intervention.

My 10 plus tips to get people in your organisation to use their personal channels and become fanatical, yet responsible, brand ambassadors!

  1. Take the Lead. Make sure all c-suite people use their personal channels to promote content related to your brand, products & services. @MichaelJordaan found the time to do this at a very busy time while he (CEO) was making his bank the most innovative bank in the world. As did Steve Jobs.
  2. Go to their party. Follow them, engage with them and acknowledge their contributions 24/7. As Martin Lindstrom advises, “we are living in a “me-erism’ world”. Care about their causes.
  3. “My space” is not your space. Don’t be a narcissist. A sense of entitlement is narcissistic. Respect that this is their space and acknowledge the privilege for you to access their network and the tribes they belong to.
  4. Sense of pride. Give them a sense of belonging to your organisation – so much so, they want to shout it out from the rooftops. When I embark on a new and exciting project I want to tell the world about it and I do.
  5. Whats In it For Me. Evidence how their contribution adds value to their personal career portfolio and future opportunities. At some point they are going to move on and first impressions really do count. Educate people on their CLM’s.
  6. Trial & Error. Make sure there is absolutely no fear of failure. Allow for a margin of error and even failure. Give them a very safe space to play and coach when necessary.
  7. Freedom of Choice. Recommend they select which of their social media channels they prefer to use for business purposes. My Facebook space is for family and friends… the others reflect my more serious side.
  8. Healthy behaviour is contagious. Celebrate success. Share your social media success and results. Send out your weekly analytics acknowledge the positive.
  9. 24/7 and 365. Most importantly avoid a social media crisis! Track your social media all of the time; the last thing you need is a negative, rampant and viral Domino’s Pizza experience initiated by a bunch of sad and disgruntled employees.
  10. Train, educate, retrain, retrain and retrain them. As Tara says, “learning a new cognitive skill helps build neurons which create new undiscovered pathways in your brain”. Just another plus side to developing their skills.

On the 18th March 2015, Dr Tara Swart, a medical doctor, neuroscientist, psychiatrist, MIT Faculty member and global consultant to C Suite Executives, will present her latest findings in respect of Neuroscience for Leadership at The BRG Progress Conference at The Forum, Campus in Bryanston.

For further information contact Angela Milburn on 0861 247 328 or email angela@brg.co.za

APPLYING NEUROSCIENCE TO AFFECT REAL BEHAVIOUR CHANGE IN YOUR ORGANISATION: HOW TO TRANSITION FROM A FIXED MINDSET TO A GROWTH MINDSET | DRAWING PEOPLE TOWARDS A POSSIBLE FUTURE

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January 2015

Can we harness neuroscience to embed sustainable behaviour change in existing organisations?

If you have been involved in any change intervention you will have realised that the biggest obstacle to affecting change is the ability to change people’s mindsets. Management science has introduced many techniques to address this including, incentive programmes, communication techniques, performance measurement and employee engagement techniques. Research has subsequently shown that with these traditional measures only 54% of change interventions succeed.

What do you get when you consult with a Neuroscientist, Psychiatrist, Academic and Medical Doctor to seek out an exact science to affect change? You get Dr Tara Swart. With all of the above competencies in her skill set Tara is at the forefront of applied neuroscience for business performance

Enter a new science for management. She says, “In a knowledge economy people are paid to use their brains to face constant change, so learning and adaptability have become synonymous with success.” This is where the Neuroscience comes in.

In essence she describes the two types of people typically found in organisations without much, if any, overlap.

Type 1: The fixed mind set:  The people that are fearful of making mistakes. (Probably because they know they won’t be supported when they do). To fail for them is shame inducing and painful. These are the people that are wired to avoid risk and as such resist change. They are largely concerned with fear and shame which affects their cortisol levels.

Type 2: The growth mind set: The people that are fearful of losing out on opportunities. Failure for them is not bad and can even be exciting. These people would feel ashamed if they sat on the side lines. They thrive on surprises and are largely driven by joy, excitement, love and trust which affects their oxytocin levels.

So now that we know what makes the two types of people in our organisation tick and neuroscience has evidenced that neuroplasticity can shift people from fixed mind sets to growth mind sets we need to determine how leaders can apply neuroscience to affect required behavioural change. There is little point in changing the brains if they still need to operate in an environment that doesn’t encourage risk taking and innovation.

DR TARA SWART’S ADVICE FOR LEADERS TO STEP CHANGE MINDSETSFOR NEW REQUIRED BEHAVIOUR. WINNING THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF YOUR PEOPLE.

Remember leaders are like the pre-frontal cortex of the people they serve.

  1. Engage empathy from your people for the context of a problem.
  2. Support risk taking and offer support in the face of a poor result.
  3. Cherish the “aha” moments of surprise and delight.
  4. Leverage the instinctive desire of your people to co-operate.
  5. Recognise that our brains are more acutely geared towards loss-avoidance than reward seeking.
  6. Be aware of threats perceived by people in your team and apply empathy to transform the frozen state of threat avoidance into creativity and trust building.
  7. Ensure your empathy is authentic. People can detect when your empathy lacks integrity and sincerity and will mentally and emotionally disengage.
  8. Define each person’s meaning and purpose in respect of your change intervention.
  9. Guard against transmitting your threat states. People perceive them and it destabilises your organisational culture.

On the 18th March 2015, Dr Tara Swart, a medical doctor, neuroscientist, psychiatrist, MIT Faculty member and global consultant to C Suite Executives, will present her latest findings in respect of Neuroscience for Leadership at The Progress Conference at The Forum, Campus Bryanston.

For further information visit: www.theprogressconference.com or email angela@brg.co.za