Changing minds: The neuroscience of change management in law firms

For managing partners, leading change in the new legal age is hard. It is easy to get stuck and to feel overwhelmed. However, neuroscience research can be used to give you new perspectives on leading change.

Despite all of our technological advances, the brain is primitive. It weighs about 1.4 kilograms and has a minimum of 900 billion brain cell connections called neurons, each with more than 1,000 contacts (synapses) with other neurons.
It produces 25 watts of electricity a second (equivalent to a small light bulb).

The next stage in human evolution
will be expanded conscious awareness. Your brain consists of your unconscious basal ganglia, deep in the centre of your brain, and your conscious thinking, the prefrontal cortex at the front of your head. This is where your mind resides, your conscious awakening.

Your unconscious mind, or basal ganglia, is a collection of mechanisms that perform the vital autopilot functions that keep you alive. It regulates your heartbeat, breathing and repetitive motor movements like walking. It sends a million little scouts to survey the landscape and report back, storing most of what it encounters and processing up to a million bits of information a second.

The conscious mind, by contrast, is far more selective. It can only pay attention to
a maximum of four things at a time, so choose carefully. Immediate memory can only remember up to seven items at a time,
with three being the optimal number.

Intentions v behaviour

There is a gap between our conscious intentions and our unconscious behaviour. The unconscious mind is hardwired to resist change. It is a lot bigger and stronger than the conscious mind and has been honed over millions of years of evolution. Our brains are driven by basic responses towards pleasure or away from pain, based on external stimuli processed by the limbic system or emotional centre of the brain. When it senses a threat, the amygdala hijacks our conscious brains. This primitive knee-jerk reaction puts us in automatic
fight or flight model; we are hijacked by
fear which often isn’t rational.

There are three things you can do to lead minds in the direction you want to
take them:

1. set a clear direction;

2. motivate unconscious minds; and

3. clear the path.

When the unconscious and conscious parts of the brain are working together in harmony, a powerful dual processor core creates optimal performance.

Being humble and setting the right leadership tone puts people at ease and reduces the status threat inherent in law firms. Providing clear communication of expectations helps to increase certainty. Letting others take charge and make decisions increases their autonomy.

The real skill of the managing partner is to lead without appearing to lead. Being authentic, a real person, creates a sense
of personal connection and relatedness.
By being open and transparent and listening to their followers, natural leaders create a sense of fairness that builds personal trust.

Embracing change

Our brains are naturally hardwired to resist change. Our unconscious emotional brains crave safety. So, to embrace change, you have to focus your conscious brain.

First, you need to have the intention to do something. Then, you need to pay attention to what you want to do. Next, you need to do it. Then, repeat the process.

Attention density changes the brain. Every time you pay attention to something, the neurons in your brain fire and your neural paths rewire. The brain is plastic, wired to change to meet the challenges
of a constantly-changing environment.
But if you want to be in charge, you need
to be mindful.

Attention is the key that unlocks your free will; it is the gatekeeper to your awareness. Consciousness acts as a ‘bright spot’ on the stage, directed by the selective spotlight of attention.

Mindfulness can activate wilfully-directed attention. For Buddhists, it is the moment of restraint that allows mindful awareness to take hold and deepen. Directed mental force stops the grinding machines of the unconscious. Mindfulness is falling awake, getting out of your own way and paying attention in the moment.

Building relationships

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou

We are wired to be social. Our default network in the brain is social. We are driven by relationships. When our brains are relaxed, we start thinking of ourselves and other people in our social networks. We are social animals, strongly dependent on our social standing in our social groups to survive and thrive.

Circuitry has been recently discovered in the brain that lets us tune into and resonate emotionally with each other during a face-to-face interaction. Video conferences can’t replicate this human connectedness so, if it is really important, get on that plane.

Your social brain is a mirror. The important discovery of mirror neurons that fire when we witness another person’s suffering gives a scientific basis to empathy. Without this ability to feel empathy and compassion, human beings would simply not be able to cooperate. Empathy is the basis of rapport and trust. Mirror neurons create the personal closeness that builds relationships.

Empathic concern is a key attribute of successful leaders. Empathic literacy, explicit understanding of what someone else feels and thinks at any given moment, is the key skill for leaders of change.

We are emotional beings. Your primitive limbic system is in control and coats everything with emotional significance.
You cannot make a rational decision without first getting an emotional response from your emotional brain. Every time we think, we are being influenced by feelings based on our emotional experiences.

According to the Institute of Heart Math, neural networks are contained in
the cardinal sack. So we really do see
from the heart.

Improving learning

Your brain is a self-organising emergent system. Every day, hundreds of thousands of synapses are released into the brain as a free-learning resource to make new connections. The brain is constantly adapting to a changing environment
in search of wholeness, to find a
natural order.

Learning is an emotional experience; we learn best when we are engaged.
The hippocampus, responsible for
memory, sits inside the limbic system,
the emotional centre of the brain.

Optimal learning is a social activity;
we learn best when we are in small
groups. So, leaders should create a multitude of informal opportunities for followers to learn together.

Importance of insight

Having powerful insights changes the brain and releases dopamine pleasure molecules and little hits of oxytocin, the reward chemical of the brain. This happens in the anterior cingulate cortex, the brain region for detecting novelty. When we have an insight, the brain oscillates in the gamma band - the fastest brain frequency waves - at forty times a second.

Insight is central to long-term change, but each person needs to have their own insight and not just listen to their leader’s insight. To encourage thinking, leaders need to ask questions with the word ‘think’ in them. Attention drives change and is the active ingredient for changing the brain.
A leader’s job is to help others to think better for themselves.

 

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Being a better leader

1. Hold the emerging space to help others think better

2. Demonstrate empathic concern to win the hearts of your followers

3. Intervene in a timely and mindful way, using intuition to decide when and how to act

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Leading change

In the new legal age, emergent leadership will be the new paradigm. Holding the emerging space for others to think better will be a key skill.

Your ability to lead others may well depend on your ability to lead yourself.
To consciously intervene, do things in a timely and mindful way. In essence, develop a greater level of cognitive control.

Observing your own thoughts is central to your ability to choose between the active and the passive, to switch from autopilot to taking control. Being more present and self aware, in the moment, leads to a state of ‘letting come’, allowing you to consciously participate in a larger field of change.

Honing your ability to observe your inner experience, to think about your thinking, to see what you’re seeing, to imagine different futures, to connect
the dots in search of wholeness and, above all to be mindful, will be the future leader’s way.

Nick Marson is CEO of The Parallel
Mind (www.parallel-mind.com)