I remember seeing the film ‘Carrie’ when it first came out. If you are too young to have heard of this film it was a real classic of its time and featured at the end a scene still imprinted on my mind.
A beautiful young girl is floating down a lane carrying a small bunch of flowers for the grave of another girl.
The music is calm. As you watch you are feeling sad. I was as I sat there with my hand on the arm of my boyfriend.
As the girl kneels by the grave and gently lays down the flowers, suddenly a hand erupts from the grave and grabs her wrist.
It doesn’t sound that scary does it? But at the time it was, believe me. I grasped the arm of my poor boyfriend. A small detail that made it worse was that I used to play guitar and consequently had rather long fingernails on that hand. So the poor guy got the full feeling of something grabbing his wrist as well as the visual effect. No wonder he virtually leapt from his seat in an uncontrolled response. (We are still on speaking terms in spite of it.)
Though I laugh about it now (thirty years later) I can still remember how it felt.
At Work
We’ve all seen it happen at work too. Perhaps the circumstances aren’t as grisly, but the effect on the brain is the same. People panic or freeze when the chips are down. And, at the moment, there are a lot of chips down.
I was listening to a lecture by Amy Arnsten, Professor of Neurobiology at Yale University, as she explained what happens in your brain under these circumstances. Basically, an uncontrolled stress leads your body to turn off your prefrontal cortex.
What Do You Need Your Prefrontal Cortex For?
This is the part of your brain where your ‘higher cognitive functions’ take place. Here are some of the things it does:
* represent goals and information that are not there in the current environment
* conceptualise
* have ideas
* make plans
* organise what you are doing in a way that enables you to achieve your goals
* allows you to make decisions
* allows you to make judgements
* gives you insights into people and events
* inhibits inappropriate behaviour
* inhibits interference from distractions
Unfortunately, it’s very sensitive to the chemical environment (the hormones and other chemicals washing around) that it finds itself in. It needs them to be perfectly balanced to perform well in any situation.
This means that when you get stressed it shuts down because of the chemicals you generate when you are stressed. That’s what happens in the worst scenarios. You completely freeze and are unable to think.
How Do You Unfreeze Your Brain?
There are three ways of doing this I’m going to outline here:
* Confidence
* Training
* Relaxing
Confidence
Here is what Prof. Arnsten recommends. The key is confidence. This goes back to Hans Salye’s experiments on rats over 60 years ago. He discovered that rats that thought they were in control were less stressed than those who thought they weren’t.
In other words, confident rats didn’t get stressed. It turns out that this is also true for humans. When you feel confident you turn the prefrontal cortex back on – so you can think again.
How Should Managers Treat People For Best Performance?
I have seen a rise in the number of emails and other enquiries I am getting about bullying recently. I’m sure this is due to the extra stresses at the moment. It’s easy for managers when they are stressed, to resort to this behaviour. However, it generally doesn’t give the results you need.
Managers, at this time in particular, need to be helping people to feel confident and coaching them.
Training
People who survive difficult situations effectively have often been trained in them so they are able to respond without thinking, in other words, without having to use their prefrontal cortex. This is another way to help people perform effectively ‘under fire’. That’s why rehearsing things is so useful. I remember a comment on one brilliant piano player. The announcer said: ‘Most people practise till they can get it right. He practised till he couldn’t get it wrong.’
A Last Tip – Relaxing
Here’s a technique I have often used that works really well and I was delighted to hear Professor Arnsten recommending it and explaining that it was also one she found to be effective.
When something happens and your brain freezes up, delay your response if at all possible. (It’s not always possible, but in many cases it is.) This is for situations like opening a letter or email and getting what appears to be bad news or something that causes you stress. Or it could be someone giving you some bad news.
Leave it and go and do something that you find helps you to relax and be calm. This enables you to switch your prefrontal cortex back on again.
Often when I use this technique and get back to the email or letter I find it’s nothing like as bad as I thought, and I can work out how to deal with it.
In her case, Professor Arnsten takes a hot shower and a walk in the country. In mine I like to go for a run whilst I listen to an episode of science fiction series on my iPod. Then I have a shower. Or better yet, I watch an old episode of Star Trek whilst treating myself to some chocolate. (Yes, I confess to being a Trekkie.)
The Key
Find your own personal way of being calm and getting that prefrontal cortex turned on before you tackle any difficult issues. The results will speak for themselves.
In Summary
Remember, we can all end up switching off our prefrontal cortex. It’s not something we do on purpose. We need to help ourselves and others handle those situations effectively.
