Never blame anyone in your life.
Good people make you happy.
Bad people give you experience.
Worst people teach you lessons.
Best people give you memories.

Inhoud

Preface

Introduction

1 Constraining Properties of the Brain

1.1 Constraining Property 1. The Brain is Conditioned

1.2 Constraining Property 2. The Brain is Led by Emotions

1.3 Constraining Property 3. The Brain is Susceptible to Danger

1.4 Constraining Property 4. The Brain is Easily Distracted

2 Reinforcing Properties of the Brain

2.1 How Brain Cells Operate

2.2 Reinforcing Property 1. The Brain is Neuroplastic

2.3 Reinforcing Property 2. The Brain Has a Reward System

2.4 Reinforcing Property 3. We Can Switch Between Mindsets

2.5 Reinforcing Property 4. Consciousness Can Grow

2.6 Reinforcing Property 5. We Can Observe Our Brain

3 The Leadership Shift

3.1 Keep fit for the brain

3.1.1 Healthy lifestyle habits

3.1.2 Effective use of the prefrontal cortex

3.1.3 Maintaining an overview

3.1.4 Working with a focus

3.1.5 Paying attention to personal needs

3.2 Let your consciousness grow

3.3 Strengthen the Internal Leader Mindset

3.4 Recognize Negative Emotions

3.5 Make safety a priority

3.6 Letting go

3.7 Be unbiased

3.8 Practice makes perfect

4 Excellent Teamwork

4.1 The leadership shift in teamwork

4.2 Communication to make brain-mind practitioners

4.3 Six needs of a brain & mind dream team

4.3.1 Put safety first

4.3.2 Train team members in the brain & mind approach

4.3.3 Belonging

4.3.4 Lead the team

4.3.5 Monitoring and feedback

4.3.6 Future focus

Epilogue

About Guido de Valk

Preface

The landscape of leadership requires a change. That is why I started my company, De Valk Leadership Company, in 2009, and why I wrote this book. The world is changing rapidly, and the current leadership does not have a good answer to meet the challenges that result from that change. The world we live in is a VUCA world: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. That means, nothing is fixed and we can’t predict the future, nor do we have access to perfect information. Even though not everything is uncertain and volatile, there will be some familiar elements, but it’s complex to navigate or to turn into a simple strategy or approach.

We need a different approach to deal with this constantly changing world. At its core, this different approach is about different actions, about different behavior. Leaders should now be superb in influencing behavior so that people and employees know how to deal with these changing circumstances. The current managers are minimally trained in stimulating voluntary behavioral change. Today’s managers are trained using models and tackle these complex issues with model-management. Attempting to manage change using models is ineffective. These models do not take the complexity of behavioral change sufficiently into account.

Besides model-management, people are attached to their old behavior. They don’t like to change. People identify with their conditioning and often believe they are nothing more than that. Like a piece of paper that is rolled out and rolls back up immediately. What they see is the rolled-up paper, not the paper that was briefly flat; they see themselves as the rolled-up piece of paper. They, or more accurately, the ego, believe they are their conditioning. We need to have a way that ensures that you understand that you and your staff are not the rolled-up piece of paper and that you know how to turn the rolled-up piece of paper into a flat piece of paper and keep it flat.

A much better way to deal with this constantly changing world, and new behavior required, is to focus on developing an effective mindset, that knows how to deal with the constant changing world. This mindset is one that is flexible, self-reflective, conscious, and looks at every situation on its own merit, to decide on the best action to take. It is a mindset that embraces behavior change.

For a long time, it was thought and said that behavioral change is too complicated. Due to developments in neuroscience, it is now much easier to understand how to do that. Behavior change starts in the brain and neuroscience provides numerous tools for behavior change. Neuroscience is about how the brain functions. You might think about the brain to be primarily in terms of reasoning and intellect, but that is not the whole picture. These days, we understand that the brain is only to a small extent about reasoning and to a larger extent about unconscious and subconscious processes.

Knowledge of the brain can thus help us to make behavioral change easier. Allow me to illustrate: One of the peculiarities of the brain is its neuroplasticity. Plasticity means the brain is able to respond and adapt to the stimuli it receives. If you stimulate the brain for long enough, you automatically see a change in the brain that matches the new status. Neuroplasticity is powerful because if you practice new behavior intensively and for long enough, a new habit is learned, and new neural pathways are created. The possibilities are endless, because the brain will always be neuroplastic and people never done learning. Isn’t that fantastic?

If you want to work with your brain, you need to have some awareness of your actions and choices. If you can stimulate your neuroplasticity with conscious actions, you will be able to make optimal use of this powerful aspect of your brain. You can incorporate new behavior and make it your own. Your consciousness can, in a certain sense, control your brain. This consciousness appears to exist in itself. In this book, I call this self-existing consciousness the mind. The brain is the tangible organ, and the mind is self-existing consciousness. This means also that the brain plays a vital role in developing consciousness and is significantly involved in developing the right mindset. With the knowledge of how the brain & mind works, the shift to another type of leadership that focuses on continuous behavioral change is not complex.

This book is about comprehending an effective mindset by improving the cooperation of the brain and mind: the brain & mind approach. And the manager who leads in this way is a brain & mind leader. The brain & mind approach realizes the optimal cooperation of brain & mind. The brain & mind leader stimulates this cooperation optimally in himself and the other. This brain & mind approach creates a leadership attitude that gives managers many tools to deal adequately with the uncertain, volatile, complex, and vague world and to provide a way to make behavioral change easier.

This optimal cooperation between mind and brain creates a behavioral change and develops a new habit, one that helps managers and co-workers to automatically adjust their behavior and actions in response to the ever-changing world. As long as the company and leadership are organized in a way that facilitates it, the workplace will be a place for continuous personal development, where ‘there are no mistakes, only lessons.’ Leaders who follow that principle, give their people the opportunity to use their skills and potential to the full. The continuously changing world is then no longer seen as a threat but an opportunity for growth and development.

A brain & mind leader has high self-awareness and awareness, and stimulates that awareness in others. It is necessary to observe your actions, engage in meaningfulness, and develop new, more effective behavior. Without it, the old patterns, conditioning, and emotions in your brain remain in control.

The constantly changing world makes people insecure. This uncertainty does people often think that the grass is greener somewhere else, but once you start acting from the right mindset, that stops being true. Every situation offers opportunities for learning and developing. Brain & mind leadership, where you combine the mindset change and continuous development with achieving great results, is built on these opportunities for behavior change. This book shows managers how they can look at every situation as an opportunity for growth and development based on how the brain works. Where people, and not content, are central. Even though the content and the result remain essential, the focus is on people’s behavior: like the sportsman who trains to win. Training is their daily activity. Practice is the daily activity of the brain & mind leader and brain & mind employers. They become brain & mind practitioners: they act from inside out.

Brain & mind leadership places ownership on people themselves and makes everyone responsible for their own progress. Progress goes hand in hand with making choices. Choices are in this approach focused on growth, development and behavior change and can take on any form. The effect of a choice is based on individual realizations. Just by making people responsible for their own development, they grow super-fast and are able to make their own choices. They become managers of their brain & mind. They become brain & mind practitioners. Many people look to their boss for all the answers. That might be true when it comes to content, but even then, I doubt it. Brain & mind leadership emphasizes that everyone has the answers in themselves. The goal of this book is to ensure that everyone understands that and discovers that they can unlock their potential and wisdom and in so doing, deal well with the rapidly changing, confusing world.

Brain & mind leadership is nothing else than learning to manage the brain with your mind and vice versa. You need to train your brain to increase your consciousness, and you need higher consciousness to train your brain. Once you know how to do this well, the constantly changing society is not an issue anymore. You know how to deal with the changing world so well. This book aims to contribute to a leadership landscape where, in addition to achieving results, the development of people, through managing the brain & mind, is central. The goal of helping people develop in this way is so they learn how to deal with complex situations, not using models but by empowering them.

I wish many people see this book as a spiritual leadership book. It was written from a scientific angle, by me, a spiritual man, for a spiritual purpose. To me, spirituality means giving value and meaning to life. I believe this book is very spiritual.

I want to thank my partner, Alvian Sofyan, for his down-to-earth, action-oriented nature. He cares and relieves. Joost Vonk should also be mentioned. Whenever I faced a creative challenge, I knew I could always count on him. He has the talent to look at issues from several angles, viewpoints of which I was unaware. Marlies Bouman did again a great job of the illustrations for this book.

I am an active Dzogchen practitioner. Dzogchen is a movement within Tibetan Buddhism. Brain & mind leadership is inspired by neuroscience, also inspired by Dzogchen. My Dzogchen teacher, who has given and gives me daily guidance, is the His Eminence 7th Dzogchen Rinpoche. The Dzogchen lineage and Dzogchen Rinpoche are my daily inspiration to develop myself, to help other people, and to make the world a better place. I would like to thank Dzogchen Rinpoche for his inspiration, for all the excellent work he has done. And I wish he has a long and healthy life and that many people can enjoy his wisdom.

I want to dedicate this book to the welfare of all beings and hope that numerous managers will use the knowledge of this book to inspire their staff.

Amsterdam, January 2021

Introduction

“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.”

Orison Swett Marden

People are a company’s most crucial and valuable asset. When people function well, the company’s results are better. When people’s work is excellent, the chance for outstanding performances is infinite. But the opposite is also true: when people function poorly, it immediately adversely affects the performance of a company. An essential task of a leader is to guarantee optimum use of this potential to maintain optimum performance.

Unfortunately, many managers and companies are not doing this right, in fact, the opposite is often the case. Due to having an insufficient understanding of how to support the self-empowerment of the employees, they inadvertently manage their employees in such a way that they undermine them. What they do not realize is that supporting the self-empowering opportunities of employees means that they should take the working of brain & mind in account. Self-empowering opportunities mean using the right mindset, that of the internal leader. Subsequently, action and behavior change start with using the right mindset.

Managers and companies don’t know much about how the brain works and, therefore, do not use the potential of the brain sufficiently, do not use the right mindset, which is crucial for high performance. They have developed habits that have a direct negative effect on the workings of the brain and, therefore, on behavior and performance. They use the follower mindset. Because of being led or managed in this way, employees lose faith in their power and function below par. Then it’s hard to act from their power.

One very ineffective habit of people is that they react and act based on observable behavior instead of on brain and mind processes. They do not use insights into how the brain works. On the contrary, they respond to sensory triggers. Their response does not take into account how many elements the brain controls, like emotions and behavior. For example, suppose a person is angry with you and is able to show it, which makes you feel attacked. If you react without understanding the brain, you address the anger and feelings, i.e., the outer manifestation of rage. But there is also an inner manifestation, i.e., the brain that is angry or attacked. Anger is a signal from the brain. Focus your attention on the anger in the brain and your actions will be based on the brain & mind approach. Now it’s not your brain that’s in charge, but you; with the right mindset, you are in charge. When you are in charge, the outcome will be completely different.

It is easy to explain why managers and companies act as they do. Until recently, there was too little solid scientific knowledge for managers to use in the self-empowerment of employees. This situation changed when they could apply neuroscientific knowledge. We only started using neuroscience in work and leadership a few decades ago. Due to the lack of knowledge of how the brain works, many leadership styles are based on models focused on changing and optimizing behavior. These styles are often insufficiently related to how the brain works and its important role in behavior change and self-empowerment.

The brain plays a vital role in behavior, behavioral change, and behavior optimization. Managers, team leaders, project leaders, etc. manage people and frequently want to influence people to change their behavior. Looking at from a different perspective, what they try to do is influence the brain. Managing people means influencing people by managing the brain. That is why information on how the brain works is vital.

The brain controls everything in the body:

heartbeat,

body temperature,

emotions,

feelings,

passion,

reaction to stress,

impulses,

thoughts,

creativity.

Because many managers lack this knowledge of the brain, they manage in a way that can be detrimental to the brain. All their actions have an impact on everything that the brain controls. This impact can be positive and negative.

This book aims to inspire and to teach managers to manage with a knowledge of how the brain works. It explains how you can manage the brain in areas essential for performance instead of being managed by the brain in these crucial areas. This form of leadership is called brain & mind leadership.

For brain & mind leadership, it is essential to realize that the brain governs behavior, and your mind can govern the brain, and you can also govern the brain with the mind. Improving behavior, therefore, means optimal cooperation between brain and mind. Leaders can govern the brain with the mind and the mind with the brain. See it as a vicious circle. The more conscious (of this) you become, the more influence you have on the workings of your brain.

You can bring about sustainable changes in behavior and so, make the brain function better. Conversely, the more effectively your brain works the more you can use it to increase your consciousness. With brain & mind leadership, improving the cooperation between the brain and the mind is the fundamental reason why you realize sustainable change, behavior optimization, and self-empowerment.

It’s no secret the world is changing right in front of us. To deal with our rapidly evolving world, you and companies need to have a system that adapts to these changes. Brain & mind leadership gives companies and managers the correct leadership system. The brain & mind approach makes behavioral change a habit. In a constantly changing environment, using the brain & mind approach people have developed a habit of coping easily with these changes.

If you, as a manager, want to influence behavior for the better, you must return to the source of all your actions: the cooperation between brain & mind. Since everyone has a brain, this means everybody can apply the brain & mind approach. Whatever the relationship, the brain is involved: between manager and employee, between employees, between company and customer, supplier, etc. This knowledge is crucial for everyone and can help everyone build confidence and make better use of their strengths. Now is the time for managers and companies to understand how the brain works and apply it. Insights into how the brain works, makes the job of a manager more fun, more effective, more efficient, more powerful, more comfortable, more compassionate and less stressful.

By using the knowledge of how the brain works, brain & mind leadership becomes less about vague topics and is more concrete. Take the popular management topic: empowerment. These days, empowerment is crucial in companies. Empowerment means supporting people to become more energetic and resilient and gain insight into themselves. It is about inspiring people to do their work proactively and to show initiative. All these empowerment topics become crystal clear when approached from the perspective of the brain. Helping people find insights into themselves, helps them understand how their brain works. Helping them build resilience means they become aware of their mindset and how to change that mindset. Self-empowerment means empowering the brain by changing the mindset to the internal leader mindset. This book teaches leaders how to use the full potential of their people and how to promote self-empowerment by changing their mindset.

This book is about the type of leader who, by learning to manage the brain, puts people at the center. It is crucial for modern managers to understand the brain because managing people means managing the brain. It’s time to put the models behind us and focus our attention on people. Once managers understand how to use the unlimited power of the brain, results should be great. And this knowledge is not only limited to managers. Since everyone has a brain, managers should share this knowledge about how the brain works with everyone.

This approach is based on scientific knowledge of how the brain works. Fortunately, many scientists study brain science (neuroscience) in combination with leadership. So, we learn more about how the brain works, and more about how to manage people. Brain scientists and neuroscientists have only been researching the brain for a few decades. Brain researchers regularly gain new insights that we can apply to leadership. As a result, we can become better and better at managing people. That means we get the best out of them and they get the best out of themselves. In the coming decades, we will learn more and more about the workings of the brain. This new knowledge will offer leaders numerous opportunities to improve and, therefore, to exploit the potential of their employees. Companies that seize these opportunities will have a tremendous head start and make a difference.

The emphasis in brain & mind leadership is on practice. One of the reinforcing principles for behavior change of the brain, and is at the core of brain & mind leadership, is neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means the brain’s ability to adapt to the impulses it receives. This principle implies that the brain & mind approach focuses a lot of attention on practice and the faith that the brain will adapt to what is required.

As previously mentioned, the most significant advantage of brain & mind leadership is that it allows people to work from their strengths in a simple, practical, and focused way. Brain & mind work provides insights into personal qualities and power. However, there is another essential feature of brain & mind leadership. The brain & mind approach underlines ownership and accountability. The internal leader mindset gives everyone the experience of having more personal control than was previously experienced: a liberating insight for many people. People realize they have a choice, are not a victim of the situation but are in charge of their behavior and destiny. This insight leads to rapid improvement in performance. They feel better about themselves, have a better work-life balance. Mutual relationships also improve.

This book explains how a leader can improve his leadership skills by learning to make optimum use of the brain and mind when managing people. The brain does, of course, have some constraining properties for behavioral change, and it is important to recognize these. In brain & mind leadership, ‘what you focus on, grows’ is an essential principle. Managers should not let these constraining properties grow too much. Chapter 1 explains these constraining properties in detail.

There is hope! In addition to constraining properties there are also reinforcing properties for behavioral change. Chapter 2 explains the reinforcing properties of the brain and how a manager can pay attention to these reinforcing characteristics.

This different focus turns normal leadership upside down. Times are changing; there are more challenges in leadership than ever before. Managers can no longer manage based on facts and figures alone. The time is right for switching to a new form of leadership. Managers must become experts in behavioral change. That is a crucial shift in leadership; a shift in everyday leadership behavior. These shifts are discussed in detail in chapter 3.

Finally, there is a chapter about excellent teamwork. How do you ensure that a team works correctly? By ensuring that all the brains have the right mindset. Chapter 4 explains how this is done.

The book talks about the brain in general. My preference would be to write ‘he-she’ so that I do justice to everyone’s identity as much as possible. However, I may then fail to do justice to people who do not identify as either men or women like non-binary people. In addition, it may make the book more difficult to read, and is aesthetically displeasing. I have, therefore, opted for the ‘he’ form. I sincerely hope that we soon find the correct form and solution for treating everyone with respect.