Addressing our employees’ social needs have often been characterized as the “soft” side of leadership and organizational development. Frequently, the intangible nature of these needs meant that they were given a low priority and often became yet another underfunded HR initiative in today’s enterprises.
However, you have probably started to notice neuroscience or more precisely the prefix neuro appearing in front of most anything related to business and its advancement. While the hype can be annoying, the research is providing quantifiable evidence that businesses should address their employee’s social needs. Understanding this side of business behavior is an enormous opportunity to enhance the engagement and productivity of the workforce. Employee coaching is one way to implement and reap the benefits of neuroscience.
Klaus Grawe’s Consistency Theory (Neuropsychotherapy: How the Neurosciences Inform Effective Psychotherapy, 2007) applied to organizational and leadership development, offers some foundational thinking for employee coaching. Essentially, Grawe proposes that humans have four basic needs:
- Attachment: Our need for social interaction.
- Orientation and Control: Our need to manage our environment.
- Self-esteem: Our need to grow and protect our self-worth
- Pleasure and Pain Avoidance: Our need to increase what feels good while evading what makes us feel bad.
When we are denied the fulfillment of these social needs, our brains react just like they do to physical pain. In turn, this triggers our biological threat response and depending on the level of personal insult, our higher level cognitive abilities start to shut down and we stop delivering our best work. This can manifest as a private internal struggle where an employee tells herself to “suck it up” and live with the circumstances, to more overt examples of office conflict. Keeping these needs in mind when we coach employees provides foundational ideas about our behavior which can really improve everyone’s effectiveness. Let’s use our need for attachment to illustrate how this model can be applied when coaching.
This basic need starts at birth and becomes central to how we socially operate as adults. Brain scanning has uncovered the neural substrates involved and has shown that individuals who are engaged in a reliable and secure social interaction release oxytocin, popularly called our “trust hormone”. It is here where the science directly supports most coaching methodologies which hinge on establishing and maintaining trust. So, when we start our coaching relationships, getting the oxytocin flowing should be the coach’s priority.
Our need for attachment also suggests that employee coaching should be extended beyond our organization’s high potential employees. It can be argued that they are already well “attached”. If coaching cannot be made available to all employees, one set that should be prioritized are your new hires. New employees are generally in an uncertain, vulnerable state when they enter an organization. Offering them the benefit of an experienced coach provides a fast path to fulfilling their individual attachment needs as well as their needs for orientation and control, self-esteem, and pleasure. By supporting fulfillment of these internal needs early, the organization can expect faster cultural adjustment, greater productivity, and elevated rates of retention from these new hires.
Remember, muting fulfillment of your employee’s basic needs can feel like a psychological punch in the nose and puts one in an emotionally threatened state. When they are in that zone their motivation and productivity will suffer. Coaching towards mindful promotion of their four basic needs is brain friendly and will ensure greater success for your employees. By the way, coaching to these needs is good for the coach, too. When a coach uses these concepts in their work, they are more likely to make sure they are addressing their own basic needs. When our social interactions include the fulfillment of everyone’s basic needs we create a virtuous cycle where everyone can deliver their best work.
Originally written by Dr. De Nault and published for SABA Software:
