Involving employees in ‘what if’ plans and emphasising the ‘knowns’ can go a long way in mitigating the effects of uncertainty, says Jan Hills
‘A feeling of uncertainty’ is how many have described the aftershocks of Brexit, and, whether we are aware of it or not, these kinds of feelings have an impact on our brains and with it our behaviour.
The brain has been described as a pattern recognition machine; if a situation is what we anticipated then we feel a sense of reward and dopamine is released, encouraging us to do more of that behaviour or to put ourselves in that situation again. However, when the pattern is broken – when something happens that we had not anticipated – an ‘error message’ results. Uncertainty is created and so is a sense of threat; we want to avoid the same situation in future and remove ourselves from it in the present.
These brain-based predictions are happening at both a conscious and an unconscious level. Dr Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief, says there are around 40 environmental cues you can consciously pay attention to at any time. But the unconscious number is huge, potentially more than two million. All that data is then stored as memories to be used by the brain for making predictions.
So thinking about the referendum result, no matter what you voted, we now have high levels of uncertainty throughout the country. You are probably experiencing this and your workforce will be too. And while the economic and political situation is uncertain, there may well be additional uncertainties related to your business.
A 2005 study called Neural Systems Responding to Degrees of Uncertainty in Human Decision-Making found that even a small amount of ambiguity activates the amygdala – an almond-shaped set of neurons located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe, known to play a key role in the processing of emotions – and with it the threat response. The more ambiguity, the more the threat response is activated, which reduces our openness to learning. It also means we are less likely to connect with others and we tend to be more risk averse.This has become known as the Ellsberg paradox. The information gap is filled with fear and the resulting behaviour is to do what we have always done, even if it’s not getting the right results. Or, in extreme circumstances, to do nothing.
Knowing that we automatically avoid uncertainty explains why change can be hard and why we prefer things we know over things that might be more fun, or even better for us, but are new – be they ‘superfoods’, or new policies, managers and teams in work. In a workplace situation it explains why we prefer the certainty of focusing on problems and finding answers in data from the past, rather than risking the uncertainty of new, creative solutions.
So what can you do to help yourself and your workforce through these uncertain times? American writer and speaker Jonah Lehrer hypothesised that we crave information for its own sake because information reduces the sense of uncertainty, even if it doesn’t make us more effective or adaptive. One thing we can do is play to this craving for information. Even if it isn’t definitive about what will happen, giving information helps. So does getting people involved in finding solutions and contingency planning, for example. In fact, there is some good practical advice in a recent CIPD podcast on the subject.
Emphasising what is going well and getting people to work together and generally celebrate success together is another great anecdote to threat. HR professionals should also help people to focus on what is staying the same. In uncertain times we tend to generalise and talk as if everything is changing. Clearly that is not the case for most of us, so to help yourself and your employees it is a good idea to acknowledge that the situation is unpredictable in many ways, give people are much data as you can on what is known, and tell them when you will give them the next update.
It might also be useful to engage people in making the change happen, which helps them create some of their own certainty in the change. Do this even if there is no clear answer and engage people in ‘what if’ plans. This activity will give them a sense of choice and enhance their reputation, mitigating some of the threat.
Jan Hills is a founding partner of Head Heart + Brain