“Leaders spend 80 of their time in conversation, and employees spend 37 percent of their time in meetings, yet we allow both conversations and meetings to be energy and cognitive brain drains that waste time and fuel mediocrity. Unfortunately, human beings are not that good at having effective conversations, so organisations who focus on developing conversational mastery can support their leaders to double their impact in half the time. The return on investment of conversational mastery is huge,” says Michelle Loch, Director of Rewired Leadership.

Rewired Leadership is a sponsor company at the marcus evans HR Summit 2017, taking place 27 - 29 March, in the Gold Coast, Australia.

How can HR develop conversational mastery in leaders and employees? Where should they start?

Quality conversations lead to quality thinking, which leads to quality outcomes. HR can have a direct, positive impact on the way their people think, collaborate and work together by investing in this critical and foundational skill. Leaders must have conversations that count. People tend to avoid difficult conversations, but issues build up. When they have the skills and knowledge to have powerful, rewired conversations, they have the confidence and courage to have the conversations they really need to have to promote productivity and performance.

When leaders become masterful at conversation, they have the tools to solve any people-related issues. Ideally, everyone in an organisation should be trained to some degree, starting from the HR team who should become the champions, then rolling it out to leaders and team leaders. When there is a shared language and mindset, so much more can be achieved. Leaders can find themselves on a repetitive “conversation treadmill”. Conversational mastery can move them on to the Elevator of Insight!

How can neuroscience help organisations get better outcomes?

Neuroleadership is an area of study where we take the latest discoveries in social-cognitive neuroscience and apply them to leadership in a practical and useful way. At the end of the day we are managing humans, and now we have the science to truly understand how they tick. Behaviour change requires a rewiring of brain connections, and it turns out that we have more control over how our brain grows and develops than we previously believed. With the right skills, leaders can influence the brain wiring of both themselves, and their team members.

How are human beings wired?

We are wired to survive, to respond to the threats we perceive in our environment. We are also wired to see the world through a social filter and the wiring created by our previous experiences, so no two people experience or perceive a situation in exactly the same way, yet we live and communicate as though we are the same. Our tendency to make assumptions can create many problems in teams and across organisations. Understanding and learning to manage our mental filters and cognitive biases is an incredibly powerful and masterful skill.

What insights can you share from brain research and how it can influence HR?

As humans, we have very limited brain fuel as a resource. That means our logic brain, our capacity for thinking and deciding, cannot work at the same time as our limbic or emotional brain. When someone is having an emotional experience, their capacity to think clearly is significantly inhibited. Giving leaders the skills to shift that, bring people back into the thinking space again is a very useful tool.