How Neuroscience Supports Building Effective Teams

Neuroscience is a fascinating and, at times, challenging topic of discussion. However, recent research advances in this field have made it more critical to pay attention to than ever, particularly for senior leaders and decision-makers in companies. In fact, neuroscience has a great deal to offer to leaders, especially as it lends itself to building and managing effective teams.

In a recent webinar, we had the chance to talk to neuroscientists Dr. Heidi Grant and Dr. Jay Van Bevel to discuss how neuroscience integrates with team performance. They focused on the different facets of group versus individual identities, manifesting high-performance groups, and the management of ineffective and difficult team dynamics. Most importantly, they identified actionable steps to help leaders build their most effective teams.

The Importance of Neuroscience in Team Performance

So why is neuroscience central to effective leadership? Dr. Grant suggested that we have a propensity to trust our intuitions, but our intuitions can be, and often are, very wrong. Further, many of us operate under the illusion of transparency, which is our belief that others understand our mental state far better than they actually do. Dr. Van Bavel pointed out neuroscience helps us to essentially “look under the hood of the car.” By understanding what is going on in our brains and identifying things like unconscious bias, we then equip ourselves to apply interventions to improve both individual and group dynamics. 

Harnessing Group Identity to Build Teams

Neuroscience research from the last decade has helped us understand how we can better come together in teams. This is based on the idea that our identities rely heavily on our familiarity or proximity to groups. In fact, creating a sense of shared purpose and emphasizing team identity helps people prioritize team over self and be more cooperative. As noted by Dr. Grant, this is more about understanding how we are as humans, rather than how we “should be.” 

The Power of Language

People can do great things when they are engaged in a meaningful group identity. In fact, behavior change is more effective when done in the context of groups, mostly because it comes with built-in support and reinforcement. However, a key component to meaningful group behavior change is the clear and explicit use of language to express that shared understanding.

Why is this? Every layer of separation creates an additional opportunity for miscommunication, shared Dr. Grant and Dr. van Bavel. Thus, communication must be explicit and intentional to carry shared meaning, and deliberate communication can create meaningful group norms that drive behavior change. This includes practices such as asking for help, encouraging collaboration, and working together towards common solutions. For further context, Dr. Grant dives into the practices of how to meaningfully ask for help, and how important it is to get help in this way rather than by making assumptions or thinking other people know we need help.

The Challenges of Remote Work

Part of working effectively as a team is strong communication, and respecting people’s time.  Communication is now more important than ever, especially as remote work increasingly becomes the norm. Because we are all in a period of adjustment, we are in the process of forming new habits.  Dr. Grand and Dr. van Bavel state that many remote work engagements don’t have an explicit purpose, or it hasn’t been communicated effectively, thereby hijacking these new habits while creating confusion and disconnection. 

Consider having group-building events but with a clear purpose and plan for helping foster cross-connection. So, for example, don’t throw people into virtual breakout rooms and expect them to figure it out. Have a plan for how to lead the engagement, and make new habit formation easy by showing people what to do.

Organizational Identity and Managing Group Dynamics with Psychological Safety

Organizational identity is all about shared experiences, shared goals, and psychological safety. And in this case, psychological safety is emphasized as the safety to disagree, offer constructive feedback, and dissent. Interestingly, toxic intergroup dynamics usually stem from bad intragroup dynamics. Moreover, research shows that dissenters actually are the ones who identify most deeply with the group. This puts the onus squarely on individual leaders to offer an environment that allows people to be open, dissent, and contribute in a meaningful way to the group dynamic. Without this, toxicity begins to take hold, and it will fester within the group and beyond it.

For many leaders, this is a tall order. With the complexity of team dynamics, they may or may not know where or how to start engendering these important team characteristics. Leadership coaching is an incredible enabler for this, as coaches can help set clear, measurable goals for teams. Likewise, they can help to improve communication, engendering a culture that encourages employees to be open and honest in their interactions. This is key to bolstering group identity and overarching organizational culture.

Concluding Points

According to Dr. Grant and Dr. van Bavel, leaders need to act intentionally to stem toxicity and foster group identity, but also to practice patience in doing so. When fostering inclusivity and providing psychological safety, leaders are more likely to create an organizational identity and shared purpose that helps them to retain good employees and build strong teams.

Fundamentally, there is no easy button, as we are in unprecedented times. Those leaders that take the advised steps and then practice patience will put themselves in a virtuous cycle of growth. Those that foster in vs. out-group mentality and diminished identity will find themselves deterring growth and in a vicious cycle of employee turnover. Having a clear understanding of how neuroscience plays into our group dynamics is key for any leader who wants to strengthen their team.

Subscribe to Our
Newsletter

Stay up to date with new releases, features, how-tos, leadership tips, and more. (Don’t worry, we won’t flood your inbox or share your address.)
REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.

Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.

Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team,  eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).

Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.

Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.

Lori Mazan

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.