INSIGHTS | CORENTUS FIRST FRIDAY with a THOUGHT LEADER SERIES
Reut Schwartz-Hebron Neuroscience-Informed Team Dynamics
Reut Schwartz-Hebron shares how team development practitioners can leverage neuroscience insights to effectively guide individuals and teams through difficult organizational changes, fostering understanding, resilience, and successful adaptation. Reut shared her insights with us and our Community of Professionals Advancing Team Effectiveness during our First Friday with a Thought Leader event.
For you from Reut & Corentus
Key Insights (below) & Youtube Video (38:33)
from the First Friday with a Thought Leader event
About Reut Schwartz-Hebron
Reut is a leading interdisciplinary expert of both neuroscience and difficult change. For the past 20 years, Reut has studied and learned how to apply a wide range of neuroscience-based models, collaborated with leading neuroscientists, and is one of less than a handful of international experts who teach about the Neuroscience of Transformation and how to guide people through the Unlearning-relearning process. Her work hones in on specific neuroscience applications, and provides answers to coaching and change facilitation questions, from the unique perspective of understanding both fields deeply and intimately.
She has over 25 years of experience as a coach, trainer, organizational consultant, and HR professional. Her particular fascination over the years with different aspects of difficult change allowed her to be involved in cutting edge projects (exploring the ins-and-outs of aspects like resistance to change, sustainability, and accountability). For 15 years, she personally led large international corporate change efforts and numerous team development processes and lovingly guided individuals through transformational coaching processes. Her expertise has benefited top Fortune 500 companies like NIKE, Intel, and GSK, alongside a diverse range of industries from finance to healthcare.
“Unlearning is Uncomfortable” (1:28)
In this clip Reut shares how, from a neuroscience perspective, any team transformation is a process of unlearning patterns, which is fundamentally uncomfortable for the brain.
“Changing Subconscious Patterns” (1:44)
This clip discusses how the way people interact with discomfort is completely subconscious, meaning that it isn’t as easy as consciously deciding to change our patterns of interaction with others. Rather, we must subconsciously change these patterns.
“Experienced-based Transformation” (0:55)
Reut explains that, in order for a team to transform and shift to new, desirable patterns, we need to shift how we interact with discomfort. To do so, we need to guide people to adopt new patterns through experiences.
KEY INSIGHTS | Neuroscience-Informed Guidance
Facilitating Subconscious Transformation: Transformation cannot be achieved solely through intellectual understanding or conscious decision-making. It requires engaging subconscious, experience-based systems in the brain.
Individual vs Team Discomfort: While individuals have unique patterns of dealing with discomfort, the team setting creates a feedback loop that can reinforce or hinder these patterns.
“The team actually creates a setting where people pick up on each other's signals or each other's patterns in ways that can kind of silence team different team members abilities.”
Impact of Dominant Voices: Unchallenged, dominant voices can dictate the team's overall response to discomfort, potentially silencing other perspectives.
Subconscious Nature of Team Dynamics: Individuals often unknowingly adapt their behavior within a team setting, unaware of the subconscious influences affecting them.
“People don't actually realize there. Once they've walked into a team space that they're not behaving as quote unquote their real self.”
Importance of Experiential Learning: Transforming a team's response to discomfort necessitates experiential learning rather than intellectual explanations.
“We understand that we can't just sit around and talk. We have to, in one way or another, engage the systems in the brain that are transformational, that are subconscious, that are experience based.”
Key Brain Areas: The amygdala, responsible for quick emotional reactions, and the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis (BNST), which stores emotional “knowings” and guides behavior based on past experiences, are key to understanding and facilitating transformation.
Identify Team Patterns: Carefully observe how the team interacts with discomfort, paying attention to who speaks up, who stays silent, and how dissenting opinions are handled.
Define Unlearning Goals: Clearly articulate the specific patterns that the team needs to unlearn in order to achieve their desired transformation.
Facilitate Experiential Learning: Design activities and exercises that allow the team to experience new, healthier ways of interacting with discomfort.
Focus on One Pattern at a Time: To avoid overwhelming the subconscious, prioritize one key pattern for transformation at a time, allowing the team to deeply integrate the new behavior before moving on.
Ask Powerful Questions: Guide the team towards self-discovery by asking thought-provoking questions that encourage them to reflect on their experiences and uncover their own insights.
Avoid Judgment: Create a safe and supportive environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their experiences without fear of criticism.
“If the team dynamics develop in a way that in effect, give those 2 the loudest voice…we need to understand that this is coming from other people in the group and how they interact with discomfort.”
- Reut Schwartz-Hebron
The Art and Science of Changing People Who Don’t Want to Change, By Reut Schwartz-Hebron
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