fbpx

What the Brain Likes About Mentoring

Slide02

 

Neuroscientists describe the minimise danger/maximise reward response “the fundamental organising principle of the brain”. Five times per second the brain evaluates the environment for threat or reward.  This is an automatic and usually non-conscious action as natural as breathing, designed to protect us from pain and propel us toward pleasure. Humans would not survive without the brain’s inbuilt threat/reward vigilance and systematic response.

 

Our earliest ancestors lived in extended family groups – clans or tribes, where they worked together as small collaborative groups. Survival depended upon the cooperation of the community and emotional bonds that meant that the individual had the protection of the clan and the stronger protected the weaker. To be cast out of the tribe could mean death. Outsiders were a potential threat so it was necessary to instantly judge them as friend or foe. The more they resembled the group-members the more likely they would be accepted as friend. The stranger, different from the norm, was immediately suspected to be a foe and evoked a defensive response.

 

Survival is a primal instinct. Evolution has ensured that our brain’s first function is to keep us safe physically and emotionally and we feel emotional pain as strongly as physical pain. Because family-tribal bonds were vital to survival, we are hard wired to crave relationships that sustain us.

 

Every social interaction may be perceived emotionally as a threat or reward. Rejection, isolation, loneliness, feeling different, or socially disconnected cause pain and are to be avoided. They are threat triggers for a fight/flight/freeze response and the brain dumps adrenalin into the system to fuel a protective reaction. Inclusion, rapport, friendship, belonging and empathy feel good, we want them. They are rewarding in the pleasure centres of the brain, bonding hormones reinforce relationship building.

 

We tend to associate with people we recognize as “like us”. We may bond and rally with like-minded people or those with a common interest, be it sport, politics, or a cause. We may be cautious, sometimes overly fearful of people who don’t look like us, talk like us or those with different opinions. Usually, we are not aware of the instinctive way we judge people as “friend” or “foe”. We’re not often conscious of the threat/reward triggers or defense/trust reactions, but they are there and they are instant.

 

Instinctive self-protection may harden into discrimination, prejudice even hatred. Yet fear can dissolve if we take time and open our mind to get to know a person. The executive function and higher order thinking can over-ride the primitive reaction of the brain. Meeting people unlike ourselves, suspending pre-judgment, speaking with them, listening and learning from them, building trust and rapport is good for us as well as them.  The more we can teach our brain that different others are not a threat and that relationships are rewarding, the less pain and more pleasure we are likely to experience when interacting with others.

 

Judith Glaser, in her book Conversational Intelligence states:

“Conversations are not just a way of sharing information; they actually trigger physical and emotional changes in the brain that either open you up to having healthy, trusting conversation or close you down so you speak from fear, caution and worry.”

 

This is particularly true of mentoring conversations. The explicit purpose of mentoring is to support, validate and encourage another person. Mentors enable others to explore their values, examine possibilities, consider alternatives, discuss aspirations, set goals, plan strategies and action them. Mentoring is a conversation that by its very nature, can minimize danger and maximize reward – for both parties.

 

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

About Ann Rolfe

Ann Rolfe is internationally recognised as Australia's leading specialist in mentoring, and is available for speaking, training and consulting. Here Ann shares her knowledge and allows you to ask your most pressing questions about mentoring.

One Response to “What the Brain Likes About Mentoring”

  1. holiday palace June 24, 2016 6:03 am #

    The UK life sciences sector is growing and continually evolving as one of the key high-tech, high-growth

Leave a Reply