Using Neuroscience to Create High-Performing Teams [Shannon Smith Part 2]
Hey everyone, and welcome to part two of my interview with Shannon Smith.
She's the CEO of Synoptic Solutions, and she specializes in helping leaders leverage neuroscience to hack your brain and create long term positive changes for yourself and throughout your organization and your team.
In part one, we really focused a lot on how to use these neuroscience knowledge and awareness to basically make changes for yourself. How to have more self control over your actions and be more intentional with how you're acting instead of being reactive.
But now I want to take a flip and Shannon's going to tell us how can we use this knowledge and awareness to create high performing teams.
So if you didn't catch the first part, , go back and check that out. It'll give you a lot of context for what we're going to talk about here. I'll include a link to that episode in the description.
Shannon, I guess let's just kickstart with the broad question here, how can you leverage all this neuroscience awareness to create a high performing team?
Leverage Neuroscience to Create a High Performing Teams
Shannon Smith: It is especially tricky, now that we're remote and hybrid and some just want to work in the office. I think before we dive into the neuroscience component, I'd like to just call out that I don't know many organizations that have done a very good job in preparing their managers to lead.
I think a lot of people get promoted because they're doing a good, individual contributor job, and then they're elevated to a supervisor, a manager, and the old I'm promoted to incompetence thing holds true. And so I don't even really necessarily think that we've been doing a good job equipping our managers before the pandemic, to lead.
But now we have all of these other variables to consider. And we're not equipping them now either. And so before if a manager was trying to lead a team and they didn't necessarily know what they should do, they went to something that was black and white. Are you on time? Did you show up today? Did you hit your quota? Now that we're remote, what are we looking at? I don't know. Keystrokes sometimes online status. It's not really a good metric. And it definitely doesn't build any kind of warm and fuzzy feelings.
Doug Howard: Measuring what matters, right?
Shannon Smith: Yeah. And as an engineer, I knew you would appreciate that. And here as managers, our amygdala is acting up because we don't feel like we're in control. And so because of that. We're just trying to control whatever we can, which is maybe clicks or time.
So I want to talk about a quick study from Microsoft that hold people to see what is their preferred way of working. And a third said they want to work remote. A third said they want to work in the office and a third said they wanted a hybrid setting. Now that is probably not super exciting or super surprising. But the reason that they wanted this autonomy and choice was because each life is different and they all want to be productive and create good quality work.
And I will tell you, I am not very productive in the office. I don't really like it. I don't like the little cubicles where your souls go to die. I don't like all the people walking around and talking. I don't like the phone conversations. I can't focus. So I prefer mostly remote cause that's where I can do my deep work every now and again for meetings, I go in. I'm sure if you force me to go into an office, I'm just going to quit. So I have autonomy.
People want autonomy. They want to find the situation where they can do the best work and they can be the most productive. That is a huge point there. And if you're an effective manager, you're going to be managing two results, not how people get their work done. The how is up to them. That really is not your game. That is not your wheel, your flywheel. What is the phrase that's not your wheel? Wheel of cheese. Okay. Wheelhouse.
Doug Howard: Wheel of cheese. I'm from Wisconsin, so I'll go with that wheel of cheese. It's outside of your wheel of cheese managers.
Shannon Smith: That's right. Manage the results. Remove the obstacles. You don't need to start measuring clicks and all of that. Give them the autonomy. You're going to build a lot more employee engagement. You're going to build a lot more trust and loyalty, and you're going to make everybody happier, including yourself and the company. So I'll just pause there. Autonomy is a big, important piece to high performing teams.
Another big important piece is connectedness, which is also very difficult to say for some reason. But you might be asking me, how in the heck am I supposed to create this connectedness. If people are all over the place and we're not really coordinated in how we come together.
Doug Howard: That's the first thing that popped in my head.
How to Create Belonging and Connectedness on Your Team
Shannon Smith: Great question, Doug. So from a neuroscience perspective, let me just walk you through this, Doug. When you meet someone new and you find out that they are also from Wisconsin. What is your response?
Doug Howard: Just walking myself through this, especially here because I live in New York now, so when I meet someone from Wisconsin or someone who's a Packers fan, there's just a kind of a feeling of warmth, I guess is the best way I can describe it.
Oh, I get this person, even though I don't know them. I've never really thought about it before but yeah, there's this type of unquantifiable bond. Not that it's like best friendship or anything like that, but I just Oh, I'm comfortable with talking to this person that I don't know.
Shannon Smith: Yeah. Actually it is your nucleus accumbens lighting up. That is your reward center.
Doug Howard: I was wondering.
Shannon Smith: So it is quantifiable if you have the right tool to measure it. So Dr Jason Mitchell, Professor of Psychology at Harvard did some really good work around what happens whenever we meet someone new and we determine, are they of our tribe? Are they a Packers fan or who's the rival of the Packers?
Doug Howard: The Bears.
Shannon Smith: The Bears. Are they from that silly town of Chicago?
Doug Howard: Yeah. And those people, no, instant opposite effect.
Shannon Smith: With their silly pizza.
So yeah, basically whenever you meet someone and you say, this person is in my tribe, you get that warmth feeling because you think that they are like you. And that helps to predict what their behavior may or may not be. And so there is a sense of comfort with being able to predict that a human will behave in a similar manner as you would or as you would expect. And so that's where that nucleus accumbens gets lit.
Now, if it's a Chicago Bears fan, you don't get that reward. The nucleus accumbens does not light up. Whenever you have a team, they're not all going to be Packers fans. And so you got to figure out how do you create a tribal sort of effect with people who are very different, not just talking about sports teams, affiliations, but, deep personality characteristics too.
There are a couple of ways you can do that. And actually, before I go into that, I'll just talk a little bit more about mirror neurons. And so when you find someone who's in your tribe and something good happens to them, you get the similar sort of happiness. That similar sort of reward that they get.
Something bad happens to them, you get a similar sort of mirrored response. You feel bad if they're in your tribe.
If they're out of your tribe and something good happens, might be neutral or there's no reward there.
Or if something bad happens to them, in some cases, you can get a reward actually from your nucleus accumbens, depending on a whole host of issues.
If you have people on your team who don't see each other, as being a part of the tribe, and they're rooting for each other to fail or they're like happy if the other one's failing, maybe, or even neutral, that's not good. And that's not going to get you a high performing team.
So a couple ways that you can create a sense that people are of each other's tribe. One is just simply shared time. Another is shared experiences and another is shared goals. So as a manager, you can lay down legit goals. Not those silly cascading goals, which by the time they get down to the person don't make any sense and they don't have any impact on them anyway, but goals that they actually have control over as a team to achieve.
So if you can set some good goals like that, you are going to start to build a sort of tribal mindset.
So yeah, creating some good goals that people have an actual impact over and control over can help to start to build that tribal feeling.
Doug Howard: A lot of very great insights here. The biggest things I'm hearing are obviously the importance of autonomy. Instead of micromanaging and telling your team specifically how to do things, it's more about focusing on what they need to accomplish and giving them free range within reason. To figure out their own best way of accomplishing it and just giving them more bounds to stay in, and rules to follow but giving them that space.
The other thing I guess I'm hearing, and I want to make sure I'm interpreting this right, is you're creating empathy by finding these common denominators between people. I heard you say if I meet a Packers fan, I feel their win and I feel their pain, automatically in some way that I don't realize. So I'd imagine that there's a element of empathy going on there too. I guess I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Am I reading that right? Am I interpreting you correctly?
Shannon Smith: Oh yeah. Mirror neurons that's a big part of it, that empathetic response.
Resolving Conflicts on Your Team
Doug Howard: So building on this whole concept of empathy and feeling like shared connections with people and feeling like this is part of my tribe. What role does this play with resolving conflicts on your team and resolving conflicts with other people?
Shannon Smith: Yeah if someone views the other person on the team as not in their tribe or out of group, it makes it extremely difficult to cultivate empathy, probably on both sides. And empathy is so important in a variety of ways. I think it was just really big in the 80s, but there's so much science behind the importance of empathy.
In fact, showing empathy tactically has been shown to completely alter the way that your brain lights up whenever you're recounting a social conflict .
There's a really cool study , participants were put into an MRI machine and so that's where they do brain imaging to see what parts of the brain are being activated? And they were then asked to recount a social conflict to the researchers.
In the first condition, the researchers responded like, yeah, I can't really, can't understand where you're coming from. It doesn't really make sense to me. I don't really get your point of view. And something similar like that. So that was the first condition. They measured what happened in the brain when that kind of response was happening.
Then in the second condition, they had the researchers then paraphrase and be empathetic with what, the subject was talking about through their social conflict. They saw a completely different, part of the brain lineup. There were several parts of the brain, but essentially the autonomic nervous system was activated when the researchers just simply paraphrased what the participant was saying about the social conflict.
And so it activates the calming system. It makes the person feel like they're heard and maybe understood. It also deactivates the amygdala, which is a portion of where the fear, flight, or freeze component comes in.
And so just that really small little thing has a huge difference when creating empathy, especially if the group members don't see themselves as being in group versus out of group.
Doug Howard: It's interesting hearing you say empathy in a quantifiable way because, we hear it as this buzzword all the time and just kind of helps make more sense about the science behind, what happens when someone feels heard and understood. I would imagine there's a link to like feeling appreciated along with that too. Feeling like connected that way.
The main thing I'm hearing though is empathy is a lens that shapes your perspective on how you're hearing the other person talk. It's almost like a translator and it can really change the meaning of a message.
Shannon Smith: Yeah, that's a part of it. It really does. Not only that, but it deactivates your amygdala. So you're not like ready to fight or ready to, freeze or flee. So what it does is it just allows everybody to just simmer down now, and actually hear and listen what each other are saying, which, healthy conflict.
I don't think that's really talked about a ton right now, too. People tend to associate conflict with something negative. I'm sure you realize, I think you're married, like there's going to be conflict, and healthy dialogue. Being calm when you're talking about it. Respectful is a requirement for overcoming obstacles.
Paraphrasing is a tool that anybody can use just to deactivate anybody's fear response, that amygdala. So that a productive conversation can happen for both parties.
Doug Howard: No, it's funny because as you're saying this stuff I was hearing conflicts with my wife and hearing things were like, I'm like, okay, we're clearly not hearing each other in this moment, but this kind of helps qualify why. Cause usually we come to our senses later on, if we get into some type of silly argument and we're not hearing each other, right. For some reason it makes a lot more sense an hour later or a day later and I guess that's why.
I guess maybe the first question is how do you recognize that you're having this biased perspective? How do you recognize that in a moment? How do you look for it? And then what do you do? If you notice it, okay, I'm biased right now. What should I do?
How to Recognize Your Biased Perspective in the Moment
Shannon Smith: Yeah. The first step is always self awareness. So getting good at being aware of what's going on internally, how that's probably being perpetuated externally.
I think it'd probably be easier just to tell the person at work. Hey, you know what, can I come back to you tomorrow and have a conversation about this when I'm more calm and have some time to think about it.
I think that probably would be easier than probably in the heat of the moment with your spouse. I know in some of my past relationships, I had some that just, wanted to resolve it right now. And it's, it's a whole conversation about what works and what doesn't. So I'm definitely not a marriage counselor, but I will say at the time, if you can be self aware and just ask for some time and to come back and make sure that you have a day and a time where you're going to come back and have the conversation again.
How to Regulate Your Emotions and Create Empathy
Doug Howard: The thing that's really on my mind here is how can I create that empathy? So let's say I'm on the other end of it and I recognize this person isn't hearing me. Obviously I can walk away from the situation myself, Hey, they're not hearing me right now. But what can I do on the front end to create that empathy and, make them feel those feelings to kind of put their guard down and listen to me and want to openly receive my message? Cause this is super powerful.
This is slowly resonating with me as you're explaining this, but I'm realizing like, okay, I have control over changing how my message is received. Part of it is the words I'm saying, but a lot of it is just how I'm treating the other person. But how do I do this? How do I tap into this?
Shannon Smith: There have been some studies on this, and one very easy way is to think about what the person may be doing on his or her Sunday morning. What are they interested in? How do they spend their time? Try to get into their shoes a little bit. And actually this kind of leads right into cognitive flexibility.
There are four components to cognitive flexibility. They are first salience. So you have to pay attention to what is going on.
The second is you have two or more different sets of rules that contradict each other. If in this scenario, we were going to try to create some empathy with this team member, you might have step out of yourself and try to step in to this person's Sunday morning and try to understand what's important to them. How do they feel? What does it feel like to walk a mile in their shoes? And so that's another component of having two sets of rules, whenever at the same time.
Another example of this is, let's say that, we're having a great conversation and I keep throwing ya dad jokes and you're just like, stop, please. Please. No more. Then I would probably eventually stop with the dad jokes. And so it's like constantly realizing that there are two sets of rules here.
The third component is inhibition. So based on those two sets of rules, you're going to stop doing some things.
And then the fourth component is switching and so you may switch up what you do essentially.
So cognitive flexibility is a a culmination of these four components together. And it's important when whenever you're trying to build your empathy because you're really trying to get into their shoes to better understand their position,
Doug Howard: By putting yourself in someone else's shoes, it's shifting your mind a little bit. It's taking you outside of, what am I thinking? What do I want in this situation? What do I care about? What am I driving for? It helps you look at the thing more, look at the situation more objectively. And it probably influences the way you're communicating and related to that other person.
Shannon Smith: Absolutely. Because whenever you're able to regulate your emotions better, and a way to do that is to imagine yourself as an objective observer, you're able to come at it in a more calm and diplomatic tone and reach out and offer more empathy. Which as we talked about earlier, there's a lot of different things that happen to our brain whenever we feel like we're being heard and the other person is empathetic, and it's just a lot more likely to resolve conflict in a healthy way.
Doug Howard: I'm a logical engineer. I'm all about efficiency and whatnot. The main gripe I hear with empathy is, I don't have time for that. Just get to the point. Get to the point. Get to the point. Kumbaya and all that stuff, we're not really into that. When I'm thinking about it the way you're saying it, it's more this is the most efficient way.
It's a lot more efficient to communicate this way and to, maybe take what feels like a step backwards. You want to just blurt out the message, but instead just take a step backwards. Think okay what is this person thinking? Or what is this person experiencing right now? Or like you said, what do they like to do on Sunday? It might feel like a waste of time, but in reality, it's probably saving a lot of time in the long run, right?
Shannon Smith: Absolutely. And it's improving the relationship because another component that study found whenever they were doing that social conflict in the MRI machine was that like ratings were higher, both just in terms of how the participant felt and then how the participant perceived the researcher.
Yeah, and that's actually a really astute observation, Doug. It is a time saver. It's a time saver, and sentiment's gonna go way up, so why not, right?
Utilizing Visualizing Techniques in Leadership and Management
Doug Howard: Leave it to me to look at it as a time saver instead of the human component to it.
The thing that popped in my head as you were saying this there's a little bit of visualization going on there. You said, treat yourself like an observer. You said look at the situation like you're outside of it and you're watching it. And, I hear a lot about visualization and I'm practicing some of these techniques on my own that I've been just learning about and reading about online.
But I'm curious what are your thoughts on that? Does visualization play a role in this? Does visualization have other benefits to it? What do you know about that?
Shannon Smith: Visualization is extremely powerful. There are a multitude of studies out there that show what happens when you're visualizing something. For instance, there was a study that showed whenever you're thinking about singing, that the part of your brain is activated even more so than if you were singing. Kai Miller at U Dub showed that when you visualize that you're exercising, the same parts of your brain are activated as if you were actually exercising, but you're actually just sitting on your sofa.
Doug Howard: Now, what does that mean? The same parts of your brain are activated. What does that mean? What's the significance of that?
Shannon Smith: So condition A, you're in the gym and you're doing your thing and you're sweating your butt off. You're like or maybe you're past that point. Oh, I feel so good. So whenever you exercise, just like when you do anything in your life, there are certain components of your brain that are activated. Parts of my brain are required to move my hands, to speak, to hear, to see, to feel. There are a set of thinky parts that happen when you exercise. So if you visualize exercising, sitting on your sofa, the same parts are activated as if you were actually exercising.
Doug Howard: How can I use that as a leader? Like, how can that make a difference for me as a leader? Understanding, okay, so if I put myself in a setting mentally, it will change my, attitude or feelings or, create a different energy about myself. How can I use that as a leader to help, with my team and helping, build relationships with my team, for example?
Shannon Smith: Yeah. I think there are a whole host of applications that we probably have not found yet. But I think one is just through coaching. If someone is having a difficult time achieving something, or maybe if they're going through a change and they don't want to do it, helping them to visualize what the other side will look like can be really powerful.
So yeah, this change is really going to suck in the interim. But on the other side, you're going to get a lot less people complaining. You're going to have a lot less issues. You're not going to have to deal with that crappy software anymore, whatever the changes. So you can guide them through, what the positive sides are to the change, that whole with them, what's in it for me. And if you take them through the steps and you guide them, it'll be easier for them to start to move through that whole change curve. And make the necessary changes to get to the other side.
Doug Howard: The thing I'm hearing here is take them out of that immediate thinking. I think with me and with other people, a lot of times we jump to the, this is going to be uncomfortable now. If you're asking them to do something they don't want to do or asking them to do a change or a new system or process that's, this won't work right now because of X, Y, and Z. I can't do this now because I have all these other conflicts. But I guess what you're getting at is it takes you into that future mindset, which maybe brings more comfort to it because you can feel like this is what it'll feel like when it's done, when it's implemented, when it's successful.
I feel like that's really powerful. Just hearing that and saying that out loud, just thinking you're helping people visualize what the end result is and what it looks like on the other side of the tunnel.
Shannon Smith: Another component of that is the more that you can connect it to different portions of the brain, like I call it stickiness, but what does it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it look like? The more components you can connect in your coaching, the more powerful that visualization is going to be.
Another really powerful visualization technique is called mental contrasting. You can completely Google this called the Whoop method. The highlight is you take them through the unhappy path. So if they don't want to do the thing, if they don't want to go through the change, what does that look like? They're going to fall behind. They're not going to know where the orders are. They're still going to have to produce the same amount, whatever it is.
And so taking them through that and happy path can be really powerful too, especially if someone doesn't really want to do the thing or if they're on the fence, it has been shown to be a good little nudge to knock them over the fence.
Doug Howard: It's funny you're saying that cause you're really helping me connect the dots on things that I've either done, good or bad. Not just good things, but as you're saying this, I'm picturing this one conversation I had with a direct report years ago.
He was underperforming, and I was struggling to figure out how to get him to improve his performance, and what I did was, I first started with just where do you want to be in your role? Where do you want to be in your career? I didn't talk about his problems or anything. I just talked about where do you see yourself wanting to be in a year from now?
He wanted to be leading projects. He wanted to be a project manager, which he was not showing any signs of being on that path. Then I just asked him questions like what projects would you think you'd be working on? What type of teams do you think you'd be leading? What skills do you think you'd need to be qualified to do that?
I just reverse engineered the path of it. Then all of a sudden he was super motivated to work on these areas that he really didn't show any interest in improving. And I think you're answering what was going on there in the back of my mind. I'm just thinking, yeah, he couldn't see it before that. He couldn't, but this kind of helped him visualize it and maybe gave him a sense of comfort in that. That's what's popping in my head. As your saying all these things, I'm just like reliving all these past experiences and thinking, okay, maybe this is what was going on in that moment.
Connecting the dots here, we've really jumped around in a few different areas. I think this is all great stuff. How can we use this to improve team performance? Because that's what this is all really about, how can we improve productivity?
Improve Team Performance
Shannon Smith: Well, I mean the paraphrasing, I think that really speaks very clearly. That is, you can implement that everywhere. So there's, a takeaway empathy really matters and the reason it does is because of the way our brain lights up and I don't know if you can get more, scientific, not necessarily engineering, but I don't know if you can get more scientific than that in terms of how our brain responds differently with empathy versus not.
So I think that's a pretty big takeaway. We talked a little bit about, cognitive flexibility and using that, enhancing your own cognitive flexibility in order to put yourself in other people's shoes to be able to create a better sense of empathy.
The whole reason that we're bothering with this empathy thing. There's a whole host of them, but a main reason is that we want our team members to see themselves as though they are part of our in group or of the same tribe. All of those components will help people to view their team members as a part of the same team, which we want them rooting for people to succeed. We don't want them to get a reward in their nucleus accumbens if one of the team members fails. And so we want people to view each other as a part of the same team, have empathy and be able to achieve the goals that they are given.
Doug Howard: That all makes sense. It's crystal clear now, what's really going on with empathy. It's not just a touchy feely buzzword, but there's a brain reaction. There's a if this than that statement going on when you make someone feel understood and appreciated.
I thought of one more thing. I'd love to just get your opinion on and it's a little unrelated to team performance, but I feel like it's super related to just all this other stuff you're talking about.
Improve Your Decision Making Under Pressure and Stress
Doug Howard: How can we use neuroscience to improve our ability to make decisions under pressure?
Shannon Smith: Whenever we're under pressure, also known aka as stress, our body and our brain respond in a very particular way. Usually we are shutting down. We're going to rote decisions. I think we talked about the rat study whenever they were under just a ridiculous amount of stress and pressure for a long time. It changes the way that our brains are wired and we no longer seek out rewards.
So if I'm an employee and I'm super stressed all the time, I'm not going to be like working on this extra project to get a promotion. I'm just going to be doing all the things that I need to do in a day and try not to get noticed, try not to get fired, just because I'm in survival mode.
And in order for employees to be able to make good decisions, especially under pressure. First, that component just has to be considered if they're over stressed or if there's too much pressure, they're going to go with what did we decide last time? That wasn't a huge train wreck. Let's just do that again because it's comfortable. It's familiar. And so that's one important distinction.
Another important distinction is that whenever we're trying to make a decision, our brain looks like a Christmas tree. There's so many areas that are involved with making a decision, it's hard just to list all of them.
And so another part of this is empathy. When someone is under the gun to make a decision, do they have time to be empathetic? The answer should be, yeah, empathy should always be a variable. Is it all the time? Probably not.
And so really it's just understanding what happens to our brain when we're under pressure. And the secret to making good decisions under pressure is just to have a good system in place. What is your system so that you can revert back to that when you are under all that pressure and stress. Because if you don't have a system in place, what the science says is you're just going to make the same decisions that you made before and try to just survive as opposed to going for rewards.
So the secret is to have a good system. If you want to talk more about what those systems might look like, I'm happy to do that too.
Doug Howard: That all makes sense to me and I think I know what you mean by a system, but could you elaborate on that or give some examples of that?
Shannon Smith: Sure. So let's say, I just, I have a big decision all of a sudden. I'm not just going to blurt out what it is, unless it's something like what kind of ice cream do you want, something like that.
But, first, for an example, you would want to clear your mind. You'd want to be in a calm state. You're not going to want to be worrying about driving. Or people cutting you off, or Seattle traffic, or Michigan traffic, but you're going to want to have a nice, calm space to, to think about things. Then determine what are the desired outcomes, prioritize key factors.
I can put all of this into a document too, if that might be easier, because this particular system has 12 steps. That's not a coincidence. Just has 12, making decisions intuitively.
So if you feel something in your gut. That actually matters, there's science behind that too, because you've got your vagus nerve that's connecting your brain to your gut, and your gut to your brain. There's a two way line of communication there, so always listen to your gut. Prepare for any kind of potential consequences, good or bad. Weigh decisions against probability and desirability. Understand the problem, make certain you understand the problem completely. Look at decision matrices, trying to quantify. I know you engineers will love that. Waste and need for more data with the timing. Can you wait for more information? Is this information going to change the decision you make? Is it going to change the outcome? Breaking problems down into more basic elements. Making them smaller, bite sized chunks. Pros and cons, and then recognize and evaluate any kind of assumptions you're making into this whole decision.
That's an example of a 12 step framework that you can use or reuse it.
How do You Listen to Your Gut Feeling
Doug Howard: The thing that really jumped out at me as you were saying it is your gut. Can you share a little bit more about this? You hear gut feeling and stuff all the time, but there's a science behind this. Can you explain that a little bit more? How do you listen to your gut?
Shannon Smith: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I will say that I've read, several books on the vagus nerve and there's still a lot that we don't understand. There's a lot of studies on the vagus nerve and just like the brain, there's just a ton we still are trying to figure out. How do we feel it? That's an interesting question.
I would probably go back to self awareness. Again, checking in with yourself does this feel good? Does this feel bad? Yeah, you can't really explain it, but you just know because it's in your gut. Why is that? It's really that two way connection between your brain and your gut via the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is an amazing nerve. It's got all kinds of things going on with it. There's some science that says your healthy gut bacteria is a variable, in all of this as well. There's a way that you can measure your vagel tone, your heart rate variability.
Actually, I understand there's a lot of heart rate variabilities on like Fitbits and everything. I don't have a Fitbit, but everybody's Oh. HRV, that's what that is. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know your vagal tone? That's so cool. The higher your vagal tone is the more likely you are to be able to rewire your neural pathways and synapses and create new connections.
And, neuroplasticity is pretty cool because we want to change our brains how we want them to be. And if we have a higher vagal tone, then we're more likely to be able to do that. So there's a lot behind that vagal tone, the vagus nerve. It's a really interesting one for sure.
There was one more study where researchers had rats, of course, and they cut one because there's a two way line of communication. They cut one of the lines of communication of the vagus nerve in the rat brain.
And what they found is that the rat's behavior changed big time. They started just hanging out in the middle of the floor in bright spaces. Not a lot of rats that do that. Is it probably safe for rats to hang out in the middle of the day on the floor? Probably not. It was a complete disconnect of that gut and brain connection. And as a result, their behaviors changed.
Doug Howard: That's going against their innate, hardwiring that's survival. I couldn't think of the word that's interesting, which I guess that means we can use these things to change things about habits, things about us that are causing more harm than good in situations.
Shannon Smith: We certainly can, but it also really says there's science when they say, listen to your gut, there's science to back it up.
Doug Howard: This has been such an interesting conversation, Shannon, and I look forward to future conversations with you because every time we talk, I learn a lot about the brain and just my own experiences and myself and how to apply these things. So I really appreciate you sharing all this. Now, for the audience, how should they get in touch with you if they want to learn more about this stuff?
Shannon Smith: Yeah, you can reach out to me at shannon at rebootyourbrain. xyz. You can go to rebootyourbrain. xyz uh, just for more information. There is a beta launching later this month called Reboot Your Brain, imagine that. A mobile gaming app based in neuroscience research that changes your habits while you play. It'll be a very skinny beta, only one level, but it should be out on the app and Google store. And actually, I'm going to be pitching it at the end of the month, out in Bellevue, Washington, at one of the local accelerators.
So that's one piece. And then if you want to know more about how to infuse your teams with neuroscience to enhance their own productivity, you can certainly get to me either of those avenues, email or website. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Doug Howard: Excellent. I'll include a link to all these resources that you just shared in the description of this episode for anyone who wants to get in touch with Shannon. Before we go, I just want to thank you for joining us. This has been great and I look forward to having you on again.
Shannon Smith: Doug, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. You're wonderful to work with and I look forward to our next time as well.
Did you miss Part 1 of this episode, “Hack Your Brain to Become A Better Leader with Shannon Smith”? Get caught up HERE.
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