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Srini Pillay
February 19, 2016We ve always known that communication is an important
leadership skill. But most leadership research and advice is centered on what
leaders say and how they say it, not on the underlying neural processes that
govern communication between people.
A new finding in brain science reveals a curious dynamic a neural
synchronization during communication between leaders and followers: the brain
activity of leaders and followers is more highly synchronized than the brain
activity between followers and followers.
In their experiment, Jing Jiang of the Max Planck Institute and her colleagues
asked 11 groups of three people to conduct a leaderless discussion while their
brain activity was monitored and the conversations were recorded. They were
given the following topic for discussion: An airplane crash-landed on a
deserted island. Only six persons survived: a pregnant woman, an inventor, a
doctor, an astronaut, an ecologist, and a vagrant. Whom do you think should be
given the only one-person hot-air balloon to leave the island? Each group was
given five minutes to think about the problem alone, and then five minutes to
discuss it. After the discussion, one person had to be chosen as the leader to
represent the group and report the findings.
In addition, independent judges observed the group discussions and were asked
to choose a leader using their own criteria. They also rated the quality of
communication skills of people using the following seven criteria: group
coordination, active participation, new perspectives, input quality, logic and
analytic ability, verbal communication, and nonverbal communication.
Brain synchrony was determined for each two-person interaction within the
three-person groups. Every time one person addressed another, this synchrony
was determined by a measure called coherence, which indicates how often the
frequency and scale of brain waves of both people are in sync.
The findings in the study were remarkable: Most (nine out of 11) of the
external judges chose the same group leaders that the participants themselves
chose. Something about these leaders clearly stood out.
When a leader and a follower were talking to each other, the degree of
coherence, or neural synchrony, between the two was much greater than when
followers were talking to each other within the groups. But then the question
was, in the leader-follower pairs, who initiated the synchrony? Whose brain
does the synchronizing with the other?
A statistical test called a Granger Causality Analysis (GCA) can be used to
determine this. GCA indicated that both leaders and followers initiated the
synchrony, but another statistical test, a two sample t-test, found that
leader-initiated communication induced greater coherence and synchrony than did
follower-initiated communication. Also, the degree of synchrony was associated
with the quality of communication skills mentioned above.
The researchers found that one could predict leaders after 23 seconds by
looking at the synchrony data alone, because leaders induced much greater
coherence. So just by looking at the degree of synchrony induced when someone
spoke, one could tell who was a leader.
Clearly, neither the leader nor the followers were aware of this neural
synchronization, since it s all happening on a biological level. The brain
region in which the synchrony was detected was the junction between the left
temporal (side and bottom) and parietal (side and top) lobes (the left TPJ).
The synchronization occurred during verbal communication, but not during
nonverbal communication or periods of silence. The results are important
because they help us reflect on how communication influences who is a leader,
how leaders emerge during the communication process, and what factors cause
them to be leaders. There are four important implications:
It s not how much you communicate. It s how well you communicate. How often
leaders spoke did not matter. Even when they spoke less often, it was the
degree of brain synchronization and the quality of their communication,
measured by the seven aspects mentioned above, that mattered. The greater the
quality, the greater the coherence and synchrony with followers. High-quality
communications may increase synchrony with followers.
It s your verbal skills, not your nonverbal skills, that matter when making
decisions. In general, nonverbal communication can reveal a lot, but in this
experiment it did not affect whether leaders were chosen. Their verbal
communication skills were that mattered.
When leaders initiate conversations, they should seek to synchronize with
followers or have followers synchronize with them. Being aware of the brain
synchronization phenomenon helps leaders better understand the biological basis
of good communication. This implies that it is important for leaders to start
conversations with a view to developing synchrony with followers. Finding
common ground and a means for connection is important and can result in a
higher level of coherence during communication between leaders and followers.
In decision making, your synchrony, not your authority, is what matters. Try to
predict how others will respond to you by putting yourself in their shoes; this
is especially important when managing another person s emotions. It s a skill
that can be developed. Leaders would benefit from setting time aside to
anticipate how their decisions will impact others, and then adjusting those
choices if necessary.
We also know that social synchrony is disturbed when people are threatened; the
brain s alarm, the amygdala, registers the threat. In organizations, this
fact implies that for leaders to be perceived as leaders, they need to be in
touch with their followers emotionally, understand their points of view, and
address threats that disrupt cooperation.
The brain region that synchronized in the Jiang study is also known for having
a significant role in sharing emotional states and in reading the mental states
of others, which are important for maintaining group cohesion and cooperation.
When the brain is cooperative, it is usually activated by shared social
emotions. If leaders want to truly influence their followers, they ll remember
this and speak accordingly.
Srini Pillay, M.D. is the CEO of NeuroBusiness Group and award-winning author
of numerous books, including Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome
Fear, as well as Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders. He
is also Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School and teaches in
the Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School.