Posts Tagged ‘Emotion’
The Impact of the Aroused Limbic System in the Workplace
The amygdala is often thought of as the emotional center of our brains but is actually made up of several regions in the brain – the amygdala (regulates emotion), hippocampus (is important for attaching emotional significance to experiences), hypothalamus (regulates biological needs such as regulating body temperature, breathing, sex and other bodily functions), and the frontal cortex (responsible for thinking, making judgments, planning, decision-making and conscious emotion). It takes in environmental stimuli and assesses whether it is a threat or reward.
The limbic system is basically an emotional thermometer that is highly sensitive to threat and reward in our environment. It is triggered very quickly when danger is present and warns us to ensure our survival. When over aroused we act first then think later. The fight or flight reaction is an essential function of the limbic system and is quick to respond to threat with the onset of fear. No matter how small the threat, fear will spark arousal in the limbic system in milliseconds. Cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormones are secreted into the blood stream and begin accumulating in the amygdala. Too much of these stress hormones in the system can initiate an uncontrollable hijack of the amygdala and will drive us to demonstrate uncontrollable behaviours with complete lack of intellectual reasoning or rational thinking to handle the situation. An amygdala hijack demonstrated in the work place very often leads to disciplinary action up to and including termination. Therefore it is important to understand what influences our limbic system and how we can control it.
A sad yet common occurrence is when people are constantly exposed to stress and threat in the workplace. The accumulation of stress hormones caused by emotionally challenging tasks and fear based experiences will drive people to the edge until they reach a point of saturation, the point of no return and can explode with rage and do something that sabotages their work, career, or others health and safety. Our impulse control is regulated and controlled by a refreshed, rested, and fully functioning prefrontal cortex. If we constantly saturate the prefrontal cortex by overloading it with information, demanding constant complex decisions that fatigue the most brilliant minds, create situations that lack time for decompressing after stressful interactions, and put people in position to meet unrealistic deadlines to complete assignments we are actually bombarding them with stress inducing situations that limit our ability to maintain impulse control and reduces their capacity to meet the demands of the tasks at hand.
The more people operate in a state of high stress and threat the more sensitive the limbic system becomes to threat in the workplace. This sensitivity and lowered response time to arousal can dissuade key contributors from moving forward on risky projects. The detection of threat related to a project or change initiative will more than likely be perceived as negative. People perceiving a state of threat linked to a project or activity will want to remain safe and will be less inclined to support it or demonstrate the higher level thinking required to complete their portion of the project tasks. The tendency will be to look at the downside of the project and offer less than supportive ideas or reasons why it won’t work. People feeling this state of threat will take fewer risks on projects. They’ll be less likely to have creative insights and offer innovative solutions to move the needle in a positive direction.
When the limbic system is aroused because of perceived threat in a work setting we lose the ability to draw on needed resources to think quickly and intelligently to handle hard, challenging questions from leaders, managers or key stakeholders in meetings or presentations. The perceived threat forces us to rely on deeply embedded functions or ideas housed in long term memory or more recent events that caught our attention yet may not have importance to answering the questions or relevance to furthering the project. Important details will be forgotten at the critical moment and will not be recalled until later when we are in a calm and relaxed state in a non-threatening environment. At that time the PFC is able to access the resources to recall the appropriate information through higher level thinking.
When the limbic system is aroused it limits good decision making in the work place because we are limited in our ability to focus and maintain attention. We get easily distracted as we react to salient objects (loud, shiny, and bright) or stimuli in our environment that is less detailed and more general. We are responding to them as we are influenced by emotion rather than rational thinking. We do not focus on important details and information that is required to make key decisions. Complex thinking is a challenge when the thinking region of the brain is impaired and influenced by the onset of stress (threat) in the workplace.
When in brainstorming meetings to generate new ideas and possible solutions for an important issue an aroused limbic system will influence our ability to contribute ideas. Brainstorming generally requires us to be open and creative to allow brain stimulation to access remote regions of our brains to offer ideas to the group. The aroused limbic system will impact our ability to have insights. Insights require a quiet brain to access multiple regions and tap into the network of memory and brain maps…the aroused brain doesn’t allow this process to occur as it is creating distracting emotional noise and gearing up to fight or flight or freeze. The aroused limbic system would limit the flood of insights we desire and we would likely be silent and perceived as disengaged or a non-contributor by others in the meeting. To allow the brain to fully engage in the brainstorming process we need to create an environment that restricts stress, creates calm and comfort and frees the brain up to access remote regions of the brain to recall tacit information appropriate for the purpose of the meeting.
The limbic system reacts to threat. In the workplace that threat is easily felt through stress. The onset of stress can be triggered by any number of things throughout a typical day. Think about what stresses you and how you perform after you are in this state of stress for prolonged periods of time. Are you at your peak performance level? Do you have the necessary clarity and alertness required to respond to requests or make complex decisions? The bottom line is for all of us to be aware of how we react to threat and stress and how well we engage our impulse control to regulate emotion in the workplace. An over aroused limbic system will impair our ability to fully function in the workplace.
