The Huffington Post

A study conducted by Uri Hasson, the Head the Neuroscience Institute, at Princeton University reports that a female student of his, through her speech, can project her own brain activity onto another person, forcing the person’s neural activity to closely mirror that in her own brain.

Daily we see headlines that suggest we are becoming mired in distrust, at high cost to our organizations. As our trust bank accounts are depleted, we run out of currency to invest in the future. And trust is not a currency we can easily print to offset the deficit.

One hundred years ago, Thomas Watson founded IBM on business beliefs. In 2001, IBM revisited those beliefs with an astounding global process called a Values Jam, (Drawn from 2003 HBR article on IBM), which engaged hundreds of thousands of people in an online conversation. At the time, many of us would think it impossible that a conversation with this many people could even take place.

Over my years working with leaders and teams, I’ve come to realize that people often have good intentions and think they are fostering great conversations when they are not. For example, a leader who realizes her team is not getting her message about the vision and mission of the company may “tell more,” hoping that more information will make a difference. If telling more doesn’t create the results she wants, the leader may “sell” her ideas to get people on board; when this doesn’t work, she is inclined to “yell“ to get results. Yet employees don’t want more “vision,” they want deeper engagement with leaders who can help them execute the vision. When those dynamics don’t emerge, employees often go into protective behaviors, pulling back from engagement rather than stepping into it.