Hardwired Humans. Andrew O'Keeffe
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knowledge, application and value of our basic instincts have largely been ignored in the practice of leadership. understanding those instincts can provide the missing link to effective people leadership. Most leaders find the toughest part of their job—the one more likely to keep them awake at night—is the ‘people’ dimension. As one manager said to me, ‘The numbers are easy; it’s the people stuff that’s hard.’ This book will help ensure that managing people isn’t as hard as it tends to be.
Behaviours that frustrate organisational performance are uncannily similar from one organisation to another. Irrespective of their organisation, their industry or country, most leaders say that in our organisation:
There’s a lot of silo behaviour and internal competition.
Change is difficult to manage and often resisted or derailed.
The informal gossip grapevine is incredibly effective and is generally faster and regarded as more reliable than the formal channels.
Our performance appraisal system doesn’t deliver what it should and Human Resources is redesigning the system just one more time!
Managers find it hard to give negative feedback and often procrastinate on managing poor performers.
Given that these experiences and many more are common to most organisations then they are not explainable at the organisational level. They can only be explained by a common factor—we all employ humans! Likewise, the solutions to these common issues will not be found at the organisational level. They can only be solved if we understand the human condition that both explains the behaviours and provides the solutions.
There’s a suite of behaviours that come with being born human. Irrespective of whether our belief systems are more aligned to evolution or creation, the point is that when we’re born human there’s a package of behaviours that come with being human and that out of the whole period of human history we have only recently popped up in offices and factories.
From an evolutionary view, Homo sapiens emerged on the plains of Africa around 200,000 years ago and it’s only 250 years ago with the Industrial Revolution that (in Western cultures) we left our hunting, gathering and village societies to work in offices and factories. A mere 250 years is no time at all for our ingrained behavioural instincts to change. Little surprise, therefore, that the behaviour that ensured our survival on the savannah plains of Africa over the millennia is alive and well in the corridors, meeting rooms and offices of today’s organisations!
And early Homo sapiens were shaped by their pre-human ancestors. The evolutionary theory is that pre-humans emerged around 5 million years ago in the form of Australopithecines who had a similar skull structure to humans and walked upright on two legs. The 23 metres of hominoid footprints preserved in volcanic ash at Laetoli in Tanzania date from around 3.7 million years ago.
Homo habilis appeared around 2 million-1.5 million years ago and then Homo erectus emerged around 1.5 million years ago, walking upright, with a large brain and engaged in tool making. Evidence of the use of fire first appears at this time. The oldest fossil of modern humans has been found at Herto in Ethiopia that dates back to around 160,000 years ago. From separate studies of genetic code scientists date Homo sapiens from around 200,000 years ago which fits the fossil evidence.
Generations of early hominoids have been a key force in shaping what it means to be human. Even the transition to agricultural communities occurred only around 10,000 years ago. Then suddenly our grandparents’ grandparents were the first to find themselves in offices and factories.
While our habitat might have changed 250 years ago—the equivalent of a nanosecond on the evolutionary clock—our hardwired behaviour, the way we process information and the way the brain works, has not.
The definition of instincts, courtesy of Robert Winston, is, ‘That part of our behaviour that is not learned.’ For the list and explanation of the nine human instincts we rely on the research of a number of people. The key source and inspiration for the instincts comes from Professor Nigel Nicholson from London Business School, who first inspired me to see and apply instincts to solve practical leadership challenges, along with Professor Robert Winston of Imperial College London and Professor Robin Dunbar from the university of Oxford amongst others.
People who have learned about instincts find that workplace behaviour suddenly makes a lot more sense, they are more in control of their environment, better able to influence things and to be more effective. Leaders who have acquired the insight into human instincts say that the knowledge has transformed their ability to lead. They report that confusion about why people think and behave as they do has been significantly reduced. And as a consequence they are able to make better leadership choices so that managing people is easier, less stressful, more satisfying and more successful.
By understanding and reconnecting with the nine instinctive behaviours, you will realise that this valuable knowledge was already tucked inside your subconscious, exactly where you would expect to find instinctive behaviour. By making this knowledge explicit you will be better able to predict what will work and what won’t, and to avoid the perennial derailers of leadership and life in organisations.
Instinct 1. Social Belonging
This instinct helps explain why:
people talk about a great team being just like a family
teams have a natural size
80% of people who resign do so because of their manager
conflict in our team drives us crazy
silo behaviour emerges as organisations grow beyond a moderate size.
JANE GOODALL WATCHED FLINT die. Dr Goodall first began studying the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960. One of her early observations was that chimps, like us, have strong bonds between family members and those bonds endure for life. Flint’s reaction to his mother’s death shows how strong this bond can be. His mother Flo died when Flint was eight and a half years old. So traumatised was the youngster with the loss of his mother he died within three weeks.
Some 35 years after Flint’s death Dr Goodall was telling me about Flo and Flint’s deaths. In October 2008 Dr Goodall and I had just concluded a three week tour speaking to business audiences about the implications of instincts for leaders. In vividly recalling Flint’s death, Dr Goodall said that she could describe it as nothing other than grief. upon Flo’s death Flint stopped eating and with his immunisation system so weakened he quickly deteriorated. Back closer to the time she wrote, ‘The last short journey he made, pausing to rest every few feet, was to the very place where Flo’s body had lain. There he stayed for several hours … he struggled on a little further, then curled up—and never moved again.’
The first of our nine instincts is social belonging. We are a social animal; we are not loners. As a social animal, we gain our sense of identify from our membership of two groups: our family group that naturally numbers about seven people, and our extended clan which can number up to around 150.
Let’s make concrete the connection between instincts and organisational life. The building block of human communities is family groups. Given that we have just recently emerged into offices and factories, it follows that the building blocks of organisations are, or should be, small family-sized teams. With our need to connect intimately with a small group of others numbering around seven, it also means that nothing drives us to distraction faster than if our immediate work team is dysfunctional. It means that as organisations grow towards 150, people will begin to say, ‘It’s not as friendly as it used to be.’ And when numbers go significantly beyond 150 we will have stronger bonds to our department or subsidiary than to the whole organisation to the extent that silos and internal competition will tend to occur as departments compete for resources and recognition.
Family
Our strong sense of community and lifetime family bonds comes from our reproductive strategy as a species. There are