Think of the last time you played sport, or even were involved in an intense game of trivia down at the pub. Your heart is beating faster, your blood pressure is higher. You really need to win — even if you won't admit it to yourself (especially when it comes to the trivia). Game over, you come home victorious. Don't you feel great? You have been flying by the seat of your pants, making quick decisions, razor-sharp thinking …

And yet you have also been quite stressed.

The brain's primary function is to keep us safe. If danger looms we react fast. When we feel safe, we have the luxury of taking the slower thinking route involving the prefrontal cortex to consider our response.

Acting on reflex denies us the time required to consider all options and make the best decisions. As a result, we tend to believe it's our emotions that determine how we react at any given moment. The reality is in fact the opposite: we rely on our emotional regulation to ensure we respond appropriately.

The problem is that in many workplaces today showing emotion or ‘being emotional’ is often seen in a negative light. With reports of increasing levels of stress, burnout, and mental health issues including anxiety, depression and unhappiness in the workplace, clearly emotional wellbeing is not being adequately dealt with. Bullying, discrimination, lack of trust and lack of autonomy provide the perfect cocktail for a toxic workplace.

Those companies that dismiss the relevance of emotion to their business are in denial over the fundamentally human desire to feel safe, included and valued.

Ask someone about stress and they will usually tell you it's a bad thing. It's bad for your brain and your body and can make you sick. Which is true, if the stress you are experiencing is chronic, severe and overwhelming your normal coping mechanisms. Yet stress is a completely normal part of our everyday lives. If we didn't have any stress, we wouldn't have the impetus to get out of bed in the morning, let alone get on and do anything.

Stress is a physiological response to a change in our environment and is designed primarily to keep us safe. Being able to distinguish between danger and safety is obviously very important to our survival. It's like being able to tell the difference between hot and cold or sharp and smooth to the touch.

Eustress is the term given to the everyday stress that keeps us going, that allows us to look forward to the challenges we face each day, the excitement of a new job, a new project at work or a new relationship. It's those butterflies in your stomach as you prepare to deliver your first presentation, shoot your first goal or meet your partner's parents.

What we perceive to be stressful (that is, outside our comfort level) varies from person to person, event to event and moment to moment. Jo finds it stressful talking to people she doesn't know at networking events, whereas John stresses over being even one minute late for an appointment.

Stress leave

You may find a work situation so stressful it leaves you feeling chronically fatigued to the point of exhaustion. If you see no possibility of being able to take some time off to relax and recharge, then you run the risk that your immune system will be impaired to the point of not being able to fight off minor but inconvenient illnesses such as colds and 'flu. Your risk of developing more serious conditions, such as heart disease, mental illness or even cancer, also increase.

But there is something else at play here. And it comes down to belief.

Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at Stanford University, believes we need to make stress our friend and stop making it Public Enemy Number One. In her TED talk she shares the idea that we can produce a different outcome by reprogramming our belief as to whether the stress we are under makes us sick. She looked at the evidence that challenged the long-held belief that being exposed to severe chronic stress inevitably makes us sick.

In one study, 30 000 adult Americans were tracked over a period of eight years. They were initially asked to record how much stress they had experienced over the previous 12 months and whether they believed this was potentially harmful to their health. The researchers followed up by checking on death records.

That might sound a bit morbid, but the results were interesting. The study confirmed that having more stress in your life is associated with a higher level of morbidity. No unexpected news there. Those who reported being under significant stress over that time interval had a 43 per cent higher risk of dying compared with those who didn't report being overstressed.

Remarkably, however, this increased death rate showed up only in those who expressed the belief that stress was harmful to health. Those who didn't share that belief, despite experiencing high levels of stress, had a lower risk of dying compared with the group who reported having less stress.

When we feel severely stressed, the physiological changes we notice in our body may include a pounding heart, trembling knees, sweaty palms, nausea and that horrible stomach churn. These unpleasant symptoms act as a warning to our conscious awareness that this is a place of danger and perhaps we should skedaddle to safety, quick smart (see figure 7.1).

But what if we changed our perspective about this?

For those affected by anxiety and panic disorders, the physiological symptoms we recognise trigger a rapid spiral down into thoughts of fear and dread. Changing our thinking from ‘Oh no, here we go again’ to ‘Great, this is a good sign! My body is energised to meet this new challenge’ keeps the thinking part of our brain engaged and minimises the stress response.

When the body is under stress, the arterial pressure normally increases, leading to an increase in blood pressure. This is fine in a short-term stressful situation. Chronic stress, however, can potentially lead to the development of hypertension and heart disease.

Why caring is sharing

Oxytocin, the so-called ‘trust hormone’, is released in social situations by the pituitary gland. It helps us develop close relationships and boosts empathy. It is also potently anti-inflammatory, which makes it extremely useful in stressful situations. Higher levels of oxytocin released when we are under stress drive us to seek support from others. Human connection allows us to lighten our emotional load. Not only this, the act of caring for someone else when we are stressed helps create resilience and reduces the time it takes for our stress levels to normalise.

Seeking out the assistance of others when we are feeling burdened by severe chronic stress is extremely important to our wellbeing. It might even help us live longer.

How we choose to reduce our emotional load of difficult circumstances will vary according to what the problem is and how much it is interfering with our ability to stay on task and feel well. Perhaps you've noticed too that we seek solace from our emotional pain by engaging in activities we would avoid at other times.

We rationalise why we do this through what is called cognitive dissonance. You may have given up smoking for your health six months ago, but today you justify lighting up because you've had a really bad day and you know it will help you relax.

Our perception of the ‘right’ way to make ourselves feel better sometimes may be quite ‘wrong’ for us at other times. But does this matter? It is our belief at the time that counts. If we believe drinking or smoking will make us feel better we do it, even though we know that relying on this type of crutch is not helpful in the longer term.

Workplace stress is not going to disappear. What matters is having the right set of strategies to help us navigate the ups and downs of everyday life and work so we feel in control (even if it's only partial control) of our circumstances and emotions and can stay in balance.

Managing stress

Reviewing the issue of workplace stress adequately would require another book! However, stress management and emotional regulation in the workplace has to be a given. Every person at work, from the CEO down, needs the right tools to minimise bad stress in order to function at a higher level and enjoy a greater level of happiness and wellbeing.

Which method you use to manage stress doesn't matter. What does matter is being aware that your stress levels may be too high and that you need to do something about it.

Identify the culprit or culprits

With so many things going on in our lives, our stress usually has not just one source but a complicity of causes, like the many layers of a mille-feuille cake.

Identify what you can change and what you can't

The first rule of stress management is to worry about things that are under your control, not things that aren't. Stressing about issues you cannot change is simply a waste of time and energy, both of which could be diverted to more productive and enjoyable activities. Let go. Easy to say, of course, but unless you choose to change here, nothing else will change.

Choose your stress reduction plan

This might include any of a variety of different methods. There's no one-size-fits-all here. Different events might see you using different methods. And that doesn't matter so long as, whatever method you use, you feel you are making progress and feeling better for it.

Implement your stress reduction plan

Practising a relaxation technique daily helps to build resilience and coping skills. It doesn't have to take long or be very complicated. It might involve:

• aerobic exercise or dancing
• socialising with family and friends
• switching off from technology regularly
• taking holidays when they are due and planning long weekend breaks in between
• taking up a new hobby or interest outside work, such as painting, gardening or cooking
• learning yoga, tai chi, meditation or Pilates
• playing or listening to music.

Psychological techniques to alleviate stress

A number of psychological practices can also help to alleviate stress, perhaps the most significant being labelling and reframing.

Labelling

Putting our feelings into words helps to dissipate some of the emotional intensity we experience. Acknowledging that you feel angry or sad and saying it out loud decreases activity in the amygdala and increases it in our executive prefrontal cortex. In others words, hearing ourselves verbalise what we are feeling makes it easier for our conscious mind to rein in the over-exuberance of the emotional amygdala. The effect can be similar to what we experience when we talk things through with a friend or jot thoughts down in a journal.

Sometimes the simplest of techniques can make the biggest difference in maintaining our mental health and wellbeing.

Reframing

James Gross, a leader in emotional regulation, has commented that ‘reframing should be in the water we drink’. What he means is that teaching people how to cognitively reappraise a situation can save an enormous amount of unnecessary angst. He likens it to a cost-free cognitive emotional neutraliser. We feel better simply by deliberately choosing to reinterpret a given situation.

Suppression has been shown to be the worst form of emotional regulation, because rather than diminishing an emotional response it heightens the amygdala response. Worse still, it has been shown to reduce memory in the person actively trying to suppress how they feel and to increase blood pressure in others around them. Rather than having one upset person, you can end up with a crowd!

In the past, the Brits have had a bit of a reputation for emotional suppression. It was seen as a sign of weakness to show how you felt. Heaving bosoms and repressed expressions of emotion were all the rage in the Brontë era, but they clearly were not a very emotionally balanced lot.

Reframing can help us move away from negative appraisal of a situation for which there is no basis other than our bad mood.

You are already feeling frazzled because you have an important deadline looming, you've skipped lunch because you felt compelled to keep working, and when you scoot out to your local coffee shop for a much-needed java pick-me-up you witness a young mother seemingly ignoring the high jinks of her three young children, who are cavorting loudly and somewhat dangerously between the café tables.

Do you mutter under your breath about ‘some parents’ who seem to have ‘no control over their kids’? Do you complain loudly to the girl at the counter that this behaviour needs to be dealt with — now? Or do you ask the young mum if there is anything you can do to help as it seems her kids are a bit of a handful?

The frame of reference we give to a situation determines our emotional response, and the filter we apply leads to our creating a new emotional state.

Reframing needs practice. As with other brain activities, the more we use it the more accomplished we become. For example, when chewing over a difficult problem or relationship issue, it can help to write down or mentally construct a list of different perspectives to consider.

As the law frequently reminds us, there are usually at least two sides to every story. Considering all the evidence impartially helps us to identify which is the correct path for us to follow.

Mobilising the brain to learn

W. Edwards Deming reminds us, ‘Learning is not compulsory, but neither is survival’. Learning remains a critically important competency in organisations, yet formal organisational learning or training currently accounts for only 10 to 20 per cent of workplace learning; 80 per cent takes place informally ‘on the job’, thus lacking design or strategy.

To mobilise our brains to learn efficiently we first need to recognise the changed nature and speed of the working environment. Technology and access to data have become so pervasive that we are now ‘online’ 24/7, hyper-stimulated with multiple communication channels vying for our attention. We have adapted by reducing our attention time to different tasks. This is why when web surfing we will spend an average of four seconds on a web page before clicking to the next. It's why we skim-read articles just looking for the salient points, perhaps reading only the first 100 or 150 words before moving on. We have also reduced the length of the messages we exchange, as exemplified by Twitter's 140-character limit.

Increasing demands on our time and the complexity of our work mean allocating time and energy to learning modules is becoming increasingly difficult. Organisations are reluctant to allow staff to spend too long away from their desks. They also want the reassurance that there will be a return on their investment of the time and money required. The result is that businesses and staff are looking for shorter chunks of focused learning rather than full training days.

The problem is that our fragmented and shortened attention spans have led to a reduction of the depth of understanding of our learning.

Learning changes the brain and shapes who we are. It determines how we respond, cope and adapt to change and opportunity. Different generations learn differently because they are wired differently.

Safety first

Of all the millions of bytes of information that the brain receives every second, only 2000 or so make it through the first filter, the reticular activating system. The second filter, the amygdala, helps determine where we direct the incoming information — either to the prefrontal cortex or to the subconscious. The prefrontal cortex and amygdala join in a delicate dance, each vying to take the lead (see figure 7.2).

If we sense danger, the amygdala, being stronger and faster, takes over, denying access to the prefrontal cortex, which is why we find it harder to take things in when we are stressed.

A staff member who is experiencing a lot of stress either at home or in the workplace is not going to be with you mentally. Their amygdala will be on high alert, and even though they may be sitting there, eyes open, apparently listening, they may be taking in little of the information being presented.

Evian Gordon, a neuroscientist, proposed that the brain operates either in a ‘towards state where it anticipates reward’ or an ‘away state where it wants you to get the heck outta there immediately’ (see figure 7.3).

Towards mental stretch

The best place of learning is a brain-safe environment that promotes the towards state.

This is about checking in prior to the training to ascertain where people are at an individual level, connecting with previous knowledge and experience, and then incorporating some fun and humour to help keep everyone relaxed. It's also about providing a mental stretch. If the information is presented in a boring way (think death by PowerPoint) or covers material you are already familiar with, you are likely to quickly switch off and perhaps seek refuge under the cover of checking your Twitter feed or Facebook updates.

Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management, summed up the need for organisational learning nicely when he said, ‘We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn’. Which is true, as is the need to recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach to learning won't work in a workplace that comprises five different generations.

Technology is contributing increasingly to workplace learning. It is interactive fun and can be designed to allow participants to travel at their own pace, with logon progress that can be monitored by both the individual and the person operating the program. Video games in particular are often structured to reflect your current level of activity and then provide what neurologist and educator Dr Judy Willis calls ‘an achievable challenge’. If you have ever played video games you will recognise the thrill of passing each level and feeling inherently rewarded. That extra dose of dopamine makes us feel good.

Video games have a bit of a bad name because they can have some negative consequences and can be addictive, but did you know gaming skill can translate into physical skill? It has been shown that surgeons who operate using a laparoscope (a viewing tube inserted through a small incision for keyhole surgery) who play a couple of hours of video games each week generally perform better in the operating theatre, making 35 per cent fewer mistakes and completing their tasks 24 per cent faster. For workers operating machinery or intricate tools this could be a distinct advantage. And if any of you are waiting for elective surgery that requires laparoscopy, you know now to ask your potential surgeon how many times they have broken track records at Monterey in Gran Turismo.

Why learning really does take AGES

The neuroscience model AGES, devised by Lila Davachi, Tobias Kiefer, David Rock and Lisa Rock, is a great way to ensure the ROI of any training program in the workplace is positive and enduring. To learn anything we have to pay attention to what has to be encoded into our memory bank. We then have to retain the information in the appropriate memory deposit box and finally, the ‘pièce de résistance’, to be able to access the information at the time it is required.

The AGES model comprises:

Attention

Generation

Emotion

Spacing.

Your attention please

Focusing our attention in a world of distractions requires more than a request to turn off our phones in class. Providing a learning environment that is as free from distractions as possible can involve taking people off-site to a specified training area and planning the program to incorporate a variety of ways to maintain engagement. This may include storytelling, undertaking pre-reading, experiential activities, games and discussion. Flipped classrooms work by providing the core information prior to attendance, with class time spent on clarifying and deepening understanding. Effective integration of the training in the workplace can happen only where the material is perceived as relevant to the participant themselves and their job or role.

Generating memory

Getting information to stick happens when we ascribe meaning and associations using our own insights. That's why sitting passively listening to a lecture is not the best way to learn.

The new way of teaching revolves around driving neuroplasticity, creating new linkages to other neural pathways through a combination of modalities. Memories are not stored in neat filing cabinets; they involve vast networks of interlinked data. The greater the number of associations we form, the easier it is to retrieve the material later.

Repetition has always been a core element of our ability to remember information. It turns out that repetition doesn't work on its own, though.

How many times have you repeated a key piece of information, such as a phone number or address, to find that within a short time it has vanished from your head — unless some other associations were made. This might mean structuring the learning to incorporate an element of self-discovery — that is, generating your own learning.

Emotion is crucial to learning

We make around 30 000 decisions every day, many of which are subconscious and all of which incorporate our emotions. In the business world emotion has been seen as inappropriate because of the belief that when it comes to problem solving and decision making we can and should rely solely on our logic and analysis. This simply isn't true. Our emotions play an important role in all our thoughts and actions. We are moved mainly by emotion, not logic.

The trick is to get the balance right, because we have what neuroscientist Amy Arnsten calls a Goldilocks brain: everything has to be just right. When we are in a positive mood, our mind is more open to learning, to seeing things differently, to considering all options and possibilities. This promotes greater imagination and creativity and helps us to retain what we have learned.

Emotion and memory are very strongly intertwined. That's because in a heightened level of stress our amygdala becomes hyperactive and enhances those memories with a strong emotional component, while activity in the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with learning and memory, decreases.

Spacing

Cramming doesn't work. Countless students over the ages have denied themselves sleep prior to exams in the mistaken belief that staying up all night might help a couple of extra useful nuggets of information to stick. If anything, it reduces students' potential to get that really high grade because they are already cognitively tired when they start the exam, and they are unlikely to retain any of that extra data in the longer term.

In organisational learning this is not what is desired. Cramming doesn't work, which is where spacing comes in. Rather than trying to condense a three-hour program into 90 minutes (to save time), project managers and trainers are far better off providing short chunks over a longer period of time. This gives the brain a chance to digest and assimilate the information and has been shown to increase retention significantly.

Finding the right spacing balance has been shown to be complex. It does appear that increasing the space gap improves retention because the brain has to work harder to remember it, and it is that increase in effort that strengthens the memory.

Promoting a culture for learning

The authors of the AGES model remind us of the important neurological factors to consider when designing a learning or training program:

• The prefrontal cortex can process between three and seven items of information at any one time, so highlighting a few key points is far more effective than dumping a whole lot of information into one session.
• Learning is a neurobiological process. It takes time to form new synapses.
• New synaptic connections are fragile. It is easy to lose a memory if the synapse is disturbed before it becomes firmly embedded.
• Long-term memory requires brain breaks. This time is needed for consolidation of the information and for the new content to be distributed and organised in the hippocampus.
• Today organisational learning is about developing capacity and capability. It has to provide engagement and meaning.
• As businesses grapple with the problems of staying relevant and competitive, achieving change through acquiring new skills and knowledge requires a workforce to be happy, motivated and engaged.

Any learning program today requires:

• an understanding of where an individual or group is currently at in relation to a skillset
• ensuring the learning is relevant, set at an appropriate level, meaningful and fun!
• providing a clear framework on how to achieve the expected outcomes
• accountability and progress reports
• experiential (where appropriate) and spaced learning to embed the learning
• keeping it brain-friendly with adequate breaks and refueling stops.