Why Mental Models Matter
As a leader in an organization, your intention, I assume, is to create a culture that promotes innovation and adaptation and makes employees feel like valued and important members of your team; but what if how you are communicating is creating a mental model of a workplace that is not aligned with these goals?
My niece and sister visited us in New Hampshire last week and when my niece got out of the car, I saw she was holding a book I recognized. She’s always holding a book and has read a rather impressive number and range of works, and the book she had with her was “Deep Survival,” by Laurence Gonzales. If you do anything that might possibly put you in danger, even something as seemingly undangerous as hiking, this is the book you should read. It’s brilliant and I was quite excited to see her reading it as she becomes an accomplished mountaineer and climber, but my point here is neither survival nor my niece. It’s how this science-based book relates directly to organizational culture and communication. Gonzales’s book draws on an array of neuroscience to understand who survives life-and-death situations and it applies equally well to challenges we face daily within our organizations.
One of Gonzales’s main points is that we navigate the world with the aid of mental models, because the world is complex, and our brains need to simplify things to make sense of it; he also writes about the issues that arise when our mental models don’t match our operating environment. This makes sense when navigating through an unforgiving environment, and it also makes sense within an organization.
We create a mental model of our organization that includes our role within the organization, how things are done within the organization, what is acceptable and unacceptable, and what is safe to do and what is unsafe to do, among many other things. When we share mental models with others in the organization, which we most often do, this gives rise to organization culture.
Culture comes from how we communicate with each other within an organization. This drives what things we are primed to look for and communicate back to others when we find them, and unfortunately it also drives what we are primed not to look for and not to communicate. Culture and how we communicate reinforces what we feel empowered to communicate and what has a negative incentive to communicate.
If an employee asks why something is done the way it is and is told by management, “because that is what got us where we are and that is what works for us,” the mental model they begin to form of this workplace is one that does not value adaptation and change. You might recall that I wrote about “why” questions having implicit judgment in my last blog post, and in this case, management’s response also comes across as defensive and a conversation stopper. A more thoughtful and actionable answer would be, “that is what worked to get us to today; perhaps tomorrow we’ll need to consider changing our approach.” Our mental models are reflections of the information we absorb and an answer such as this creates a more desirable reflection—one that is empowering and creates collaboration.
At one point in my career, I was detailed for an extended period to Pakistan working on a series of high-profile cases. In this capacity I had often to deal with members of FBI management who were just below the Director. One day one of them ordered me to go into an incredibly dangerous part of Pakistan to do something quite dangerous, with the hope of locating a person we were looking for. My life has been primarily risk seeking, but this was not a good idea and, more importantly, it was not going to accomplish the end goal. Rather, it quite likely was going to thwart it. So, in consultation with the rest of the Embassy Team, I laid out for him what I thought to be a better alternative and the reasons why his directive was not feasible and likely would not accomplish what we wanted.
His response: “I didn’t ask for your input. I told you to make this happen.” How did my mental model of FBI management shift at that moment? Fortunately, we found a better route and achieved the short-term goals we were hoping for, but from my perspective, for a period of time the FBI was an unsafe organization and providing intelligence up the chain did not seem a good idea (though of course I still did, but rather grudgingly for a time). When our mental models tell us our workplace is dangerous, that we are not empowered, and that our input is not valued, we simply stop providing information because our brains tell us, “They do not want the information you have, so don’t bother. Keep yourself safe.”
This aligns with another of Gonzales’s points. We make decisions not based on logic or some sort of cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we make decisions based on what are called “somatic markers.” These are emotional markers that are left over in our brains from previous times we’ve made similar decisions. If we faced an equivalent decision in the past and it worked out well, we have a pleasant somatic marker left behind and we pursue a similar path because our brain tells us that felt good. Conversely, if we tried something in the past and were met with reprimands or retribution, we have a negative somatic marker and base our decision on that, even if a rational analysis said, “this is the right choice and for the good of the company.”
As a leader, consider not just the immediate repercussions of what you say and do, but also the long-term consequences in terms of the beliefs the people around you are creating, the somatic markers left in their decision-making brains, and the culture you really want in your organization. You can have a direct and intentional positive impact on the culture of your organization simply by taking the time to give dedicated attention to a question or situation that you previously may have overlooked as inconsequential. This is important because everything you say has a real, physical impact on the brains of those around you and on how they subconsciously perceive the organization and their place in it. I can almost guarantee you will have an opportunity to practice this in the coming week, as you listen for the indicators of how open and receptive your organizational culture is—or is not—and how you would like it to be.
