Neuroscience has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on thinking in a wide variety of disciplines. With our focus on leadership and personal development, understanding how the human brain functions through neuroscience has provided us with a wealth of insights into human behavior. Still, as practitioners we are making a discernible move away from the mere "descriptive" use of neuroscience (for example, using neuroscience explanations for behavior in addition to or instead of social science explanations) to more "prescriptive" uses (for example, using neuroscience findings to enhance intervention strategies intent on changing behavior). While the "descriptive" material available to the practitioner is quite extensive, reliable, data-driven "prescriptive" materials are sadly lacking. Certainly, some of this dearth in availability can be explained by the relative youthfulness of the discipline, and the fact that much academic research attention has been placed on ferreting out the underlying brain architecture. Realistically, effectively testing "prescriptive" behavior hypotheses will likely necessitate big data requirements, further prizing the creativity needed to develop those workable "prescriptive" interventions to be tested. To arouse the interest of practitioners, those interventions need to be focused on what it is going to take to assist an individual in becoming more productive, constructive, and creative.

In this specific regard, I would like you to consider Dr. Dan Siegel's book, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. I can well imagine that many of you who follow this column on a regular basis are going to react with some surprise to what seems to be this month's focus, the "teenage" brain, as opposed to that of an executive. In response, let me first point out that Dr. Siegel's brain-of-interest is an adolescent brain between the ages of 12 and 24; clearly, the book overlaps very well with our undergraduate student development clients. Secondly, our large and growing database here at CIMBA includes both those undergraduates and a significant number of executives, both of whom have gone through the CIMBA Leadership Development System and adolescence. So it is not so remarkable that the issues these two groups face are very similar, something which does not escape the attention of Dr. Siegel: "The mind is shaped by changes in our relationships and in our brains throughout the lifespan." (At page 197).

In driving our attention towards Dr. Siegel's thinking, we are increasingly finding his insights parallel what we are seeing in our client groups. In the recent past, our principal encumbrance in fully grasping the relevancy of Dr. Siegel's works had been largely a matter of language compatibility. Given that this "prescriptive" space is largely unoccupied, and with the issues and their potential solutions combining and converging from a very wide, divergent group of disciplines, making terminology compatible can be challenging (not to mention Dr. Siegel's particular penchant for the use of acronyms). This minor issue aside, the contributions that Dr. Siegel's thinking is making to the "prescriptive" side of neuroscience applications cannot be ignored (I sincerely hope there is an up and coming "Organization Neuroscience" professor reading this column). Let's take a moment and consider how his thinking is impacting our activities here at CIMBA. I am confident that those of you who have had the privilege of being coached here will find this to be quite compelling.

In setting the stage, our thinking at CIMBA has been greatly assisted over the past year by insights gleaned from our ever-expanding database. Upon the notion that we are wired to be social, we believe that to manage the increasing demands of the human social environment, the brain evolved specialized circuitry to assist with social group adaptation: (1) Self-awareness, (2) Threat and Reward, (3) Social Awareness, and (4) Self-Regulation. With an adaptive failure in any one of these circuitries, an individual risks rejection from the social group and consequential social "death." Much of this required social group adaptation would be applicable to anyone making a social transition to a new social group, whether that individual was intent on being a follower or a leader (And thus this leader-follower distinction is of little concern to the neuroscience research community). However, a leader's responsibility is not only to adapt to the new social group (a follower's core responsibility), but additionally to adapt or mold the social group so that it can thrive, so it can be more successful. The ability for an individual -- leader or follower -- to make such adaptations is a function of something we call mental complexity. Within our core development system, mental complexity measures an individual's ability to effectively adapt to and manage social connections. The higher an individual's level of mental complexity, the more readily can that individual move purposefully in, between, and among social groups. It is a complex function of social, cognitive, and affective variables led by the individual's self-awareness, social awareness, and self-regulatory abilities. For a leader, it also involves being able to differentiate individuals within the social group on the basis of the relevancy of their behavior. The failure to distinguish relevancy from irrelevancy -- between more and less important social group members  -- may lead to following deceptive advice or conforming with the unproductive, unconstructive, or unhealthy attitudes or opinions of individuals less likely to move the group forward, and thus social group failure. Internally at CIMBA, we see this interpersonal neurobiological ability as defining an individual's Wisdom.

We have further observed that challenges to mental complexity are most often experienced or observed during periods of social transition - changes in current, important social connections. Obvious examples from a business leader's perspective would include taking a new job with managerial responsibilities or being promoted into the same; seemingly less obvious examples but equally as challenging in many cases would include a change in team membership (consider the inclusion of a new team member who then brings to bear both a different perspective and a strong personality) or a change in organizational leadership, both of which would involve important adaptations for affected leaders and followers. In our experience, the author who best explains both the what of this social transition notion ("descriptive") and, importantly, the how of going about addressing it ("prescriptive") is Dr. Dan Siegel. Dr. Siegel artfully exposes the depth and complexity of social transitions as he shows us the growth in mental complexity demanded of all members of a primary social group as a member goes through adolescence -- something to which we can all relate.

We have observed that many of the developmental issues facing adults in social transition are manifestations of survival behavior that arose during adolescent years but were never addressed. In fact, it is often frustration with a social transition that motivates most of our clients to seek our assistance. Dr. Siegel provides both anecdotal illustrations of this process based on his experience, and the research upon which his thinking is based (Our only disappointment is in the fact that he does not expressly cite that research, but which may be more in line with the expectations of his primary audience). From our perspective, this recognition of the importance of social transitions is not adequately addressed in a prescriptive sense in the practitioner literature. On a rough but meaningful basis of comparison, you will find that his concept of Mindsight - insight, empathy, and integration - parallels our notion of mental complexity (self-awareness, social awareness, and self-regulation). In an abundance of detail, he explains how we are varyingly and differentially impacted by members of our social groups, and particularly our primary social group. Those relationships build mental "models" the provide us with a schema to "anticipate what is happening next, how we should behave, and what emotions we will have, and how we filter our perceptions" (At page 141). Those "models become engaged automatically, without our awareness or intention" (At page 142) - something we refer to as System 1 thinking, with self-awareness providing a System 2 thinking modulation. Clearly, those "models" can work for and against your interests. "Our non-secure models of attachment reflect how we had to adapt to insecure relationships when we were younger. And these models of attachment persist throughout our lives. They are changeable, yes, but only if we come to understand them." (At page 148).

With specific regard to practitioners, the book is one of the very few that expressly separates description from prescription. After each major descriptive section, which are well developed through personal experience and the relevant science, Dr. Siegel provides a highly useful prescriptive section called Mindsight Tools. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of building self-awareness (insight), social awareness (empathy), and self-regulation (integration) through a variety of mental exercises and a meaningful mindfulness practice. For example, with regard to social awareness we were pleased to see that several of the mental exercises we prescribe to our student/Coachees are endorsed by Dr. Siegel. He explains the effectiveness of using a television show with the sound turned off as a vehicle for improving an individual's ability to understand another's emotions. We were particularly pleased to see that he encourages turning on the sound if the language is unfamiliar to you in order to capture the tone of the person being observed (something our European location provides in abundance). He explains the practice and usefulness of mindfulness, providing several key insights into that practice our facilitators here have found to be quite useful (As simple as it sounds, if you find yourself drifting toward falling asleep during your mindfulness practice then open your eyes to stimulate your brain a little before returning to your practice). As strong believers in Dr. Siegel's Healthy-Mind Platter, we found his explanation and supporting discussion helpful: the "brain functions in a state-dependent way, meaning that while it is in a calm state, certain integrative [self-regulation] functions may work well and efficiently. But in other situations, those same functions may not work so well" (At page 101). Several of the coaches found his "Chaos or Rigidity" distinction of how an individual might recall a social stimuli triggering event to be quite useful in working with coachees: "Recall a time when your life became filled with chaos or rigidity. This may have been within some interaction with another person in which you felt the chaos of being flooded with emotion, like anger or sadness or fear.  Or it may have been a time of rigidity, in which some repeating thought kept at you without changing, or you felt yourself withdrawing from interactions with others." (At page 61).

While the book does provide meaningful confirmation of our "social transition" approach to personal development, its real strength is in the insights it provides with regard to effective intervention strategies. Social transitions are demanding, and into each new such transition we all carry the "strengths" that made survival possible in past social groups. As Dr. Siegel points out, those "strengths" might not have the intended affect in the new social group. Understanding how the brain functions, and how it functions to form our habitual patterns of behavior in adapting to our social groups, provides considerable direction on how to manage those transitions and develop the needed personal skills. Clearly, there is much to be learned from this book about the practical, "prescriptive" applications of neuroscience tools. This emphasis on the "prescriptive" is the direction the field of NeuroLeadership needs to take if it is to make its intended contributions to individual productivity, creativity, and well-being: