Communication comes from Latin and it means “to share” or “to be in relation with”. So, communication is much more than transmitting information or transmitting feelings. Communication is being in relation to someone.
It is easier to build a relationship than to maintain it. Here you will find out the 5 “secrets” that will help you build and maintain any relationship through communication:
When you communicate to request, what do you think defines the level of success?
The mood of the person you are requesting from? The level of relatedness between you two? If she is having a good or a bad day?
I think it is the way we communicate that influences how much we are going to obtain at work, in a negotiation, and in private. When we communicate, either to request or to give feedback, there are 3 main aspects that we should consider:
- how we make that person feel
- how much empathy and/or moralistic judgment do we use
- the person’s type of character
This article, based on neuroscience, is about how we make that person feel through what we say and communicate.
The SCARF Model for better communication between managers and employees
The SCARF Model was developed in 2008 by the neuroscientist David Rock. He writes about this in great detail in his book “Your Brain at Work”. The acronym comes from the five domains that influence human behavior in all social situations.
Those five social domains can activate the threat or reward responses in our brains. This was a matter of life or death. For millions of years, the brain responses were what we relied on for our survival. The threat makes us react aggressively or defensively: fight or flight. The reward makes us react confident and peaceful.
We can improve our social life and also our professional one a lot by knowing how those work and how we can trigger them positively. For now, I will only enumerate them shortly: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.
For simplicity and association reasons, I will call those social situations buttons. Because they act like silicon anti-stress toys, with buttons that you can press on both sides. They represent emotional sensitivities that can be pressed to obtain a positive feeling: the feeling of reward which will lead to a positive behavior/reaction. Or they can be pressed to obtain a negative feeling reaction. Like the feeling of threat or stress which will lead to a negative behavior/reaction.
All creatures, independent of age, culture, and hierarchy, that have the limbic system, react to those 5 buttons. The mammals included also have a limbic system. Now let’s go into detail and see what those buttons are and how they can be pressed negatively and positively.
1. Status in communication
According to the definition, status is the position or rank of someone when compared to others.
Nobody wants to be a nobody. According to feelings, status is a feeling about being respected and important.
Each time a manager validates the work of his/her subordinates or gives them positive feedback he/she presses the status button positively triggering the reward response in the employee’s brain. Criticizing their work has the opposite effect: triggers the threat response.
Also, the way managers address during meetings incorrectly resolved tasks, results, or negative outcomes can press very negatively the status button of the employee. I would draw here general attention to offering negative feedback in public. Giving negative feedback presses by default negatively on the person’s status. But if this is done publicly, it is by far worse than when it is done in private.
When giving negative feedback, a good approach is always to start by mentioning and appreciating the positive aspects of the job. In order to trigger the rewards centers in the brain and only then mention the negative ones as being aspects to be optimized for the future.
2. Certainty
Certainty is the firm conviction that something is the case. Or the quality of being reliable.
We humans have a concern or a need to somehow predict the future, to know what happens next.
“People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty“(Virginia Satir)
We need to have some certainty every day, like that the promised article will be published this week. That the report will be sent to the customer by 5 PM, the task will be done by the end of next week. And one certainty very important for all employees: that the salary will be paid by the end of the month.
Dear employees, every day’s assigned tasks offer the possibility to press the certainty button of your managers positively or negatively. Positively, when you deliver your task in the promised time frame, and negatively when you don’t. Dear leaders and managers, every task due date, that changes closer to the present, presses very negatively the certainty buttons of the employees that have to fulfill that task.
Of course that those domains apply also to your private life. If you manage to get in time to a meeting/date/event where somebody is waiting/counting on you, you press the certainty button positively, and by being late you press it negatively.
And just between us, we all have a great uncertainty that we have to live with our whole life. Death presses negatively the greatest certainty button to ALL humans: we have no certainty about what happens after we die.
3. Autonomy in communication
Autonomy is the right of self-government. Is about our feeling of having control over our lives, the feeling of freedom, and being free.
“Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement” (Daniel H. Pink)
To press autonomy positively means to give the other’s freedom to make choices (if and when possible). Companies or managers who offer their employees the freedom to work from home, or to have a flexible work schedule, press the autonomy button of their employees positively. Some companies make this on a regular basis not only during pandemics.
Another way to press positively the autonomy of your employees is to let them decide what type of tasks they will work at. Instead of assigning them a task, they can choose from the pool what would they like to work at, or what would they like to learn. When full autonomy is not possible (for sure that this will not work in all companies and for each employee), at least some autonomy should be available.
Suppressed autonomy in childhood
Do you have memories from your childhood when someone from your family suppressed your autonomy? What about: “As long as you eat at my table, you do what I say!”?or everything that starts with “You do as I say or …!”
The problem with this violation of autonomy from an early age is that the child creates a sensibility. This will trigger the “threat” behavior sooner or more aggressive responses later on in his adult life. I am not saying that you should allow the kid to take over you. But you could simulate autonomy by offering him some choices. The choices are still your preferences with your desired outcome.
Like: “Do you prefer to eat your vegetables right now and get immediately your candy or do you prefer to eat them later but you’ll get the candy also later?”. The end result is that he eats his vegetables but he has the feeling of a decision.
4. Relatedness
Relatedness is the fact of being related, associated, or connected.
An example of positive relatedness is when a famous band from abroad comes to sing in your town. The first thing they say when they come on the scene is to greet the people by mentioning the name of the city: ” Good evening, Berlin!”. What they do at that moment, is nothing else than pressing positively the relatedness button.
By analogy, the best example of pressing negatively the relatedness button is when the speaker of the band, is a bit confused and messes with the name of the city, mentioning a city that is not even from that country. And this is a true and repetitive story that happens in Bucharest. The capital of Rumania was greeted very often with “Good evening, Budapest!”, and Budapest is the capital of Hungary 🙂 The problem here is that not only the relatedness is pressed negatively but also the status of the people. They are thinking: ” you don’t even know who I am !” and very often they yell back as a sign of revolt.
Another example, very useful for companies creating user applications, is when we use an application for a while and the interface changes overnight. Invariably, the first use of the new interface generates frustration. Even then when we logically understand that the new interface is better. There are cases when only small changes took place, like the repositioning of a button led to people complaining and asking back the old interface. Their relatedness was pressed negatively. To be taken into consideration!
5. Fairness in communication
Fairness is related to justice and just treatment. Behavior without favoritism or discrimination.
We need to feel that the exchanges that we have with others are fair.
Franz De Waal an evolutionary psychologist made the experiment to reward differently too monkeys for the same task. For handing a stone to the experimenter the first monkey gets a cucumber as a reward. She eats this without having any problem. The second monkey gets for the same task a grape. Monkeys like grapes much better than cucumbers. The first monkey sees everything. And now when the task is repeated and the first monkey gets again the cucumber she throws the cucumber into the experimenter. Something that only some minutes before was perfectly fine and eatable turns out not to be sufficient. And just because she saw that the other one got something else, which is considered better. And the experiment goes on.
Maybe it does make sense for companies to carry the “secret salary” policy!
I recommend watching this video experiment for a better understanding through the emotions and feelings that it provides. I warn that the video is funny but also emotional at the same time. It will help you understand how powerful those five domains/buttons are. And even more to understand that as mentioned before, not only humans react to having those buttons pressed negatively and positively but all mammals. The test was done also with other animals, not only monkeys and the results were the same.
The main task of every manager should be to trigger reward responses in the brains of the people. Easier said than done. First, you must learn the skill by applying it daily until mastery. But the first step is to know those five buttons and try to press them positively in “challenging” situations. Through this, you minimize the chances of hearting feelings or triggering fear, stress, and defense in communication with employees or subordinates.
This model applies also in private life, not only in business, to communication with loved ones or friends.
