New generation leadership and collaboration, a brain-based model: SCARF

Almost everything that is currently known about the way the human brain works was discovered in the past ten years. Recent advances in research have overturned old models of neurological operation and revolutionised the way we view our brains.

For example, in the 1980s it was believed that each person was born with a finite quota of brain cells which gradually died away over a lifetime, with no new cells being created to replace the ones that were lost. This suggested that damage to the brain could not be repaired. It is now known that the brain does renew cells and that a damaged brain can regenerate itself.

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system – the brain, spinal column, neurons and the senses. It’s not a new science, psychologists, physiologists and biochemists have long been interested in the nervous system. What is new, is the rapid pace of new discoveries in this area and the consequent application of this knowledge to everyday life.The major organising principle of the brain is to minimise threat and maximise reward. This means the brain is constantly (five times per second) scanning the environment for stimuli that may lead to either threat or reward. Stimuli associated with positive emotions and reward will trigger an approach response; stimuli associated with negative emotions and experiences will be seen as a threat and trigger an avoid response. These responses are not purely mental or behavioural.

Data gathered through measures of brain activity (such as MRI or EEG) show that threats to any of the social concerns listed above trigger physiological response in the same way as a physical threat. The same neural responses that drive us toward food or away from predators are triggered by our perceptions of the way we are treated by other people. Being ostracised, for example, activates similar neural responses to being hungry. Threats to our status elevate the level of cortisol, which is also associated with sleep deprivation and chronic anxiety. In MRI tests, lack of clarity and unpredictability light up the same areas in the brain as physical pain.

Feeling threatened blocks our creativity, reduces our ability to solve problems, and makes it harder for us to communicate and collaborate with others. But, when we feel rewarded, our self-confidence soars, we feel empowered, and we want to do a good job. What makes the SCARF model useful, is that it identifies the five domains that activate the primary reward or primary threat circuitry in a person’s brain. Therefore, SCARF model can be used to plan interactions with other people in such a way that you minimize threats and maximize rewards in each of the five areas (or domains, as they’re called). And, even better, the technique can be used to go on and activate the other person’s reward response, and so motivate that person more effectively by using their internal reward system.Model can help to minimize perceived threats, and to maximize the positive feelings generated through reward when working alongside others. Doing this can help to collaborate better, to coach people, and to provide more effective training and feedback.

What is Scarf Model?

The SCARF model, posited by David Rock in 2008, seeks to explain why our brains influence us to behave in certain ways. This is based on minimize threat and maximize reward, which helps in engaging people better as engaged employees are far more productive.These five are environmental factors which Brain is monitoring, and these elements have a tremendous impact on motivation.

The acronym SCARF stands for:

Status: How important we are compared to others
Certainty: How we can predict the future
Autonomy: How in control we feel of our environment
Relatedness: How safe we feel with other people
Fairness: How fairly we perceive exchanges with others to be

Status

The Status domain means that we are constantly evaluating our own importance relative to others. Status is about relative importance, ‘pecking order’ and seniority. Humans hold a representation of status in relation to others when in conversations, and this affects mental processes in many ways.

The brain thinks about status using similar circuits for processing numbers. One’s sense of status goes up when one feels ‘better than’ another person. In this instance the primary reward circuitry is activated, in particular the striatum, which increases dopamine levels.

One study showed that an increase in status was similar in strength to a financial windfall. Winning a swimming race, a card game or an argument probably feels good because of the perception of increased status and the resulting reward circuitry being activated. The perception of a potential or real reduction in status can generate a strong threat response. It's no surprise people are motivated to act in ways that positively improve their status. But perhaps more importantly, Rock points out that the "perception of a potential or real reduction in status can generate a strong threat response." Citing research on social rejection, Rock notes that a hit to status can light up the same regions of the brain as physical pain. Expect people to approach things that improve status and to disengage or avoid things that threaten it.

Certanity

The importance of certainty can be seen as a result of the brain's effort to conserve energy, which derives from the limited capacity of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive function.

We resist mental effort around decision-making and impulse control because we're preserving resources in case we need them more urgently in the next moment and the same dynamic contributes to our resistance to uncertainty. When we're acting with sufficient certainty, our brain senses patterns, successfully predicts next steps, and operates much more efficiently. But when we lack certainty and can't predict what will happen next, the brain must use dramatically more resources, involving the more energy-intensive prefrontal cortex, to process moment-to-moment experience.

That said, it's useful to distinguish mild uncertainty from excessive uncertainty. The former triggers a mild threat response, generating just enough adrenalin and dopamine to spark curiosity and energize people to solve problems. However, when perceived uncertainty gets out of hand, people panic and make bad decisions.Any ambiguity creates a threat response. The brain is a certainty, creating a machine, and always trying to predict what is going to happen next.People feel much more particular about their world when they have the knowledge, which puts their mind more at ease and therefore makes them better able to solve severe problems.

Any kind of significant change generates uncertainty. Yet uncertainty can be decreased in many simple ways.This is a big part of the job of managers, consultants and leaders. As people build business plans, strategies, or map out an organization’s structure, they feel increasing levels of clarity about how an organization might better function in the future.

Autonomy

Autonomy is the perception of exerting control over one’s environment; a sensation of having choices. Showed that the degree of control organisms can exert over a stress factor determines whether or not the stressor alters the organism’s functioning. Inescapable or uncontrollable stress can be highly destructive, whereas the same stress interpreted as escapable is significantly less destructive.

The difference in some rodent studies was life and death. An increase in the perception of autonomy feels rewarding. Several studies in the retirement industry find strong correlations between a sense of control and health outcomes.

People leave corporate life, often for far less income, because they desire greater autonomy. A reduction in autonomy, for example when being micro managed, can generate a strong threat response. When one senses a lack of control, the experience is of a lack of agency, or an inability to influence outcomes.

Autonomy is about the power to exert control over your environment. It's the freedom to make choices. When you have autonomy, you're empowered to take action. Combined with certainty, autonomy is highly motivating.Consider the common, painful experience of feeling micro-managed. When you're micro-managed, not only means are you told what to do, a direct affront to your autonomy, you start to feel helpless about making any decisions whatsoever. You're too concerned any decisions you make will be quickly overturned by your manager. As a result, you simply don't act. When you combine a lack of autonomy with uncertainty, the impact on motivation is devastating.

Relatedness

Relatedness involves deciding whether others are ‘in’ or ‘out’ of a social group. Whether someone is friend, or foe. Relatedness is a driver of behavior in many types of teams, from sports teams to organizational silos: people naturally like to form ‘tribes’ where they experience a sense of belonging. The concept of being inside or outside the group is probably a by-product of living in small communities for millions of years, where strangers were likely to be trouble and should be avoided.

Relatedness has to do with feeling connected to other people—in particular people we identify as being similar to us. Feelings of connectedness are rewarding because we expect others who are similar to us to be think, act, and have similar desires to us, which makes them potentially helpful for our survival. Relatedness comes down to empathy. The more you empathize with someone else, the more you are motivated to help them because helping them is, in effect, like helping yourself.

Increasing globalization highlights the importance of managing relatedness threats. Collaboration between people from different cultures, who are unlikely to meet in person, can be especially hard work. The automatic foe response does not get diminished by social time together. This response can be mitigated by dedicating social time in other forms. For example, using video to have an informal meeting, or ensuring that people forming teams share personal aspects of themselves via stories, photos or even social-networking sites. In any workplace it appears to pay off well to encourage social connections.

Fairness

If a person thinks something is unfair, their brain automatically goes into defence mode. A strong response from a person that removes the unfairness can activate the reward centre of the brain.More research points to the insight that a sense of unfairness could be harder to handle than an empty stomach. This is very important that leaders need to trade fairly with people. Some leaders want to keep lots of secrets, which is demotivating.

There should be more transparency, and leaders need to keep their promises. There should be no gap between saying and doing. The report says, there was less impact of downsizing when people understood that the decisions made relatively. In the workplace, some organization allows people to have community days, where they give their time to a charity of their choice.

The threat from perceived unfairness can be decreased by increasing transparency, and increasing the level of communication and involvement about business issues. For example, organizations that allow employees to know details about financial processes may have an advantage here. Allowing teams to identify their own rules can also help. In an educational context, a classroom that creates the rules of what is accepted behavior is likely to experience less conflict. Examples of the success of self-directed teams in manufacturing abound. Much of what these self-driven teams do is ensure fairness in grass-roots decisions, such as how workloads are shared and who can do which tasks. The issue of pay discrepancies in large organizations is a challenging one, and many employees are deeply unhappy to see another person working similar hours earning 100 times their salary. Interestingly, it is the perception of fairness that is key, so even a slight reduction in senior executive salaries during a difficult time may go a long way to reducing a sense of unfairness.

David Rock also explained how a change in any of the SCARF factors results in a threat response or a reward response. Here are some examples of how to use SCARF in organizational and project settings.

Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees' best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead.

The impact of this neural dynamic is often visible in organizations. For example, when leaders trigger a threat response, employees' brains become much less efficient. But when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people's efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. The feel intrinsically rewarded.

If you are a leader, every action you take and every decision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness in your enterprise. In fact, this is why leading is so difficult.

Knowing the drivers that can cause a threat response enables people to design interactions to minimize threats. For example, knowing that a lack of autonomy activates a genuine threat response, a leader or educator may consciously avoid micromanaging their employees or students. Secondly, knowing about the drivers that can activate a reward response enables people to motivate others more effectively by tapping into internal rewards, thereby reducing the reliance on external rewards such as money.

Looming in the background are several key factors;

First, Threat responses are usually much more powerful than reward responses, and thus we move away from threats more quickly and more vigorously than we move toward rewards. So it's not enough to give equal emphasis to rewards in our leadership and management practices--our brains' disproportionate response to perceived social threats implies that we need to put a much greater weight on efforts intended to generate a reward response, and take great pains to avoid triggering a threat response.

Second, our typical reaction to the strong negative emotions generated by a threat response is to suppress them, particularly in the workplace. But this response has many undesirable consequences, from reducing our own memory function to raising the blood pressure of people around us. So the cost of a threat response isn't borne solely by the person experiencing it, but by anyone who interacts with them or depends on their effectiveness. It's a shared--one might even say contagious--social experience, and this highlights the importance of group dynamics, perhaps most significantly the extent to which it's safe (or unsafe) in a given group to express negative or difficult emotions.

Finally, we have very little time--approximately 1/3 of a second--after the perception of a potential threat before a neurological threat response is triggered. So on an individual basis, it's essential to cultivate our ability to recognize the conditions that might trigger a threat response and proactively reappraise the situation. And at the group or interpersonal level, it's important to be aware of the speed and ease with which a threat response can be triggered in someone else, to understand how such a response is likely to undermine effective communication, and to take steps that support the other person's reappraisal of the situation without creating defensiveness.