The Scenario

Bill Wolfe, President & CEO of Fleet Industries, was chairing a meeting with his Executive team and was about to erupt in a fit of anger over his team’s inability to agree on a course of action to answer to a competitive threat posed by the company’s main competitor, Gadco. While Fleet had experienced strong revenue and bottom line growth over the past few years, Wolfe was concerned that Gadco might rain on the company’s parade by making an aggressive push into Fleet’s important South American markets. Furthermore, Wolfe feared that lower-than-expected earnings this quarter would ruin the payout of a sizeable bonus that he was counting on.

After several more minutes of inaction, Wolfe exploded. He directed his rage at Robert Sharp, Fleet’s VP of Marketing. Wolfe didn’t hold back as he attacked Sharp over Marketing’s failure to deal with the Gadco threat. He criticized the Marketing department’s passivity and lack of a concrete plan and promised that there would be consequences if Sharp and his team didn’t act soon. Wolfe next directed his fury towards Terri Starr, Fleet’s VP of R&D.  The President accused Starr and her team of resting on their past laurels in terms of product development and demanded quick and decisive action to deal with Gadco. Wolfe then lashed out at the rest of the team and adjourned the meeting.

Deceptive Brain Messages

According to authors Drs. Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding, the impact of the above scenario will be disastrous for Fleet Industries. The outcome of Wolfe’s tirade will likely be devastating for him, Sharp, Starr and the rest of the Executive team. Wolfe’s outburst and Sharp and Starr’s reaction to it are the result of “deceptive brain messages” in the brains of all three executives. Schwartz and Gladding, in their brilliant book You are NOT Your Brain, define deceptive brain messages as “false or inaccurate thoughts or unhelpful distracting impulses, urges or desires that take you away from your true goals and intentions in life”. The authors teach us that the brain’s main function is to help us survive and that the brain merely receives and processes information in a very programmed and automatic manner. No thought or awareness is involved. The problem lies in that we often engage in negative behaviors in the short term to protective ourselves from stimuli that are perceived to be threatening. Repeated enactment of these self-destructive behaviors throughout our lives becomes encoded in our brains – turning into bad habits that work against our best interests.

From a company’s perspective, toxic bosses such as Wolfe and unhealthy work cultures are a threat to direct reports and, ultimately, to productivity – they result in employees engaging in “fight or flight” behaviors that result in low morale, disengagement, high stress, anxiety and poor longer term business results.

Let’s peek inside the brains of Wolfe, Sharp and Starr to better understand the President’s aggressive behaviour and his VPs’ reactions.

The Three Executives

Bill Wolfe is a brilliant businessman who has tremendous business acumen and is driven to succeed at all costs. Wolfe has an impressive record of business accomplishments with other companies, although he was never able to last in a senior management position for more than a few years. He had a pattern of joining a company, shaking things up and ruthlessly dealing with his direct reports. While he was able to increase earnings in the short term, Wolfe’s rough and tough demeanour would always backfire and get him fired. Wolfe was the only child of divorced parents and, as a result, he felt alone and scared in an unforgiving world. To cope with his insecurities, he learned to lash out and bully other kids. The strategy seemed to work. The other kids would back off and he would get his way. This aggressive behavior became hard-wired into Wolfe’s brain and continued into his adult working life. He had developed an effective short term coping mechanism to deal with his insecurities but, in the long run, he was paying a big price.

Robert Sharp, Fleet’s VP of Marketing, was considered to be a marketing guru and was highly admired and respected by his team. Robert’s marketing genius was instrumental in vaulting Fleet Industries to be the industry’s market leader and his value in the labor marketplace was extremely high. Sharp liked Bill Wolfe but had a difficult time dealing with his frequent tirades. As a child, Sharp had an overbearing father who had constantly criticized and belittled him. As a result, he grew up with no self-confidence and learned to deal with this reality by avoiding difficult and challenging situations. This short term coping mechanism was highly effective – by walking away, his fragile confidence stood intact. When dealing with an angry Wolfe, Sharp’s long term automatic avoidance behaviour took root. He never stood up to Wolfe and just retreated into his own world – leaving lots of outstanding marketing ideas that could have countered Gadco’s competitive threat off the table. Both Sharp and Fleet Industries would eventually pay the price for the VP Marketing’s deceptive brain messages.

Terri Starr, Fleet’s VP of R&D, has a long list of achievements in her career. She is a product development genius and, because of her innate talents, Fleet Industries has benefitted from one successful product launch after another. The main issue in Starr’s life was trying to balance her unrelenting work schedule with the demands of being a mother and wife. All day and night, at work and at home, Starr was besieged with requests and demands from co-workers and family members. To help cope with the situation, Starr started to drink. A few sips of wine eventually turned into several glasses. After the Executive team meeting with Bill Wolfe and her colleagues, the VP R&D returned to her office, closed the door and started to drink. Starr learned to cope with stressful situations by drinking her troubles away – a short term strategy that would backfire in the long term big time. Once again, a senior executive and the company would fall victim to deceptive brain messages.

 Taking control of Your Brain

In the cases of Bill Wolfe, Robert Sharp and Terri Starr, adverse life circumstances caused them to develop short term coping mechanisms in the form of negative behaviours that helped them deal with their situations. Wolfe used bullying tactics; Sharp simply avoided and withdrew from tense situations; Starr drank. These negative behaviors based on deceptive brain messages became encoded in the brains of all three executives – resulting in a lifetime of bad habits. All three would pay a big price.

Drs. Schwartz and Gladding, in their book You are NOT Your Brain, write that you do not have to be the victim of deceptive brain messages. They write that, on an individual basis, you can deploy your mind to constructively focus your attention to overcome negative thoughts and behaviours. The authors write that “The mind is involved in helping you constructively focus your attention. Why is this important? When you learn how to focus your attention in positive, beneficial ways, you actually rewire your brain to support those actions and habits”.

Schwartz and Gladding outline a four-step method to allow your mind to take control over deceptive brain messages and take control of your life:

  1. Relabel – Identify your deceptive brain messages and the uncomfortable sensations; call them what they really are.
  2. Reframe– Change your perception of the importance of the deceptive brain messages; say why these thoughts, urges and impulses keep bothering you. They are false brain messages.
  3. Refocus – Direct your attention toward an activity or mental process that is wholesome and productive.
  4. Revalue – Clearly see the thoughts, urges and impulses for what they are, simply sensations caused by deceptive brain messages that are not true and that have little to no value.

All of the above strategies allow your rational brain to take control over your emotional brain, which is the source of deceptive brain messages. The four-step method allows ‘mind over (brain) chatter’ and prevents your brain from, according to Schwartz and Gladding, “taking over your thoughts, attacking your self-worth, questioning your abilities, overpowering you with cravings or attempting to dictate your actions”.

For Bill Wolfe, the four-step method could have been deployed during the Executive meeting to prevent him from lashing out at his team. His mind could have overpowered his deceptive brain messages as follows:

I am angry and this is a deceptive brain message caused by me feeling rejected in my childhood by my parents (relabel). My brain is playing tricks on me but I know that this isn’t the real me (relabel). Blowing up will not allow me to accomplish my goals so I will take a few deep breaths and focus on my core belief that I have a strong Executive team (refocus). I know that my anger is just a passing feeling and I feel confident that my team will continue to build an exciting future for Fleet (revalue).

Unfortunately, the fictitious scenario at Fleet Industries described at the beginning of this article plays out daily in the vast majority of companies throughout the business world. The negative impact on a company’s productivity and financial health and individual careers is significant and so learning to take control over deceptive brain messages is a skill that managers in all organizations need to master.