Neurobiology of self-leadership – who we are is how we lead
Image credit: Milad Fakurian
Humans – as a species we are spectacularly unique in our experience of the world and our relational engagement with it. Our commonality lies in our shared neurobiology, autonomic nervous system (ANS) and our evolutionary ancestry.
Self-leadership is an intrinsic process by which individuals guide their own thoughts, behaviours, and emotions to achieve desired outcomes for themselves and for their teams and cultures. The neurobiology of self-leadership focuses on how our nervous system and brain influence our leadership style, decisions, and interactions with others. This understanding emphasizes the interconnectedness of our neurobiology, behaviour, and leadership in daily life. Who we are is how we lead.
Anyone wanting to be a leader or lead others in any setting benefits immensely from having a dynamic working knowledge of the architecture of the human system, how to regulate it, and what some basic maintenance tips are to keep self, the people you lead and the collective organisational culture adaptive and flourishing.
Time then for a super basic walk through the human operations manual. It goes without saying (but I’ll do it anyway) that there is an immense complexity to the neurobiology of humans. For the sake of understanding and applying knowledge about behaviour in an organisational setting, we’re only going to cover off the very topline.
Just like we don’t need to be mechanics to drive a car but it helps if we know where the brake and accelerator are, we don’t need to be neuroscientists to understand our own humanity.
From a systems perspective, it’s helpful to think of human beings as a system on a macro and micro level – that means as a mammal all parts of our minds and bodies work in a system for our survival (and thrival) with an interconnectedness and capacity to transmit information intelligently that allows us to optimally respond to our needs. Similarly, as humans in relation with each other, we form systems that recognisably keep us alive and optimal, whether in a family, an organisation, a community, or a place.
Each individual’s neurobiology is shaped by a lifetime of survival-driven responses, deeply embedded in our autonomic nervous system (ANS), which governs our reactions to external stimuli. In self-leadership, we must acknowledge that our development is multi-dimensional, encompassing emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences. Our ability to lead effectively is not solely about mental clarity or decision-making prowess but about understanding and managing the intricate systems within our own body and mind.
Neurobiology and the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
The ANS is split into two systems – the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). These systems are systems of safety in that they bring in information about threats to survival, and then initiate actions to help avoid anything that might unalive us.
In evolutionary terms, the ANS is stacked from bottom to top – the lower PNS is around our gut and torso area and was the first part of the ANS that developed when we were still in early reptilian forms, this part is where we have our freeze response to threat, and also our rest and digest functions.
As we evolved into land mammals and needed mobilisation, we developed our SNS, responsible for fight or flight, and for the release of hormones like adrenalin and cortisol that help mobilise us into action through a stress response.
When we evolved to the humans we are today, we developed our upper PNS where our executive functions, language centres and advanced intellectual capacity resides, this is also the part of the nervous system where we are able to feel safe, social and connected – the tend and befriend area of our ANS.
All branches of PNS and the SNS are interconnected and collectively help us to navigate through the world by accessing information about our surrounds and interactions and helping to process that information into actionable knowledge.
Survival, stress and leadership
The ANS was designed to protect in threatening environments using short bursts of stress driven response that we co-regulated or re-regulated from once the threat was over. However, in the modern world, stressors are more often chronic and relational, causing an overuse of the SNS and often ends up in burnout or getting stuck in the collapsed or freeze style of response.
In terms of leadership, when we default to survival modes (fight, flight, or freeze), it can significantly impair our ability to lead others effectively. Self-leadership requires understanding these survival responses and consciously shifting towards connection, empathy, and calm, which are fostered by the PNS. We also need to be able to compassionately recognise the signs of survival modes in the people we lead, so we can support them to come back to regulation and their peak selves.
While our society rewards fast paced, SNS-driven action, the human mind and body actually thrives on PNS-dominant activities that promote calm and recovery. Chronic stress, often encouraged by organisational environments that prioritise urgency and constant activity, can harm both the individual and the organizational culture they are a part of.
Leaders must learn to manage their own stress responses to create environments that foster creativity, collaboration, and well-being. By doing so, they can model effective self-leadership and help co-regulate the emotional states of their teams.
Leading from the Inside Out
Effective self-leadership begins with the individual’s ability to regulate their internal states. Depending on the state of the ANS, leaders may exhibit different traits:
Connected (PNS upper branch dominant): Compassionate, empathetic, accountable, with healthy boundaries. Leaders in this state foster a culture of collaboration and trust.
Mobilized (SNS reactive survival dominant): Command-and-control style, reactive, often operating from a place of fear or shame. This state can lead to high productivity but often at the expense of well-being.
Collapsed (PNS under duress): Perfectionistic, avoidant, or burned out. Leaders and teams in this state may withdraw, creating a culture of silence, mistrust, disconnection and exhaustion.
The Collective Impact of ANS on Organisational Culture
Leadership does not exist in a vacuum. The emotional state of the leader influences the team’s emotional state through processes such as the mimicking of states through our mirror neurons. As a species hardwired for connection, this hardwiring has a practical driver which is to signal danger across a group. And while we might be more evolved than our mammal ancestors, are systems are still predominantly running on the same software.
When the pack leader isn’t creating a culture of calm and courageousness in relational connection with manageable stress peaks, the emotional contagion impacts the people around them where team members mirror the leader’s mood and behaviours. Leaders who manage their nervous systems effectively create cultures of safety and connection, leading to better decision-making, creativity, and productivity. Conversely, leaders who operate in survival mode can cultivate environments of fear and mistrust.
While productivity and outputs can be maintained in a fear-based environment, it is a diminishing return that is unsustainable both in the nervous system and in organisational culture. Discernment and decision making are impaired when the brain and ANS is kicked into survival mode – if everything looks like a threat, it can be hard to prioritise what is actually urgent, leading to cultures that are primed for burnout and struggle to allocate resources.
Nothing in nature happens quickly.
The sense of false urgency that sits in survival-based cultures keeps people trapped in cycles of sympathetic nervous system hypervigilance and collapse. If we are designed for regulation, rest, response and back to regulation, then it follows that if we allow our nervous systems to optimise, a congruent bottom-up top-down system will also bring optimal capacity to harnessing the full power of our brain’s incredible processing capacity. Slowing down can actually speed up our net productivity benefit as we won’t be wasting time in reactive solutions to the wrong problems.
Practical Approaches to Self-Regulation
Leaders can use several strategies to shift from a survival state to a connected, calm state:
Reflection: Taking time to pause and reflect before reacting can help leaders regain control over their emotions and responses.
Authenticity: When people are celebrated and supported to be themselves and are safe to express their authenticity, organisational cultures can reap the benefits of the flourishing and productivity that comes from human connection.
Accountability: Encouraging a mindset of taking 100% responsibility for one’s actions fosters a culture of ownership and connection.
Co-Regulation: Leaders who know how to remain calm can help stabilise the nervous systems of others around them. Mirror neurons in the brain facilitate this emotional exchange, creating a more regulated and balanced team dynamic
Fast learning: supporting people to innovate, learn fast, prune and collaborate in a dynamic way models the safety to make mistakes and grow in connection not competition.
Ready to self-lead your organisations to flourish?
The neurobiology of self-leadership is rooted in understanding how our body and brain respond to stress and connection so we can get the optimal contexts for individuals and collective culture to thrive. Leaders who are aware of their autonomic nervous system and can regulate it effectively are better equipped to lead themselves and others from a place of calm, compassion, and accountability. In a complex and often chaotic world, leading from a state of connection rather than survival is key to fostering healthy, productive organisational cultures.
Dr Polly McGee is a Neuroleadership Designer, Facilitator, Author, Podcaster and Co-CEO of DISCO. Polly spends their time in organisations building trauma-responsive leadership capacity and psychologically safe, productive cultures; designing and leading workshops; and working with high performance clients in their private therapy practice. From leading fast growth start-ups and excelling in innovation to guiding digital strategies Polly brings a unique perspective to the table with an intersectional lens that collides neurobiology with scaling technology and person-centred leadership capacity across organisations.