Can science help leaders wake up?

Can science help leaders wake up?

Can science help leaders wake up?

A new study in Nature Human Behaviour revealed something extraordinary.

Under deep anaesthesia, the brain’s unique “fingerprint”, the patterns that make each of us neurologically distinct, disappears.

Individuality dissolves.

Uniformity emerges.

The “you-ness” of the brain fades into something more universal.

For centuries spiritual traditions have said consciousness is not created by the brain but conducted through it. Now neuroscience is catching up.

Is science on the verge of beginning to illuminate what many contemplative traditions have intuited for a very long time?

As I reflect on this as a practitioner working with senior leaders and teams, the implications are profound.

In Ken Wilber’s Integral meta-theory, “waking up” describes our access to the 5 different states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep formlessness, the witness, and ultimately the highest state of consciousness, non-dual, literally “not two”, the realisation that we are all one and that separation is merely a perspective.

This new research doesn’t yet objectively prove the non-dual state, that practitioners have subjectively known and experienced for centuries.  But it does show that when waking consciousness fades, what supports our sense of individuality fades with it.

And remarkably, our brains become similar not just to other humans, but to primates as well, potentially suggesting something more universal.

My brief understanding of the findings:

• When awake, each of us carries a distinct functional connectome, a neural signature as unique as a fingerprint.

• Under deep anaesthesia, that uniqueness collapses and become more similar, especially in the networks linked to identity and higher cognition.

• When waking consciousness returns, the fingerprint re-appears. The “self” reforms.

Why does this matter for leaders?

Because when our sense of self becomes more interconnected and less separate than we tend to normally assume, the choices we make are different.

We care differently

We listen differently.

We collaborate differently.

We lead differently.

This means, as we gain a deeper acceptance that we are not isolated leaders, but nodes in an interconnected human network.  We recognise we are participants in a larger field of relationship, responsibility and influence.

As individuality softens, wisdom and compassion become more available. The boundaries between “me and you”, “us and them”, begin to loosen. And that shift changes everything.

At the C-suite this means integrating a deeper sense of connection in each of the four principal dimensions:

• I - self-awareness, emotional regulation, presence, spiritual intelligence, and our very sense of identity

• We - team dynamics, relational intelligence, the cultures we create

• IT - behaviour, performance, technology, what we do

• ITS - systems, stakeholders, the impact we have on the wider ecology and environment we operate within

A Practice

Today, imagine sitting in your next meeting knowing that the boundaries between 'you' and 'them' are more fluid than they appear.

Tomorrow, in your first meeting, take a moment before speaking. Sense the invisible threads connecting everyone in the room and those beyond it but affected by your decisions.

Feel it in your body. Act from that place.

Notice what becomes more possible.

Reflection

If consciousness is more fluid than we imagined, what becomes possible when leaders choose connection over separation?

For more on the research by Andrea l. Luppi et al https://rdcu.be/eQNbY Gratitude to Nature Portfolio and Lanson Burrows Jones Jr. for bringing it to my attention.