We must encourage greater psychological self-awareness among our employees, says Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox
If there’s one thing Steve Peters is probably tired of talking about, it’s sport. While he made his name as the psychological guru who helped Victoria Pendleton and her cycling colleagues – not to mention snooker star Ronnie O’Sullivan and several Liverpool footballers – focus on raising their game, he believes his work is every bit as applicable in the less glamorous workplaces most of us inhabit.
Of course, scrutiny over Peters’ role with the England team at this summer’s European Championships – he was reportedly restricted from working with most of the squad and was merely ‘on call’ if required – probably makes the topic a tough one. But it’s equally true that his bestseller, The Chimp Paradox, has influenced many HR and L&D professionals who care little for sport.
The book divides our brain into different ‘systems’ (the impulsive ‘chimp’, rationalising ‘human’ and memorising ‘computer’) and encourages us to recognise which is in control at different times, as a means of making better decisions and achieving greater self-awareness. People Management visited Peters, who previously worked as a maths teacher, surgeon and a psychiatrist at Rampton Secure Hospital, to ask him more about his nuanced take on corporate mental wellbeing.
Do you think we have become better at recognising and dealing with the causes of stress and mental ill-health in the workplace?
We’ve always had stress at work. You can look at the causes – there might be deadlines to meet, transient job roles or heavy penalties for transgressions – and you can try and keep the fire down by reducing the probability of stress occurring.
But what’s more interesting to me is that if you find someone who is extremely adept in any situation, who holds on to a sense of perspective and has a good grasp on reality, they would have coping mechanisms to deal with any situation and it’s unlikely they would suffer stress. That means looking at someone entering a job and asking: ‘Are they in the best place they can be? Have they got the skills to deal with deadlines, stress and change?’ But of course, we don’t think about things in that way.
How might you recruit that type of person?
I would look for people who’ve already got an insight into the way their mind works; someone with the strategies to deal with life, whose value systems are in tune with their actions. You can ask them [during recruitment] to explain how they make decisions, and how they communicate with others. But most importantly, do they understand and can they explain the importance of knowing their own mind?
Your brain isn’t a single structure – it’s made up of several systems trying to operate. People need to understand which system they are using and how they can switch between them. The starting point for building great teams and great cultures at work is to get people understanding themselves.
What type of interventions do you find are most effective when you work with businesses?
We ask them to consider the emotional systems of the people who work for them. The most serious error companies can make is to not allow for the emotional aspects of humans. I brought out the chimp model as an entertaining and informative way to think about the systems in our brain, without using terms like ‘dorsolateral prefrontal cortex’, which people can’t relate to.
The processes we follow at work are written by ‘human’ brains for other humans to follow, but then a chimp walks in and tries to follow that process. We help people make things chimp-friendly.
Many companies are championing the concept of neurodiversity. Is it an idea you subscribe to?
Neurodiversity has got two separate meanings. From a scientific point of view, it’s related to the autistic spectrum – the brain is wired differently in different people and we should respect that and understand that people perceive the world very differently.
The more common meaning is that, as we go through life with different experiences and perspectives, we bring different ideas to the table. That’s more of a learned neurodiversity, and it’s something we have to be careful about. If you take people with massively different viewpoints and bring them together you can see huge rewards, but it can create havoc if it’s not managed properly.
Look at what happened in the field of computing, when they had what was called the ‘deadly embrace’ [among early operating systems]. They linked two computers together, thinking that would give them a supercomputer, but they ended up destroying each other. That can happen with two extremely good people who have neurodiversity – they can either link in and learn from each other or, if they’re in more of a chimp mode, they become desperate to win and believe their view of the world is the correct one.
Why are we still so reluctant to talk about our mental health at work?
You have to look at mental health as an umbrella. At one end of the spectrum you have people who could be dangerous, have no insight into themselves and find it hard to function, while at the other you have people with mental health issues who can still function unimpaired, have full insight and pose no danger.
But we tend to think of mental health as a bucket, where everyone is mixed in together. The vast majority of people with mental health problems can function very adequately. There’s no reason not to give them a job that could include stress – they’ll deal with it. Yet we think that if someone has had any form of mental illness or psychological upset that they just can’t function.
It’s strange that if someone has a physical illness, like diabetes – which wouldn’t impair their work but could make them unwell at times – I would hope we wouldn’t hesitate to recruit them.
Yet we feel differently about mental illness, even though it is largely the same.
For more insights on how psychology can help HR and L&D, don’t miss the CIPD Behavioural Science at Work Conference: bit.ly/BehaviouralScience