INsight/ SCARF for Managers
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Hilversum, 23 August 2023 — An unexpected disadvantage for new managers and project leads.
Story
It happened over the past years whenever I observed professionals being promoted to managers or project leads. Inevitably, the role change would bring some unexpected stresses that started surfacing soon after the appointment, not just in the new managers but also among the staff in their teams. Sounds familiar? What is happening in these situations?
To find answers, we need to go back in time much longer than you might think, all the way to when our ancient ancestors had to survive in dangerous landscapes full of physical threats. Nowadays, while we have long since exchanged those wild environments for modern workplaces, our ancient brains are still finely tuned to spotting threats, and they will respond to social changes in our workplace as if they were physical threats. In What Triggers You we already explored the five social concerns that our brain will treat as either a threat or a reward, using David Rock’s SCARF model as a guide. If you missed it, please check that article first.
Today’s projects in our workplaces are full of social changes, and a role change to become manager or lead is one of them. The problem is that, even with your best intentions as a manager or lead, the brains of the staff in your teams will involuntarily register a threat when you step into that supervisory role, bringing stress into all five social domains of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Rock describes these stresses here. This threat response creates a tough and often not well-understood challenge for you, just as you are stepping enthusiastically into your new role. How will you make the best of this unexpected disadvantage?
Challenge
“Leaders are under social magnification,” writes Rock, adding that “everyone is watching them, looking for meaning, and even taking on their emotions non-consciously.” For you as a manager or lead, therefore, it’s important to take care with your social interactions. In my experience, that involves three tasks. Your first task is to anticipate the emotional impact of any change you contemplate introducing at work. What kinds of stress will that change trigger? The SCARF model can guide you in this task.
Your second task is for you to promote positive reward responses among your staff, in all five SCARF domains and to do so proactively. For status, for example, Rock and other experts recommend that you can recognize your staff’s excellence, offer constructive feedback, and create opportunities for growth and multiple streams of success. For certainty, you can make each situation seem solid and stable, and communicate your expectations clearly in the form of goals, strategies, and processes. For autonomy, you can delegate, give your trust, and empower your staff with space for decision-making. For relatedness, you can adopt an open-door policy, help your staff build strong connections for collaboration and a strong sense of collective identity as a group. And for fairness, you can create standards and ensure that processes are equitable and transparent, supported by guidelines and means of resolving conflicts. Sounds good so far?
Your third task is to communicate, communicate, and communicate. This part is often overlooked. Continuous communication by managers and leads is key to mitigating your staff’s threat responses and to fostering their reward responses in the ways suggested above. With effective two-way communication, you can avoid adding unnecessary changes that will threaten the SCARF domains. That will bring down stress levels, avoid disastrous crises, and help your staff focus on the project goals and deliverables. While you are keen to show early results in your new role, it’s worth remembering that your responsibility is to enhance team performance by creating an environment in which team members feel included, appreciated, and empowered, which in turn will boost engagement, well-being, and results.
Question
When the staff in your team, possibly including colleagues who competed for the role you gained, experience a social threat in the workplace arising from the changes you make after your promotion, this will often generate avoidance emotions like fear, anxiety, anger, and shame. These can, in turn, lead to avoidance behaviors, such as staff being defensive, reluctant to share information, and resorting to denials. Such behaviors will soon get in the way of performance. On the other hand, when you know how to elicit positive reward responses in your staff, that will generate a range of positive emotions because they will feel safe, included, and recognized.
My question this week is for the new managers and leads among you: What will you do to mitigate the involuntary threat signals that your colleagues will experience after your role change, and how will you make the best of the situation by consistently promoting positive reward responses whenever you can? Understanding and using the SCARF model will help you to act in a socially sensitive and adaptive manner that will lessen stress and generate more well-being and better results.
How to make that happen? In our work at TransformationFirst.Asia, we support executives, managers, and leads to navigate their individual SCARF challenges through our one-to-one Leader in Transition coaching, the Work in All Colors leadership course, and the Seven Ways of Inclusive Leadership workshops for interested businesses. We are grateful that neuroscience for leadership is giving us more insights into the social concerns that play such an important role in the workplace. Now is the time to use these insights.
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