The Link Between Well-Being, the Brain, and Strengths (podcast)

Happy New Year! We hope your 2020 is off to a roaring start. As you know, we’ve been on hiatus over the holidays, re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past two years. I was also recovering from a tonsillectomy and after lots of smoothies, naps, and way too much Netflix, I’m healed and excited to bring you a new episode of the Leadership Vision podcast!

In this episode, Brian, Schubring and I talk about well-being, a very timely conversation as we begin the year. Many of us are focused on goals, outcomes, and generally trying to do things a differently to make some sort of change in our lives. We believe that focusing on well-being can help anyone achieve those changes both personally and professionally.

Today we’re talking about well-being as it relates to the intellectual, emotional, influential, and unconscious life of the brain. Basically we’re just talking about how our Strengths-Based approach to People, Teams, and Culture aligns well with some of the latest research in neuroscience. We also talk about how understanding that can really help us maximize our levels of personal and professional well-being. See, it all ties together!

We’ve been experimenting with these big ideas on our own team and also with some of our clients. This topic of well-being is a hot one right now, but largely focused on the individual. That’s of course important, but we think it also has a lot to do with the well-being of your team and ultimately the culture of your organization.

As you listen to this conversation today, think about your own well-being. What are one or two areas of your life where you would say you’re really well or really healthy? Now think about one or two areas of your life where, perhaps things are going so well.

We’ve got some great questions at the end of this to challenge your thinking in this area bit. Enjoy this conversation between our founder and CEO, Brian Schubring and I as we set the stage for some of the ways we’re extending the strengths conversation in 2020. We’re talking about Strengths, neuroscience, well-being, cactus’s, riding roller coasters and a bunch of other stuff. Listen now!

What is Well-Being?

What comes to mind when you hear the word well-being? Take a moment to formulate a definition in your mind. By definition, well-being is the “state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.” But what does a comfortable, healthy, or happy YOU look like, feel like and sound like?

As you’ll hear in the podcast episode, we’ve intentionally chosen not to fully define the term well-being because it means a little something different to everyone. Defining it on your own terms will make all the difference in the world.

The Brain

During our conversation today, Brian makes reference to neuroscience research he learned about from the book, Neuroscience for Leaders: A Brain Adaptive Leadership Approach by Nikolaos Dimitriadis and Alexandros Psychogios. Here is a brief summary.

Modern science has shown that in order to behave more productively in complex business situations, we need to understand and alter the inner workings of our brain.

Dimitriadis and Psychogios

They go on to break down their research and decades of study into different lives of the brains. Which are;

The intellectual Life of the brain. Your thinking life.

The emotional life of the brain. Your ability to spot and respond to the emotions of yourself and others.

The influential life of the brain. The social and relational aspect of our brand.

The unconscious life of the brain. The automatic instinctual automation – repeatable behaviors that we’re doing all the time.