Your brain sits at risk until it finds certainty, says keynote speaker Milo Wilkinson

Real estate leaders need to be open to free thinking and tolerate mistakes to create a modern-day workplace, according to the keynote speaker at the Rise Leadership conference in Sydney.

Renowned neuroscientist and psychologist Milo Wilkinson offered a profound perspective on human behaviour in the workplace, emphasising the critical roles of belonging, psychological safety and trust in any professional setting. 

In her address, the Neuroscience of Leadership, Milo drew on her unique background, including her early life in foster care and later her experience as a criminologist. She told the Rise Leadership “Action” conference that understanding the brain’s hardwired responses was essential for effective leadership.

Milo revealed several fundamental neurological principles that dictated how individuals reacted to their environment. These included:

Social rejection causes physical pain

The brain processed social rejection in the same regions as physical pain, said Milo. Being excluded socially mirrored the sensation of being physically harmed. A lack of belonging, trust or social exclusion placed the brain in a threat system, causing real pain. 

“Your brain sits ‘in risk’ until it finds certainty,” she told the conference of more than 150 Rise delegates at Macquarie Bank’s new HQ in Sydney.

Belonging is a survival imperative

Our “ancient DNA” hardwired us for a desire to belong to a community, and this was part of our survival mechanism, said Milo. 

“Historically, social exclusion often meant death, and this deep-seated fear persists in all of us to this day,” she said. “Consequently, the brain defaults to a state of risk until it finds certainty. It explains why people often perceive change as fearful rather than exciting. Change introduces ambiguity and a potential sense of loss.”

Recognising your loss and moving on

When implementing change, Milo said leaders must acknowledge the inherent sense of loss individuals may experience. She shared her personal struggle with selling her first home, which had symbolised independence and pivotal life moments. 

She said a brief "loss reconciliation" conversation – even if it took just five or 10 minutes – could be crucial to helping people process what they were giving up before they could embrace something new. "You cannot move anyone through change until you acknowledge that they're going to lose something.”

Don’t say, you’re not enough

A lack of belonging can lower IQ, said Milo, citing research that shows individuals who were told they would "amount to nothing" exhibited lower IQ scores. Negative labeling had a profound effect on a person’s self-belief and their perceived worth.

A child’s self-perception was most dramatically formed between the ages of 8 and 13. What they believed about themselves aged 13 onwards would likely stay with them unless they sought to actively rewire their thinking later in life.

Business leaders should seek to understand the underlying causes of an employee’s behaviour rather than “merely judging the symptoms” and coming to conclusions, Milo said.

Power of personal stories

Milo mostly focused on how to achieve positive outcomes for individuals at work. She said the sharing of personal stories, vulnerability and even the sharing of meals would trigger the release of a bonding hormone called oxytocin. 

This "feel-good" hormone, also released by cocaine, was crucial in fostering connection. Milo described how “mirror neurons activate, making individuals feel neurologically closer to others, especially those who share authentic experiences”.

“The more you share, the more the brain releases feel-good hormones, the same feel-good hormones that cocaine would give. One's not illegal!”

Dangers of loneliness

Chronic loneliness posed significant health risks, comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes daily, said Milo. It increased cortisol, inflammation and the risk of heart disease and dementia. Loneliness led to a 26% increased risk of premature death. 

Milo cited Harvard Business School’s “Happiness Survey” – an ongoing 75-year study. It  most recently concluded that a deep sense of belonging through strong friendships, social structures and enjoyable relationships directly correlated with longer, healthier lives.

It’s Us vs. Them 

Achieving the ideal workplace was a most difficult challenge that needed to overcome instinctive behaviours. Milo warned that humans were born with a hardwired bias to segregate. 

Innately, we tended to prefer those who share similarities with us, and we would exclude those who were different. 

Milo  talked about the Yale University experiment called “Baby Lab”, which “shockingly demonstrated” that infants preferred puppets who shared their preferences and wanted "different" puppets to be treated badly. 

This inherent "in-group" and "out-group" bias was an evolutionary survival mechanism, Milo explained. For a more diverse and cohesive workplace, business managers were challenged with having to consciously work to overcome this “segregation”. 

Quoting Brené Brown, Milo said: “The opposite of belonging is fitting in.” True belonging, said Milo, meant being "completely you", while fitting in often involves betraying oneself to conform to group expectations

Psychological safety

Milo told the Rise audience that in environments of high psychological safety, people engaged more, asked challenging questions, built collective knowledge and adapted faster. In turn, this fostered a healthy organisation in which trying and failing was acceptable. 

Conversely, low psychological safety led to disengagement, avoidance of challenging ideas and a command-and-control dynamic. Milo said she had seen this scenario when employed as a consultant to the national airline, Qantas. Internal leaders lost their voice, and soon became unable to make decisions. Command-and-control leadership was no longer effective, especially with the millennial generation, who had been raised with a voice and expected to be heard.

Also, when individuals felt unsafe, their reptilian brain would trigger a fight, flight or freeze response, diverting cognitive resources from strategic thinking and creativity. To counter this, Milo advocated for providing "bucket loads of context" and fostering environments where there are no "wrong answers". This would encourage free-flowing thought. 

Cultivating trust

Instead of focusing solely on results, Milo suggested encouraging teams to explore what they genuinely desire to think, feel and do within their organisation. By focusing on positive desired outcomes and celebrations, rather than just the "threats" or “sacrifices”, leaders could ignite motivation and connection.

Profound influence of leadership

Milo concluded by emphasising that great leaders possessed the highest levels of neurological, psychological and emotional skills. She cited a second Harvard study that revealed 92% of employees' daily highlights were directly attributed to their leaders, yet 89% of their worst experiences also stemmed from leadership. 

While driving hard for results, real estate principals should never compromise the well-being and psychological safety of their people, she said. 

True engagement and sustainable results were achieved when the head, heart, and body were in alignment, fostered by a culture of genuine belonging and trust.