Neural leader, coach, and director: the manager who creates well-being and helps us live longer

Mapping out a direction, making complex decisions, inspiring others, and achieving results through them. We could use this as a definition for what leaders do. But neuroscience suggests that this description is incomplete. To do all this, in fact, the most effective leaders know how to create the conditions that allow people’s brains to work in synch—not only in a metaphorical sense, but also physiologically—with tangible effects on well-being and health.

To understand more, we can look to recent neuroscience research using hyperscanning experiments, a neuroimaging procedure involving simultaneously tracking the brain activity of two or more individuals during a social interaction. This technique highlights brain synchronization phenomena among individuals engaged in shared activities. Specifically, when a group collaborates on interdependent tasks, people tend to focus their attention simultaneously on the same elements; they also process information together and coordinate their behaviors more effectively. But when a group performs sequential tasks or carries out shared activities under competitive conditions, this alignment does not occur. Attention scatters across individual interests, mutual listening abates, and emotional engagement tends to swing between two equally harmful extremes: hyperactivation and excessive stress, or demotivation and declining energy. (For reference studies, see here and here ).

To understand the reasons behind these phenomena, we need to start with a fundamental characteristic of the human species. Our brains evolved to create social connections. For tens of thousands of years, survival depended on the ability to cooperate with other human beings. Being part of a group meant protection, opportunities for reproduction, and access to greater resources. In short, you stood a better chance of surviving. By the same token, if you were excluded from the group, your life expectancy would drastically drop. So it comes as no surprise that the brain continues to treat social relationships as a matter of vital importance.

When we perceive exclusion, unfairness , or devaluation , these emotions activate what neuroscientists call the pain circuit—the same system that fires up when we face a physical threat. The brain reacts exactly as it would to an injury, hyperactivating the immune system and releasing adrenaline and cortisol (the stress hormone). This physiological response allows us to deal effectively with an emerging threat of limited duration, but it becomes harmful to our health when it is turned on for prolonged periods.

A famous experiment by Williams, Cheung and Choi demonstrated this by placing participants in a simple ball-tossing video game. Initially the human participants got their turn to toss the ball, but gradually it started moving back and forth only to the game’s virtual characters. At that point, neuroimaging data from the participants who were excluded revealed activation in the same brain regions involved in the perception of physical pain.

In organizations, this has consequences that every manager observes sooner or later, even if they often fail to recognize the underlying cause. People who feel excluded, unrecognized, and therefore threatened in the workplace tend to react with three types of behavior, triggered by the neural and hormonal dynamics embedded in our brains: fight, flight, or freeze.

• Fight . They strike back and become defensive and aggressive. This is perhaps the most misunderstood reaction, often mistaken for a personality trait when instead it may be a response to a situation people perceive as hostile.
• Flight . They withdraw mentally, avoid interaction with others, and retreat to the point where they’re simply going through the motions, while participating as little as possible.
• Freeze . They become stuck, remaining hypervigilant, cautious, and focused primarily on identifying potential threats in the environment and avoiding mistakes.

In all cases, the result is the same: Cognitive energy is diverted away from work and redirected toward self-preservation.

There is, however, an opposite mechanism. When people perceive cooperation , fairness , and social recognition , the “reward circuit” is activated. The brain releases dopamine and other hormones associated with motivation and well-being. People become more willing to collaborate, share information, and go above and beyond their job requirements.

But there is a critical caveat: The drive toward collaboration and the sense of well-being associated with the release of these hormones do not arise spontaneously. They emerge in an appropriate organizational environment that has been intentionally designed to foster these outcomes. Research shows that brain synchronization augments when people work under conditions of authentic interdependence. That means, it’s not enough to sit at the same table or attend the same meeting; each person’s success must genuinely depend on the contributions of others. Only where true cooperation exists does alignment occur, not when activities merely take place side by side. And this is where leadership comes into play, which requires not only designing interdependent activities but also fostering authentic collaboration.

Studies on brain-to-brain coupling show that leaders can actively generate a specific response in the nervous systems of their team members, synchronizing their brain waves and influencing their ability to connect with the leader’s perspective.

Several recent studies in management settings have shown that this alignment is heightened when leaders do the following:

• They speak in terms of “we” rather than “I-you.”
• They collaboratively build action plans and projects.
• They discuss work in qualitative terms rather than relying on numerical performance ratings.
• They adopt a participatory leadership style.

In other words, when they act like coaches, using their role to create a working alliance with and among team members. When they help give meaning to organizational goals, explore what motivates people, and build partnerships with them to create an organizational environment where everyone can perform at their best.

For this reason, perhaps the most fitting metaphor for a leader is a neural director. Someone who harmonizes not so much the activities themselves as the conditions that allow different brains to operate on the same wavelength. Someone who fosters the creation of a shared rhythm capable of unlocking attention, learning, and collective intelligence.

There is one final aspect that should be a priority for every manager and employee. Establishing environments based on cooperation, fairness, and connection does not simply improve performance. It alleviates chronic stress, minimizes activation of the brain’s alert systems, and strengthens the biological mechanisms associated with well-being. In other words, with a good leader, coach, and neural director, team members work more effectively, with a bonus whose value cannot be overstated: they live longer too.

Developing coaching skills for managing teams is the focus of the live online course Il leader coach (in Italian).