Why People Behave as they do. Workshop on using neuroscience for project success

The South Wales and West of England Regional Network were very pleased to welcome Carole Osterweil on 14 January 2025, to speak at this Webinar. Carole is the author of APM’s groundbreaking book, Neuroscience for Project Success: Why People behave as They Do, and is a project troubleshooter and accredited executive coach.

Carole explained that although neuroscience is a highly complex area of study, a pinch of knowledge and understanding can help the project professional toward better project outcomes, success and less stress for them and the team.

Tonight, Carole discussed two aspects: brain basics that explain why we behave as we do, and stress, both personal and systemic.

She asked the audience to reflect on themselves and their projects as the talk progressed, pointing out it would help them engage and get more out of the session.

Carole asked the audience a question about how much they already knew about how the brain works. The poll indicated that 19% knew nothing, 42% knew a bit from school, 34% had read about it or studied it ay Uni, and 5% that it informed everything they did.

The APM book was designed to introduce neuroscience to the PM community in an accessible way.

The brain's most important job is to manage the body’s budget to ensure we survive, thrive and reproduce! It does this by regulating biological resources and trying to stay in credit. Just like a project budget your body budget deals in deposits (for example what we eat and drink, and the air we breathe) and withdrawals (for example energy consuming activities such thinking and making decisions. All this happen as the subconscious level.

Carole introduced Dan Siegel’s ‘brain in the palm of your hand’ - a simplified 3 part model of the brain. The audience were asked to follow Carole as she moved her hand and fingers. Firstly, she traced around the palm of the hand, to represent the brain stem and down the arm to show how it connects to the rest of the body. The second part, the Feeling brain represented by the thumb folded over the palm, is where our behaviours and impulses originate. We were then invited to wrap our fingers over the thumb to represent the Thinking brain, the site of rational decision making, empathy and other higher functions.

All this operates as an integrated system. Carole explained that the latest thinking is that 80-90% of information flows from the body to the brain, which is not a top-down command centre once thought. Your body is your brain.

The model can start to explain how we behave. As humans, we do not distinguish between physical threat and a social threat. And we are constantly seeking cues of danger and safety. These cues, which are typically processed at the subconscious level, come from our five senses and internal body sensations.

Any perceived threat can take the Thinking, rational brain offline and we go on emotional autopilot to the flight fight / attack, freeze behaviour responses. In contrast, when the Thinking brain is online, we experience emotions such as trust, excitement, joy and these drive behaviours that enable us to create, collaborate, motivate and learn.

As social creatures we coregulate with others we interact with. Your mood will impact on others and how they feel. As a leader, you should be very aware of your impact on the team. You need to try and keep your Thinking brain online.

Unfortunately, life in the 21st Century is designed to screw us up! We are at our most effective and resilient and when our body budget is in credit, and we know how to bring our Thinking brains back online.

Carole next turned to personal and systemic stress. We all need some stress to be motivated and to perform well. On projects the pursuit of high performance can become toxic, leading to brutal cultures which can create mental health issue and poor performance.

Excess stress can create the project stress cycle, which is a vicious circle leading to less trust, poor relationships, poor communication, poor creativity and poor outcomes, which can create more pressure from stakeholders.

It’s important that you recognise this systemic stress if you want to break the circle. Sharing the model with the team and stakeholders can help illustrate the situation and start a conversation about what the real issues are.

When stuck in a stress cycle there’s often a gut reaction to demand more and more data, but looking ‘out there’; for information may not get at the root cause.

A better approach can be looking ‘inside yourself’ (i.e. using self-awareness) to explore how you are feeling, and to understand your energy levels, and behaviours and to consider if your Thinking brain is online or not.

The performance / stress/arousal bell curve can help you understand where you are. Are you in the zone, feeling calm and alert, or starting to feel uncomfortable, overwhelmed and out of control. Talk about this with the team, ask how they are feeling.Project success can be helped with 4 steps.

1. Self-awareness, how online is my Thinking brain?
2. Self-management, how do I get my Thinking brain on line and keep it there?
3. Social awareness, how online are the team’s (and stakeholders’) Thinking brains.
4. Relationship management, how can I help them get their Thinking brains on line and keep them there?

This all leads to better thinking and decision making and successful projects.

In summary, you can lead projects by managing the stress cycle. Don’t assume that Thinking brains are online all the time. Learn how to get yours online, and create the conditions to empower the team to get and keep theirs online. Be mindful of the stress cycle, look out for it and manage it for yourself and the team.

The evening concluded with a lively and informative Q&A session. A key question was about the effect of neurodiversity, such as autism. Carole’s view was that the online / offline thinking brain model was universal, but that the triggers and their levels would be different for any individual. The trick is to ask about any triggers and to be self-aware to let others know how they can help you.

The webinar recording is now available on our APM YouTube Channel. You can find the slides on our APM Slideshare account, we hope you find them useful.