Leadership is a social skill, you might think, nothing to do with physics. If there is anything physical about it, then it is about pulling more than your weight. But wait.
When was the last time you landed at an airport? Having stepped off the plane, you passed the jet bridge and the gate, entering the terminal. Next came a walk along a corridor among a crowd of people all of whom were on the same flight. So far, so common.
Unless your conscious awareness was absorbed by a conversation with someone on the phone or a fellow traveler, you may have noticed something spooky: after covering a short distance, your steps and those of the other people had synchronized: you were marching in lockstep. It is an almost compulsive behavior. Even when we notice being drawn into this odd motion pattern, it feels almost impossible to escape it: neuroscientists at the University of Dublin found out that instructing people to avoid synchronization of their body movements had no effect.
Physicists refer to the spontaneous synchronization of oscillators as ‘entrainment’. Entrainment was first observed by the Dutch astronomer and mathematician Christiaan Huygens in 1657. Oscillating systems, such as the pendulum clocks he observed, but equally biological oscillators such as hearts or brains, synchronize. When brain waves synchronize, biologists, psychologists or neuroscientists refer to ‘interbrain connectivity’ (no less than ten different terms are currently in use to describe the phenomenon, which is typical for a nascent interdisciplinary field).
Entrainment has been observed (and measured via electroencephalography (EEG) among people performing and working together, whether they were choir singers, jazz musicians in jam sessions, card players, doctors and their patients, professors and their students – and leaders and their followers. Researchers found that the quality of their performance or interaction was correlated to the extent to which brains had become connected.
In my book ‘Subliminal Leadership – why it is as important as emotional intelligence’ (Routledge / Taylor&Francis), I connect research published in reputed neuroscience, psychology or biology journals which leads to the following conclusion: the depth of leader-follower relationships, and hence the effectiveness of leadership, is directly correlated with the extent of interbrain connectivity. Research shows that trust, cooperation, problem-solving (notably in non-routine or emergency situations), creativity and innovation, and communication are far superior if peoples’ brains are ‘on the same wavelength’.
So how can you tune in with other people ?
‘Born’ leaders, as a growing body of research confirms, are ‘entrainers’. What may be second nature for born leaders may however not come naturally to mere mortals – but subliminal leadership skills can be learned, practiced and improved. Good, effective leaders are entrainers.
For those who like to get to the bottom of things, here is a selection of recent open source (no paywall) articles:
- Atesh Koul et al., Spontaneous dyadic behavior predicts the emergence of interpersonal neural synchrony, NeuroImage, Vol. 277, Issue120233, August 2023
- Jun Nie et al., Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization, PLOS Biology, Vol. 22, Issue 3, March 2024
- Golnaz Baghdadi et al., Role of brain oscillations in neurocognitive control systems, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, Vol. 17, Issue 75, March 2023
- Akexander P. Demos et al., Social and nonlinear dynamics unite: musical group synchrony, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 27, Issue 11, Nov. 2023