Leaders judge people in seconds, and those first impressions often drive the conflicts that follow. Marcel Schwantes lists five brain habits for leaders in Inc., drawing on Anu Gupta’s book Breaking Bias. They rest on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to build new connections with repetition. The research behind them is a mix of promising and thin, so this article says which is which.
Mindfulness slows the reflex to judge
Mindfulness means noticing thoughts, feelings and body signals without reacting to them. A Greater Good review of mindfulness and bias describes three thinking errors that practice appeared to reduce. People who had meditated were less likely to explain someone’s behavior by their character alone. They were less drawn to negative information, and their brain scans showed more prefrontal activity and less amygdala activity. They also rated themselves less rosily than others. The review calls the evidence preliminary.
Facts over first impressions
When a snap judgment about a colleague appears, name it, then recall a real counterexample or a verified fact about that person. Gupta calls this habit breaking: you replace an automatic link in your head with a more accurate one. If a manager assumes a quiet employee lacks ambition, the fix is to recall the last time that employee delivered something ambitious. The habit is simple and free, and it works on one judgment at a time.
Individuation, treat people as individuals
Individuation means getting concrete details about a person instead of relying on a quick label. Ask curious questions about their goals, constraints and working style, and let those answers guide your view. Schwantes gives the example of a leader who stops seeing an employee as difficult after learning what the employee is dealing with. It costs a few minutes per person, and it fits naturally in one-to-one meetings.
Loving-kindness practice builds patience
A loving-kindness exercise has you silently wish others well, starting with people you like and moving to people you find hard. Schwantes says five minutes can improve communication, patience and trust. The wider research is more modest. A meta-analysis of 22 meditation trials with 1,685 participants found a moderate overall gain in prosocial traits, with a correlation of 0.26. Compassion and empathy rose, but aggression, connectedness and prejudice did not change significantly. Most of those studies were rated weak in quality, so treat the benefit as plausible, not proven.
Perspective taking engages the social brain
Perspective taking means picturing a situation as the other person sees it. A Wharton report on perspective taking in the brain says this uses the brain’s mentalizing network, including the temporoparietal junction and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. According to the report, the Swedish bank SEB has run perspective-taking training since 2018 as part of a culture change effort, and Wharton researchers describe practices such as regular reflection with colleagues, visualizing a person’s day and a five-minute exercise. The report shares no sample sizes, so it supports the idea more than it measures the effect.
How strong is the evidence?
The five habits are not equally well tested. Mindfulness and loving-kindness have the most research, mostly small and uneven. Habit breaking and individuation come mainly from Gupta’s practice, and perspective taking from a company program and a university explainer. None of the sources measured workplace conflict directly in a large trial. The habits are low-cost and low-risk, which makes them reasonable to try, but nobody can promise a specific drop in conflict.
What you can do about it
Pick one habit per week and attach it to a routine. Before a hard conversation, take five seconds before you react. In your next one-to-one, ask one curious question about the person’s goals. When you catch a snap judgment, write down one fact that contradicts it. End the day with five minutes of loving-kindness, or spend that time on the other person’s view of a disagreement. Pair this with better listening, the underrated leadership skill, since both start with attention to the other person.
Sources and related information
Inc. – 5 brain strategies to reduce conflict and boost your leadership – 2024
The article behind the five habits, with brain strategies for leaders and practical examples.
Greater Good Science Center – Three Ways Mindfulness Can Make You Less Biased – 2017
A review of studies on how mindfulness affects common thinking biases, with links to the primary research.
Wharton Knowledge at Penn – Perspective taking, a brain hack that can help you make better decisions – 2021
An explainer on the brain networks behind perspective taking and the SEB training program.
Scientific Reports – The limited prosocial effects of meditation: A systematic review and meta-analysis – 2018
The meta-analysis covering 22 randomized trials of meditation and which prosocial traits changed.
