Differences make us nervous.

It’s a biological fact: difference is a cue for threat, which triggers the amygdala, our brain’s “red alert” when danger is present. This leads to all sorts of negative outcomes, in our lives and in the workplace.

A while ago I wrote about how diversity, by itself, is an inadequate solution to inequity and injustice. We need to create trusting and empathetic environments where people feel they belong.

Today’s post digs into why trust and empathy don’t come easily in the workplace.

Our brains are wired to fear difference

We know that we need trust and empathy to create inclusive workplaces, but the workplace makes it hard to trust one another or to empathize with one another.

It comes back to the brain, and what it’s wired for: survival.

The famous “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction is the product of the amygdala, our brain’s built-in threat-detection device. The amygdala’s main job is to keep us alive. It does this by letting us know right away when our survival is at risk. Funny sound coming from the bushes? Run! Or get ready for a fight. Or stay very, very still and quiet.

It wouldn’t be smart or helpful to spend time thinking through whether the danger is real. Just do something right now before I die. It’s that simple.

This is a good thing. Without the amygdala, our ancestors wouldn’t have survived long enough to pass along their genes.

So, what’s the problem?

The amygdala is really, really bad at telling real danger from fake danger. It’s always scanning the environment, every moment of every day, for something dangerous. That’s its one job. And so it finds danger — even when our literal, physical survival isn’t at risk.

One of its favorite places to find danger is in differences. When something in the environment deviates from what’s “normal” or expected, it could mean there’s danger nearby. The greater the difference, the greater the danger.

If there was ever a place where we feel threats, even though our lives aren’t at risk, it’s the workplace. Where else is there such a close connection between what we do and how we provide for our most basic needs? And where else do others (bosses and influential colleagues) have such an outsized say over the conditions of our providing, and how long we get to continue providing? Power relations are baked into every single relationship in every single organization, not only through org charts, but through the varying levels of societal privilege that we all carry.

In the workplace, lions are everywhere.

Making things even harder, the amygdala has a special trick up its sleeve: when it’s active, it shuts down the neocortex. That's the part of the brain where we do our planning, our collaborating, and some of our empathizing. Since an active amygdala means an inactive neocortex, when we find ourselves feeling threatened, we’re unable to “think straight” or reason well. Any chance we might have of using our higher brain functions to build trust and empathy is out the window.

It doesn’t take much for the amygdala to get busy. Maybe the boss seems a little “off” today. Or there’s a new hire who’s younger and more energetic than you. Or that annoying colleague from marketing criticizes your font selection in the latest deck.

Anyone can be a lion

These “one-off” kinds of lions are just scratching the surface. There’s a whole class of behaviors that can set us off. They revolve around how our cultural backgrounds, as well as our individuality, shape specific behaviors in common workplace settings.

Take conflict style, which we touched on in the last post. With my “Engagement” conflict style — direct communication paired with emotional expressiveness — I’m likely to see colleagues with different conflict styles as threatening, and I have a long list of unkind names for them: “condescending” and “robotic” for the Discussion style, “passive” and “uncaring” for the Accommodation style, and “passive aggressive” and “unaccountable” for the Dynamic style.

My colleagues with different conflict styles are also likely to see me as a lion, viewing me as a “loose cannon,” or as “overly emotional.”

Conflict style is just one form of workplace behavior where we’re likely to see our colleagues as lions.

Another set of differences revolve around what are called “cultural dimensions.” These were first discovered by Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede in the 1970s. Since his seminal research, others have deepened and expanded his discovery.

Here are some examples of cultural dimensions that regularly show up in the workplace:

• Task vs. relationship: At the start of a meeting, do you prefer to jump into the agenda, or to spend some time catching up on personal matters?

• Hierarchical vs. flat: Should decision-making be done mostly by those with more authority, or by everyone, regardless of rank? And whose voices should be considered in the decision-making process?

• Risk vs. certainty: When taking on new projects, would you rather jump in and start trying things, or plan more first?

• Firm time vs. flexible time: Do we need to start the meeting right on the dot, or is there a little wiggle room? How much wiggle room? (A nod here to Edward T. Hall, who, long before Hofstede, wrote of “monochronic” vs. “polychronic” time.)

• “Big bubble” vs. “little bubble” space: How much physical space is the “right” amount of space to maintain between people?

This list is not exhaustive. And, cultural dimensions and conflict styles are not the only ways behavior varies in the workplace.

Differences — cultural and individual — are everywhere. Since the amygdala interprets difference as a threat, it’s no wonder we go around seeing lions everywhere. And of course, because power suffuses every human interaction, some of those lions are going to be especially scary.

It’s not a pretty picture. Trust and empathy are not likely to thrive in this environment.

What can we do about it? We’ll get into that next time when we talk about training the brain.

Interested in discussing these topics in your organization or at your next event? Check out my speaking page or drop me a note.