Navigating Our Internal ‘Maps’

Our senses are continually bombarding our brains with input, with estimates varying between four billion and 400 billion bits of information per second. If our brains took on even the lower of these, we would suffer from a meltdown!

To protect ourselves from this overload, our brains filter sensory input. Our filters are unique to each and every one of us and can encompass our environment, peer group, age, etc. Three filters, however, have the greatest impact upon how we make meaning from our sensory input: experience (what has happened to us previously), values (what is most important to us) and state (a combination of the words we use, what we focus on and our physiology).

This filtering process has three impacts upon the information we are receiving. The first is to delete anything falling outside our filter range; the next is to distort reality (we are all familiar with the experience of time distortion when we’re having fun…); and the last is to generalise, or group ‘similar’ things together.

What maps do
The maps we each create for ourselves have two primary effects: they change our current state or feeling (our focus, physiology and language), and this in turn can alter our behaviour (both internal and external). How we behave externally (what we say and do) can then have a great influence upon the results we achieve. These results are then fed back to our brains via our senses – and on the cycle goes.

When our sensory experience is close to our map, then our behaviour appears more regulated and calm. Larger changes in behaviour appear when we experience the anxiety, or dissonance, created by greater difference or distance from our map. The greater the difference, the more extreme the behaviour.

Maps and leading
Understanding this filtering process enables leaders to, firstly, recognise that everyone will have a different view on things and, secondly, be able to influence behaviours in their teams. By simply changing the way people are filtering an event – either by creating a different experience, aligning closer to their values or changing their stated – we can better influence and moderate behaviour.

Simple actions such as talking about previous positive experiences, sharing common values and focusing on more optimistic outcomes can have a huge and sustainable impact on behaviour.

Give it a try, you’ll be surprised!