Treat people like animals. Yes, yes, I know how it sounds, but this is no joke. Yes, it’s fun to declare that the people around you are “going wild” or that getting people to do things is “like herding cats.” And yes, we’ve all used the phrase “they’re treating us like animals” when suffering some sort of treatment that’s perceived to be abusive.
But this is a dead serious piece of advice, something that might well transform your workplace, your organisation, and even your own personal life. In practice, the way we think about ourselves–as animals or something else–has vast implications for how we treat ourselves, our people, and the world around us.
The problem begins in modern culture – a world in which we’ve grown accustomed to talking about people as something other than animals. We’ve all heard the exceptions and the exceptionalism and we’re quick to list our favourite human attributes. Language, mind, spirit, soul and so on.
Humans may be similar to animals in some ways, but we’re fundamentally different and of course, better. To be sure, all species are unique, but we’re uniquely unique. And because of our self-declared exalted status, we’re free to ignore all those deeply primal attributes that we share with the rest of the animal kingdom.
This is a grievous error, one that leads to all manner of bad behaviour and suffering, both within and outside our organizations.
Whatever you might happen to believe about human capability, there can be no denying the biological reality of our bodies. As children of evolution, every detail of our anatomy, physiology and behaviour can be traced back to our biological history and the multi-million year history of our hominid line. Every system in our brains and bodies has a precursor and an ancestry and nearly all of it is shared with other creatures. In actual fact, our bodies are not arbitrary and neither is our behaviour. Like it or not, we are kin with the rest of the living world.
In particular, humans share a deep and ancient wiring with other primates and mammals, an autonomic nervous system that regulates our activity, as well as our body’s healing and regenerative processes. This system is well understood by medical science and is widely recognised in popular culture. Most of us are familiar with the two branches of autonomic activity: one leads us to fight-or-flight engagement, the other towards rest-and-digest, sometimes called “feed and breed.”
We understand the importance of this system in matters of personal health and most of us have come to realise that the modern world tends to keep us in a state of chronic fight-flight activation, a state that is ultimately detrimental to our individual well-being.
But the autonomic is about far more than personal health or wellness. In fact, the autonomic system has a profound influence on our behaviour, our performance, attitude, and cognition. It shapes our social behaviour, our creativity, our disposition and our ability to work in teams. In fact, it’s safe to say that much of our modern social and organisational dysfunction can be traced back to poor regulation of the autonomic system. When the human animal is under pressure, the stress doesn’t just stay inside the afflicted individual; it ripples and cascades across entire social systems.
In essence, all our stress is contagious.
The consequences can be debilitating. Chronic stress contracts our attention and leads to increased perceptions of scarcity and danger. It contributes to extremism, dogmatism, polarisation, and xenophobia. At the same time, it drives people back to the familiar; people under chronic stress are far more likely to revert to habitual behaviours, ideas, and patterns. To put it another way, chronic stress destroys our creative capacity and our ability to adapt to challenging circumstances.
Taking care of the animal
Those of us with a biological orientation will be quick to recognise the power of the body and in particular, the autonomic system. But how do we take care of the human animal? The good news is that the fundamentals are well understood. Writing in Scientific American (December 2005) Professor Robert Sapolsky offered a concise explanation and a road map for working with human animals.
As he put it, “Individuals are more likely to activate a stress response and are more at risk for a stress sensitive disease if they …
- feel as if they have minimal control
- feel as if they have no predictive information
- have few outlets for their frustration
- lack social support
In effect, Sapolsky has given us a recipe and a framework for taking care of the human animals within (and outside) our organisations. The recommendation is simple: Whenever possible, give people more control, better predictive information, and make sure they have outlets (hobbies, sports, or any kind of activity outside the stress domain).
And above all, making sure that they have some sort of humane, authentic, and meaningful social support.
This is where you can do some powerful work. At the most basic level, humans are hyper-social animals and we depend upon one another for a sense of acceptance, validation, and meaning. In our encounters with one another, everyone wants to feel seen, heard, understood, and respected. Above all, the human animal wants to feel felt. When this sense of appreciation takes place, the autonomic nervous system shifts away from fight-flight and moves closer to the healing, creative domain of rest-and-digest. When people feel felt, their bodies and their minds just work better.
Sadly, this basic experience is so often lost in the hyper-active world of modern work and living. Obsessed with speed, efficiency, and productivity, we leapfrog over our basic animal needs and in the process, weaken the very capabilities that we need to solve problems and create a future. To put it another way, human social needs aren’t just a nice-to-have supplement or enrichment, they are essential elements in personal and group success.
All of which has powerful implications for leadership and management. Instead of treating people like “resources” or even as “employees,” try treating them as highly social, creative animals that just happen to be working in your organisation. Pay close attention to their bodies and their lived experience. Exercise curiosity as to their physical state and experience. And above all, make sure they feel felt: seen, heard, understood and respected. In short, treat people the way you would treat any other creature in our world. Take care of the animals around you and they’ll take care of you.
