Teamwork The neuroscience behind emotional behavior In any team sport, creating a robust team dynamic is always the greatest challenge for any coach. Team members differ in personality styles, attitudes, motivation, and behaviors. A coach fixated in believing that his message will equally resonate with each player will fail to create a cohesive team approach as individual’s differences are not being considered.
According to psychologist, Peter Levine, emotional memories are “felt-sense emotions such as surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and joy.” These memories lie just below the neo-cortex, hence are only expressed when we place meaning on the awareness. Having to give an oral presentation before a large audience may bring an array of different felt-sense emotions, such as calmness or nervousness, which are derived from implicit memories of prior experiences. Factually expressing that those emotions have first appeared two months ago at a community assembly speaking engagement is the job of our explicit memory.
To achieve an effective teamwork atmosphere, leaders shine in their ability to unite a group of individuals by seeking a common goal while supporting emotional behavioral differences amongst team members. An individual’s emotional behavior results from the combination of personal genes and life experiences, both supportive and upsetting. Such experiences mold a neurological imprint in our brains leading to the development of behaviors whose roots lie in implicit, subconscious, emotional memories. These memories cannot be intentionally brought up. Page 30
Hierarchically, our brain develops implicit memories first and explicit ones later. We feel butterflies in the belly and later express them as feelings of anxiety.
The tennis player who is about to serve to win a grand slam match will feel rapid heartbeats and shallow breathing. If the player is Australian, such felt sense awareness will be expressed in English; if the player is from Japan, the same felt sense sensations will be spoken in Japanese. Both players brought forth implicit memories based on past experiences. Regardless of their nationality, human beings experience non-verbal awareness before those sensations turn into verbal language. To be coherent between what we sense and what we express is a result of how emotionally regulated we are. When athletes are asked about the experience of losing a very close game last week, they tend to rationalize their feelings by either minimizing its emotional content or expressing a rationalization aimed
