The tech world is known as a clinical and rational ecosystem. It is a domain driven by logic, sleek code, KPIs, and hard data. Speed and constant technological innovation are the absolute norm. Yet, this is merely the surface. The tech sector invests heavily in data, technology, and innovation, but technological change also demands a lot from the people who have to work with it. Reorganizations, uncertainty, and a fast-paced environment can make it difficult to actually alter behavior.
According to sociologist, learning & development and leadership specialist Suzanne Mau-Asam, tech companies are running into the limits of purely cognitive thinking. Drawing from her expertise in sociology, behavioral change, and body-oriented work, Mau-Asam addresses a question that is highly relevant in fast-changing organizations: why do people not always succeed in changing their behavior, even when they rationally understand that change is necessary? Embodied Leadership is a form of personal leadership in which you do not just use your mind, but also learn to listen to the signals of your body. This allows you to recognize automatic patterns, creating space to make more conscious choices about how you think, act, and interact with others.
Data literacy
Many organizations are currently investing heavily in so-called data literacy. Mau-Asam recently developed a successful program for a major financial institution to increase the 'data literacy' of its employees. At an operational level, teams learned to prompt and work more efficiently with AI. At a strategic level, the executive top layer learned how to embrace technological developments to remain competitive.
Although such a process is crucial to keep up with the times, Mau-Asam notes an important blind spot precisely within this context. "The school system and corporate culture have trained us to solve everything exclusively with our heads. We collect data to create control and certainty in a complex world," she explains. "But the market changes so rapidly nowadays that we simply can no longer oversee it all cognitively. Data and analysis help us understand the world. Bodily intelligence also helps us notice what uncertainty and tension do to us, so that we do not react automatically, but can continue to act consciously".
Particularly in an innovative tech environment, the ability to consciously perceive what is happening in your body – also known as sensing – is a strategic advantage. "This is not about intuition as a vague gut feeling, but about bodily intelligence. This is the ability to perceive signals of tension, relaxation, and boundaries, and to examine what they are telling you. Our nervous system picks up on tension and boundaries even before our minds can put them into words. If you ignore that somatic intelligence, you miss essential information needed to switch directions quickly and flexibly".
When the body says ‘no’ to change
The necessity for this became painfully clear during a project Mau-Asam guided for a large IT-tech consultancy. The company had undergone one radical reorganization after another in recent years. The executive board wanted to transform and roll out a future-oriented strategy. Although the employees perfectly understood the necessity of the pivot cognitively and fully agreed verbally, in practice nothing changed on the work floor at all.
"Employees understood the necessity of the change and expressed their support for it. Yet, behavior on the work floor remained largely the same. According to Mau-Asam, what plays a role here is not just what people rationally understand, but also how they experience the ongoing uncertainty and which protective patterns are activated as a result," Mau-Asam reflects. "Years of uncertainty and constant shifts in management cause chronic stress in the human nervous system. Biologically speaking, when a human experiences unsafety, they automatically default into a protective response." In her newly published book Embodied Leadership, she translates these responses into recognizable, automatic masks on the work floor.
In her work, Mau-Asam recognizes various reactions to high performance pressure. Some people try to maintain a grip by perfecting everything. Others keep pushing through and take on more and more responsibility. Still others withdraw and wait out the unrest until it passes. "You can want to steer a new course cognitively, but if your team's nervous system is in survival mode, the entire corporate transformation is blocked".
The ‘embodied’ future
Tech companies that want to flourish in the AI era must therefore not only steer on data literacy, but just as hard on nervous system literacy, according to Mau-Asam. As AI supports or takes over more cognitive and routine tasks, it becomes more vital to maintain attention on human qualities such as judgment, collaboration, dealing with uncertainty, and recognizing behavioral patterns.
The future belongs to tech teams that dare to slow down when pressure mounts, that can tolerate uncertainty constructively, and that make mutual patterns discussable. Innovation and diversity will only truly deliver returns when the organizational culture offers space to discuss uncertainty, ask questions, and practice new behavior. Only when tech leaders effectively combine ratio with bodily intelligence does an organization change not only its software and systems, but also the fundamental way it thinks, decides, and performs sustainably.
Suzanne Mau-Asam is a sociologist, specialist in learning & development and leadership, and author of Embodied Leadership: Je maskers afzetten en (bij) jezelf blijven (Dropping your masks and staying true to yourself). In her work, she connects insights from sociology and behavioral change with body-oriented work.
