Executive Summary
Your brain’s primary job is survival, not collaboration—which means threat detection often wins over clear thinking when teams form. Hilary Scarlett, author of Neuroscience for Organizational Change, shares how to design teams and projects that quiet the alarm bells and unlock focus, trust, and creativity.
Core insights:
- The SPACES model identifies six factors that enable high performance: self-esteem, purpose, autonomy, certainty, equity, and social connection
- Threat responses kick in faster than reward responses, impairing our ability to think and collaborate
- Clear boundaries and structure reduce anxiety—like a playground fence that invites exploration
- In-person kickoffs create interbrain synchronisation that accelerates trust and shared understanding
- Psychological safety isn’t about being nice—it’s about welcoming candid questions and surfacing mistakes early
- Autonomy and co-creation (the IKEA effect) create ownership that sustains effort when work gets hard
- Three immediate actions: listen deeply when certainty is scarce, revive confidence by recalling past wins, and reduce stress with shared laughter
Your Brain Wants to Help You Collaborate, But Survival Comes First
When that email arrives inviting you to Project Magma, your brain doesn’t think “wonderful opportunity”—it thinks “threat assessment required.”
Hilary Scarlett explains that our brains still operate with two-million-year-old programming where survival trumps everything. When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, the prefrontal cortex—where we do our best thinking—gets deprioritised. We literally can’t think as clearly or collaborate as effectively.
For leaders building teams, this creates a crucial insight: before diving into deliverables, you need to create conditions where brains can move from threat mode to reward mode. That’s where the SPACES model comes in.
The SPACES Model: Six Levers That Shift Performance
Hilary’s SPACES framework provides a practical planning tool: self-esteem, purpose, autonomy, certainty, equity, and social connection. “If we’ve got them, we can focus, we can perform, we can be more creative, we can collaborate better. But if we haven’t got them, our brains go into a negative place.”
Certainty: Boundaries That Enable Exploration
Uncertainty triggers threat responses. Even small acts of structure—agendas, clear timelines, defined decision rights—reduce anxiety. Hilary uses a compelling metaphor: with a low playground fence, children stay cautious. With a high fence, they explore freely. Clear boundaries don’t constrain creativity; they enable it.
Purpose: Connecting Work to Meaning
Purpose operates at multiple levels: organizational mission, project contribution, and personal meaning. When purpose is clear, work matters. When it’s absent, work becomes transactional. In change initiatives particularly, people need to understand not just what is changing, but why it matters.
Autonomy: The IKEA Effect
Autonomy doesn’t mean isolation—it means having voice in how work gets done. “It’s about choice. Even if I can’t choose what to do, if I can have a little bit of autonomy or choice in how I do it, that’s really valuable.” This connects to the IKEA effect: we value things more when we’ve co-created them. Ownership keeps people going when work gets hard.
Social Connection: Building Tribe
Humans are tribal. When teams form, brains ask: “Do I belong? Do I like these people? Do I feel competent?” In-person gatherings create “interbrain synchronisation”—brains literally align their patterns. For distributed teams, Hilary recommends in-person kickoffs when possible, then sustaining connection through rituals and creating space for informal conversation. “Having a good laugh with the team—laughter is a great de-stressor to the brain.”
Social connection also requires psychological safety—not being overly nice, but creating space where people can ask candid questions and surface concerns early. Hilary references aviation’s transformation: hierarchical crews wouldn’t challenge captains, and crashes happened. “The airline industry realised they’ve got to change their culture. So they changed the language, the norms, the reporting, and it really changed outcomes.”
Self-Esteem: Recognition That Rewires
“We tend to focus on things we haven’t got done because the threat state is strong in the brain.” Leaders must deliberately counterbalance this negativity bias by helping people acknowledge what they’ve achieved and learnt. When people feel out of their depth, Hilary suggests asking them to recall a time when they performed well: “From a brain point of view, talking about a time when I was performing well is like my brain is back there again.”
Equity: Fairness and Voice
Equity addresses the fundamental need for fair play, particularly acute during change when resources and opportunities get redistributed. This means transparency, clear criteria, and ensuring everyone’s voice gets heard. For neurodivergent team members particularly, this might mean providing time to reflect and asynchronous input mechanisms so quieter insights aren’t lost.
Why This Matters Now: AI Makes Human Collaboration Your Edge
As organizations rush to adopt AI, understanding human collaboration becomes more critical, not less. AI can process data and generate options, but creativity, curiosity, and collaboration remain distinctly human capabilities.
When teams are stressed or uncertain, their brains can’t access these capabilities. The SPACES model provides a practical checklist: Am I providing certainty where possible? Have I articulated purpose? Are people co-creating solutions? Do team members feel connected? Am I recognizing progress? Is the process fair?
These aren’t soft factors to address after the technical work—they’re the conditions that determine whether the technical work succeeds.
Three Actions You Can Use Immediately
Hilary distills her advice into three practical steps leaders can take today:
Listen deeply when certainty is scarce. “If you can do nothing else, just be a good listener, even if you haven’t got the answers, because listening is rewarding to the brain.” When everything feels uncertain, being genuinely heard reduces threat.
Revive confidence by recalling past wins. When someone struggles or doubts their capability, ask them to tell you about a time they performed well. The brain responds as if it’s back in that successful moment, restoring confidence.
Reduce stress with shared laughter. “Laughter is a great de-stressor to the brain. So having a bit of fun when you get together, eating that meal and having a laugh together could be a really good way to get the brains, the team’s brains, into a good place.”
Small things make a big difference to our brains. The SPACES model isn’t about grand gestures—it’s about consistently creating conditions where brains can do their best work.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Hilary Scarlett and Mark Blackwell explore neuroscience, collaboration, and the SPACES model in depth, including practical guidance for building psychological safety, supporting neurodivergent team members, and creating sustainable high performance.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-WF_EmLXG_w
Listen on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012667/episodes/18069231
About the Speakers
Hilary Scarlett is author of Neuroscience for Organizational Change (now in its third edition) and founder of Scarlett & Grey. She brings neuroscience research from the laboratory into practical workplace applications, helping leaders navigate change with greater understanding of how our brains work.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilaryscarlett/
Website: https://www.scarlettandgrey.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Organizational-Change-Evidence-based-Practical-ebook/dp/B0DK822VW1
Mark Blackwell is founder of Arkaro, specialising in change management, innovation, and commercial excellence for the agriculture, food, and chemicals industries. Arkaro’s collaborative “do it with you” approach works closely with clients through a four-step process: Understand, Co-create, Enable, Sustain. We don’t just coach—we get on the pitch with you.
Build Teams That Thrive on Complexity, Not Despite It
Your next project team will succeed or struggle based largely on invisible factors: whether brains perceive threat or reward, whether people feel they belong, whether purpose is clear, whether autonomy creates ownership.
The industrial playbook treated organizations like machines and people like interchangeable parts. But in a world where volatility is rising and AI amplifies both excellence and bottlenecks, your competitive advantage lies in creating conditions where human brains can sense, adapt, create, and collaborate.
Are your transformation efforts stumbling on the human factors?
Whether you’re building cross-functional teams, leading through organizational change, or preparing for AI adoption, understanding how brains actually work isn’t optional—it’s the difference between sustainable success and another abandoned initiative.
At Arkaro, we don’t just share neuroscience insights—we help you apply them. Our collaborative “do it with you” approach builds the capability within your teams to create environments where the SPACES factors enable focus, creativity, and high performance.
If your teams are struggling with collaboration challenges, change resistance, or performance plateaus despite having smart people and good processes, let’s discuss how neuroscience-informed change management can unlock the potential that’s already there.
Contact Mark Blackwell: mark@arkaro.com
Connect on LinkedIn: Mark Blackwell
We work with organizations in agriculture, food, and chemicals to turn change initiatives from slide decks into sustainable capabilities. We don’t just coach—we get on the pitch with you.
Related Reading from Arkaro
On Neuroscience, Collaboration & Change Management:
AI Implementation Failure: Why 95% Fail & How to Fix It – Deep dive into the SPACES model and why AI projects fail on human factors, not technology
Transforming Change Resistance: 4-Step Collaborative Approach – How to transform resistance from obstacle to valuable feedback using the Arkaro approach
Why ADKAR and the Arkaro Approach Are Essential Partners – Collaborative change management that addresses both technical and cultural dimensions
Arkaro’s Approach to Culture During Change Initiatives – Building change roadmaps that incorporate cultural and behavioural considerations
On Adaptive Organizations & Strategy:
Why Traditional Management Fails and How Adaptive Organizations Succeed – Moving from control to flow in complex systems through trust and collaboration
Strategy is an Adaptive Challenge not a Technical Problem – Why expert-driven approaches fail and collaborative solutions succeed
Strategy Implementation Crisis: When Plans Fail in VUCA – Rules-based strategy frameworks that enable adaptation in uncertain environments
On Strategy Execution:
Make Strategy Work: The Power of Integrated Business Planning – Moving strategy from slides to sustainable execution through collaboration
Strategy in a VUCA World: Emergent Approach Guide – Adaptive approaches for volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environments
Exposing Bottlenecks: The Key to Building a Great Strategy – Root cause analysis and Einstein’s problem-solving approach
External Resources & Further Reading
Scarlett & Grey – Hilary Scarlett’s neuroscience consultancy
Neuroscience for Organizational Change (Third Edition) – Hilary Scarlett’s comprehensive guide
NeuroLeadership Institute – Research on brain science and leadership
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