Oh, that's my brain!
The best thing about learning something new is recognizing it in action. Here's what I mean: this week, I worked from a different office than the one I usually visit—and the foe vibes were strong!
Foe vibes: lack of hellos, sideways glances, intentional ignoring of your presence, general avoidance ...
I work for the same company as these people! They are not foes! Foe vibes should not be present. Especially unintentional foe vibes. In fact, I saw many of these people interacting with each other with smiles. No foe vibes there. But that's their brains.
Just as our brains classify a situation as potentially threatening or rewarding, they do the same with the people around us: subconsciously determining if a person is friend ... or a foe ... and people who are unfamiliar tend to be automatically labeled foes.
Automatic friend/foe classification was once helpful—and to an extent, remains so in selected situations today—but it also can get in the way of establishing the relationships that can help us be effective at work.
Relatedness, the R in Dr. David Rock's brain-aware SCARF framework, is our primary need to feel safely connected to others. And just like with threats in the other elements of SCARF, when a relatedness threat is activated, our brains divert cognitive resources to the limbic system's threat response. "In the absence of positive social cues," writes Dr. Rock, "It's easy for people to fall back into the more common mode of human interactions: distrusting others. In this brain state, with the limbic system overly activated, a joke becomes a slight, a slight becomes an attack, and an attack becomes a battle."
On the other hand, when we experience relatedness, or connection, we're rewarded: we think better, collaborate more effectively, and are better at reframing threat situations. On top of that, in my experience, work is just better when you enjoy the people you're doing it with.
There are reasons for this. To understand why this automatic classification system has such a powerful grip on our lives, we need to start with how central other people are to your brain's basic functioning.
Your Brain Is Obsessed with Other People
Here's a startling discovery from UCLA social psychologist Matthew Lieberman: The vast majority of processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest involve thinking about other people and yourself—Lieberman's research suggests around four out of five of these default mental activities are social. That's the brain's default, constantly running social calculations even when you're not consciously aware of it.
Social connection uses the same brain networks as basic survival. Being ostracized activates the same pain responses as being physically hungry. Your brain can't tell the difference between social rejection and a survival threat, which explains why that cold reception in the unfamiliar office made me feel … uncomfortable.
There's an evolutionary logic here: as humans develop, we receive all of our resources not from the world directly, but from other people. This dependency leads to sophisticated neural networks throughout your brain being devoted to the social world, with specialized circuits constantly trying to figure out who's safe, who's dangerous, who's an ally, and who might leave you out in the cold.
For most of human history, being cast out from the group was essentially a death sentence, so our brains evolved to be especially sensitive to social cues and potential rejection.
One of the most important mechanisms your brain uses to navigate this social world are mirror neurons. Here's how they work in a scenario you may have experienced.
The Bad Attitude Boss
Picture this: your boss walks into the Monday morning meeting with a scowl, slumped shoulders, and an unmistakable "The meeting right before this one was not good" energy. The entire room feels different. Conversations slow to a trickle, people avoid eye contact, and everyone seems a little more tense.
That's mirror neurons at work.
Mirror neurons are specialized brain cells that light up both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform the same intentional action. If you see someone pick up a piece of fruit to eat, the same neurons that would fire when you eat fruit yourself become active in your brain. These neurons respond most strongly to actions with clear intent behind them, rather than random movements. Your brain is constantly working to understand what other people are planning to do and how they're feeling about it.
Your mirror neurons activate the same motor patterns in your own face when your boss shows up with that bad attitude. You might not realize it, but you're subtly mimicking their expression, and that physical mimicking gets transmitted to your emotional centers. Before you know it, you're feeling some version of their bad mood. Then that version of bad mood spreads to your colleagues. This emotional contagion happens unconsciously and spreads fastest from people we pay the most attention to—which explains why the boss's emotional state has such an outsized impact on the entire team.
The contagion works in reverse, too. When that same boss walks in with genuine enthusiasm and energy, mirror neurons create an upward spiral. You see them smile, your brain starts to mimic the smile, you actually smile, the vibe in the room spirals upward, and the feedback loop continues. Each person raises the depth of the other's positive emotion through this automatic mirroring function.
This mirroring works best face-to-face, which creates challenges for Zoom-dependent teams. Video calls provide some visual cues but miss subtle facial expressions and body language. Phone calls limit mirroring to vocal tone and energy. Email? Slack? Almost no mirroring happens at all, making it much easier for people to misread intent.
The mirror neuron research reveals how connection happens, but it also highlights why modern workplaces can feel socially challenging.
Why Your Workplace Can Exude Stranger Danger
Relatedness, or the lack thereof, explains why certain workplace situations occur and consistently trigger our threat responses.
"Silos" have long been a workplace bogeyman … they're also human nature. As Dr. Rock notes, "People naturally tend to form safe tribes with close colleagues and work well within these, and avoid people they don't know well." Your brain treats collaboration with unfamiliar people as an actual threat.
Here's how this plays out: imagine you're invited to another team's weekly meeting to discuss a project. Even before you walk in, your threat response is quietly activating. You don't know their meeting patterns, their inside jokes, or their unspoken dynamics. Your brain interprets this uncertainty as potential danger. You can feel it when you're in the meeting.
This explains why certain workplace situations consistently trigger our threat responses: first day at a new job, attending networking events, and performance reviews where the power dynamic shifts a familiar relationship. Our feelings are normal and expected—they're biological responses that once kept our ancient ancestors alive by being suspicious of outsiders.
Once you understand what's happening neurologically, you can start working with your brain's natural instincts to improve relatedness.
How to Flip from Foe to Friend
Moving someone from "foe" to "friend" in your neural classification system can start happening in moments with a deliberate approach.
Simple Oxytocin Generators
The simplest connection triggers are quite basic, and they work because they directly trigger oxytocin release, the neurochemical that creates feelings of connection:
- A genuine handshake and learning someone's name
- Finding shared interests or common experiences
- Brief personal sharing—something authentic: how your day is going, what you're working on, an observation
These small interactions trigger the neurochemical shift that tells your brain "this person is safe."
Start with Shared Goals
When beginning any collaboration, explicit or not, find a shared goal:
- Spend the first few minutes discussing what you're both trying to achieve together
- Make the shared objective clear before diving into tactics or processes
- Dr Rock: "When you're collaborating with anyone, start with a shared goal, and everything after will be easier"
Remote Work Relationship Tips
Virtual connection requires more intentional effort since we're missing most of the visual and physical cues that naturally trigger relatedness:
- Use video strategically for relationship building (not every meeting, but when it matters)
- Create virtual shared experiences through structured personal check-ins, probably on video
- Include both task and relationship elements rather than diving straight into business
A Missed Opportunity (And What's Next)
My biggest reflection on the week that was: the missed opportunity it became. I walked into that unfamiliar office, felt the foe vibes, recognized what was happening ("Oh, that's just my brain!"), and then ... did nothing with that knowledge. I stayed in my default threat response instead of trying even one simple introduction.
Here's what I'm going in with next time: when your brain successfully classifies someone as a friend, something of a miracle occurs. You start processing their thoughts and ideas using similar neural circuits you use for your own thinking. As Dr. Rock notes, "When you feel safely connected to someone, hearing them speak is similar to thinking your own thoughts." Wild!
Relatedness redirects the cognitive resources that might otherwise be used for threat response. You become more creative, more open to their ideas, and better at building on their thinking rather than defending against it. It's quite the contrast. Because, when in "foe mode," you spend mental energy monitoring social dynamics instead of focusing on work. You dismiss ideas before evaluating their merit—not because they're bad ideas, but because they came from someone your brain tagged as "not safe." Cold and distant behavior from colleagues you haven't yet met? They're likely experiencing the same threat response you are. Those awkward first moments? Everyone's brain defaulting to caution.
As Dr. Rock and abundant research shows, "We simply perform better when we have positive relatedness with others." (Beyond work, relatedness is critical for our health: studies link strong social connections to longer lifespan, better immune function, and reduced risk of depression and anxiety.)
And—all things equal, meaning there hasn't been a relatedness rift in the relationship—improving relatedness is not difficult. An introduction. A handshake. Sharing something personal. It often just requires overcoming social discomfort. Discomfort that is explained by natural human behavior. So the next time you feel those foe vibes, you'll know exactly what's happening—and what to do about it.
