When I first moved to Colorado, my friend Matt made a valiant effort to transform me into an outdoorsy type. Those efforts came to a conclusion the day I brought a camping chair and a Hemingway novel to a fly fishing outing.
What I remember most from his various fishing, hiking, and skiing lessons was the bear safety briefing for what to do in an inopportunistic encounter: "If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down."
Why do we need such simple rhymes for dangerous situations? Because when you encounter a bear in the woods, your brain's emotional network—the limbic system—immediately takes over from your rational decision-making prefrontal cortex. This survival mechanism diverts energy away from complex thinking and toward an automatic response.
According to neuroscience research by Dr. David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your Brain at Work, our brains react to social threats at work in exactly the same way they respond to physical threats in the wild. The parts of your brain that light up when someone dismisses your idea in a meeting are the same ones that activate when you face physical danger.
The SCARF Model: Identifying Workplace Bears
Dr. Rock categorizes these workplace social threats into five domains in his SCARF model:
Status - Our sense of importance relative to others
- When threatened: Receiving criticism publicly, having ideas dismissed, being corrected in front of others
- When rewarded: Receiving recognition, earning promotion, getting positive feedback
Certainty - Our ability to predict the future
- When threatened: Unexpected changes, ambiguous direction, unclear expectations
- When rewarded: Clear timelines, transparent processes, predictable patterns
Autonomy - Our sense of control over our environment
- When threatened: Micromanagement, being told exactly what to do by a colleague, having no say in decisions impacting your work
- When rewarded: Freedom to choose how to accomplish tasks, setting your own schedule
Relatedness - Our sense of safety with and connection to others
- When threatened: First day on a new job, feeling excluded, working with people you don't trust
- When rewarded: Team bonding, feeling included, experiencing psychological safety
Fairness - Our perception of equitable treatment
- When threatened: Unequal pay, biased treatment, inconsistent rules
- When rewarded: Transparent decision-making, equitable distribution of team resources
Why This Matters for The Work We Do
Here's what happens during a social threat: Your brain experiences even minor SCARF threats as genuinely threatening as encountering a bear in the woods. When this occurs, your brain diverts resources away from your prefrontal cortex—the very part of your brain responsible for analysis, complex problem-solving, creative thinking, and balanced decision-making.
Even a seemingly small trigger—like a dismissive comment in a meeting—can significantly reduce your cognitive capacity. The very mental functions you rely on for creative and caring work become compromised precisely when you need them most.
In contrast, when you experience "toward" responses (rewards) in these domains, your brain releases dopamine and other neurochemicals that enhance prefrontal cortex function. This creates the ideal state for complex thinking, problem-solving, and caring for others.
Brain-Aware Responses
Since many limbic system responses happen automatically and below conscious awareness, developing "brain awareness" is crucial. Next time you feel that sudden emotional reaction at work, remember: you might be facing a workplace bear. Name it, tame it, and help your brain get back to what it does best.
In the moment
Notice your physical response - Before you can even name what's happening, your body signals a threat response. Look for physical cues like tension in your shoulders, a racing heart, shallow breathing, or a knot in your stomach. These sensations are your first indication that your limbic system is activating.
Label the response - Simply naming what's happening ("I'm feeling a threat response right now") helps reduce limbic activation by engaging your prefrontal cortex. This creates space between stimulus and response, allowing you to choose a more deliberate reaction.
Deploy regulation strategies - Use techniques like mindful breathing, taking a short walk, or writing down your thoughts to restore prefrontal cortex function. Even simple interventions like drinking water or changing your posture can help shift your brain state.
After the moment
Identify the trigger domain - Is it status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, or fairness? For example, recognizing "This is a status threat when my colleague interrupted me" gives you insight into what's happening.
Reappraise the situation - Consider alternative perspectives. If your boss questions your approach, instead of seeing it as micromanagement (autonomy threat), reframe it as an opportunity to clarify your thinking (status reward). This reframing requires separating your emotional response from the situation itself, allowing you to see potential benefits rather than just threats.
Shaping a Brain-Friendly Workplace Experience
But understanding your brain's response to SCARF threats doesn’t only have to be about managing reactions in the moment—it can be about deliberately creating the conditions where your prefrontal cortex can thrive despite ongoing SCARF threats at work and in the world.
Here's how to create a brain-friendly workplace experience when social threats are persistent:
Create a certainty practice: Establish a personal routine that your brain can count on. Start your day with a consistent ritual. Create standard templates for recurring work. Break your week into themed days. Your brain craves predictable patterns, and you can provide them even when work cannot.
Cultivate autonomy: In environments where control is limited, look for decisions you can own completely. This might be how you complete individual tasks that are part of collaborative work, or how you organize your day, or the approach you use to figure out how to start problem solving—such as breaking it into smaller pieces, sketching it visually, or thinking it through verbally. By noticing and exercising these choices, you provide your brain with essential autonomy experiences that help maintain cognitive function.
Design your environment for status rewards: Create ways to acknowledge your own progress and competence without relying on external validation. Celebrate personal wins. Set personal benchmarks that matter to you. Your brain responds to self-acknowledged status just as it does to recognition from others.
Establish fairness touchstones: When workplace fairness feels lacking, create personal standards that reflect your values. Define what "good work" means to you. Set boundaries around what you will and won't compromise on. By creating clarity about your own principles, you provide your brain with an internal fairness reference point based on what matters to you.
Create relatedness anchors: Identify specific relationships that provide psychological safety. This might be a trusted colleague, a mentor outside your organization, or even regular conversations with friends who understand your work challenges. These connections provide critical balance to your brain's social needs.
Among these, the most powerful strategy remains deliberate practice—regularly noticing when your brain shifts into threat response and using that awareness to activate your prefrontal cortex. Like learning any skill, your ability to recover from SCARF threats strengthens with practice.
Workplace bears can’t be eliminated. But they can be tamed. You can become skilled at noticing them and shifting back into your best brain-aware state—even in the most challenging environments.
You can't eliminate all workplace bears, but with practice, you can become a skilled tracker—spotting threats early and navigating back to your optimal thinking state even in challenging terrain.
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Looking for more? I've posted (often) about SCARF and being brain aware over here
