Neuro-Empowerment of Executive Functions in the Workplace: The Reason Why

Michela Balconi, Laura Angioletti, Davide Crivelli
2020 Frontiers in Psychology  
The successful achievement of pre-established working goals and the ability to respond appropriately to workplace demands depends both on efficient and flexible cognitive and social functioning. Previous research has proposed that executive functions (EFs) play an essential role in work performance, with successful professionals displaying better social, cognitive, and executive functioning (Bailey, 2007; Willoughby and Blair, 2016) . Therefore, the demand of assessment procedures and
more » ... t protocols dedicated to the EFs is growing rapidly. EFs are considered a family of top-down mental processes including inhibition (self-control and interference control), working memory, and cognitive flexibility (Miyake et al., 2000; Diamond, 2013 ). They are high-level cognitive functions that foster goal-directed behavior and are a pre-requisite for sustained focusing, regulation of attention resources and automatic responses, and rapid and flexible adjustment to the changeable requests of the environment (Miller and Cohen, 2001; Burgess and Simons, 2005) . These components sustain more complex cognitive functions-such as reasoning, planning, decision-making, creativity, and problem solving-which represent critical skills for professional success and optimal workplace performance. As posited by Diamond (2013), "EFs make it possible for us to mentally play with ideas, quickly and flexibly adapt to changed circumstances, take time to consider what to do next, resist temptations, stay focused, and meet novel, unanticipated challenges" (p. 155). In particular, according to an integrated EFs and self-regulation model (Hofmann et al., 2012), working memory capacity, behavioral inhibition, and flexibility act as the fertile ground for fostering active representation of multiple self-regulatory goals, adaptively switching and orienting cognitive resources toward individual goals while actively inhibiting distracters, suppressing maladaptive habits and mindless behavior, and regulating unwanted affective reactions and dysfunctional distress responses. The ability to self-regulate-together with the ability to reflexively become aware of own communication, relational, and affective schemata and to interpret others' mental states-is then deeply linked to EFs. Notably, it is today acknowledged that EFs might support social skills and emotion-regulation, which also play a crucial role for successful management of social dynamics, interpersonal relations, and adaptive stress-management (Cacioppo and Cacioppo, 2020) . Building on such premises, we suggest that they together subserve the development of a domain-independent repertoire of soft skills-such as adaptive management of the stress load, empathy (intended as the ability to interpret and understand others' intentions, desires, and affective states), interpersonal and communication efficacy, and leadership-and then deserve peculiar attention with implications for both assessment
doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01519 pmid:32848981 pmcid:PMC7411509 fatcat:a2dqrqwojvhjpd7dbxrvdyep6m