Do you thrive on the buzz at work, or do you grimace at the mere thought of phones ringing or colleagues shouting at each other across the office floor?
According to Cape Town-based Dr Annemarie Lombard, CEO of Sensory Intelligence Consulting, our sensory thresholds play a crucial role in our perception of the world.
Understanding whether you have a high or low threshold for different senses can have a considerable impact on both your personal and working life.
“Sensory intelligence has a major role to play because the world is so technology orientated, overloaded and disengaged,” she says.
Lombard explains the brain has three levels that work in conjunction with one another. The top level is the cortex of the brain and the IQ center, where thinking, learning and reasoning take place. The middle section is the stronghold of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). The lower brain level, often referred to as the primitive brain, is the sensory intelligence area of the brain and the gateway for all information. This information is filtered and creates triggers for the two top parts.
“Sensory intelligence is the understanding and insight on how your lower brain triggers actions and responses in order for people to make adaptations and better choices. If we can understand and control the brain at this level, we can use the senses to influence cortical thinking and working of the higher brain structures,” says Lombard.
With a PhD in Health Sciences and 24 years of national and international clinical experience as an occupational therapist, Lombard says sensory intelligence thresholds have a direct impact on our behaviors, habits, relationships and choices.
“A low threshold to a sense means the body recognizes it quickly, over-responds and tends to go into over stimulation, while a high threshold means the body takes longer to create the firing pattern, under-responds and is often under-stimulated,” she says.
While typically each individual will have a different threshold for each sense, Lombard says that more often groupings occur, with people often having low thresholds across various senses resulting in a generalized low threshold sensory profile and vice-versa.
“While we see fluctuations across various systems, low threshold people typically will be fussy eaters, dislike certain tastes and textures. They will go to the same restaurant and may have particular daily rituals. They can be change aversive, hate surprises and prefer to mingle in small groups. They can be seen as fussy and controlling, but are in fact continuously working hard to ‘protect’ themselves from over stimulation. They have a tendency to say no as they need to think and process more,” says Lombard.
On the flip side, high threshold people love going to a new restaurants, drive change and surprises. They are often sociable and enjoy being in a large group, are often daring and say yes very quickly.
Lombard says sensory thresholds drive the brain to naturally avoid what feels wrong and seeks out what feels right. She adds that companies taking sensory processing into consideration when planning an office environment can boost productivity and cohesion.
For example, a person with a low threshold for sound will do better in a quiet corner of the office, with the phone volume turned down, whereas a person with a high threshold for sound will do well in the busiest part of the office.
“Our sensory behaviors drive a huge amount of our working habits. It is critical to understand and manage engagement and collaboration in open plan office environments. People get irritable, distracted and fight because they don’t understand the underlying triggers, which 80 percent of the time have a sensory root,” says Lombard.
Understanding your thresholds also allows you to put strategies in place to reduce distractions in order to improve concentration and focus, and reduce stress.
“Know what to avoid, anticipate what you cannot change and plan accordingly. You can also self-regulate by using high threshold drivers which help to reduce sensory overload,” says Lombard, who has trademarked her company name.
Many occupational therapists work with sensory processing as a therapy, particularly with children. But Lombard says her focus has been to see how sensory intelligence can be of use to every person and to the business environment.
And according to Queen Ramotsehoa, Founder of the Tsheto Leadership and Coaching Academy in Johannesburg, understanding her sensory profile created a new path to self-awareness.
“I find the layers available for leaders in terms of knowing themselves and their team members go deeper than a lot of people recognize. One of the characteristics of both leaders and employees alike is the intake of stimuli through their senses. I know a lot of people battle in open plan offices, including the arrangement and even color of the furniture,” says Ramotsehoa.
Having had her profile done in 2012, she says: “I learned a cluttered and noisy environment makes me miserable. I realised self-awareness immediately empowered me to manage myself, especially when under pressure, firstly by understanding where the irritation comes from and what to do to ensure I don’t end up snapping and upsetting people around me. For maximum performance, leaders need to take sensory profiles into account when they create space for themselves and for others.”

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How To Manage Your Sensory Threshold

Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
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“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.
Before it scraped the skies it had to pay a $4 road toll. The plane that can fly 500 kilometers an hour also caused a traffic jam for Sunday churchgoers as it trundled 40 kilometers from the factory along the N1 highway to the airfield. Amid all the confusion, it also needed a traffic permit and a police escort.
“The person in the toll gate didn’t know what to charge us. We were larger than a car, but the plane only had three wheels. In the end she let us decide. So we paid the maximum [$4] considering we had stopped the entire highway,” says Paul Potgieter Junior, Program Manager of ARHLAC Holdings, which worked with Paramount Group in designing and building the multi-purpose military aircraft.
“We brought Pretoria to its knees on Sunday church time,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, Executive Chairman of Paramount Group, at the post
flight briefing.
Nearly three months later, on a chilly August morning the advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), worth $9 million, soared into the skies on its first public flight.
“This is without doubt a truly historic moment in the South African aerospace and aviation industry. What we have witnessed today has relevance for the whole country and the continent. It marks the rebirth of a dormant industry that has been devoid of innovation for years… this project proves we can build things in Africa and the world is noticing,” says Ichikowitz after the plane lands.
It took four years for 60 engineers and technicians, all African, working 315,000 hours, to do what many thought was crazy.
The ARHLAC can do four jobs in one, cutting costs. It can be fitted for combat, disaster management, intelligence gathering and surveillance within 4 hours.
Along with features like a pusher prop, which allows for unobstructed views in the cockpit, the plane can also carry an 800-kilogram payload; enough for a fighting wild fires from the air. It comes with rugged landing gear for harsh terrain.
“While it’s a terrific feat of South African engineering and a wonderful achievement to have designed, built and flown a new aircraft type, until the details of the proven flight envelope, its handling characteristics, range, payload and endurance are published, it is impossible for anyone to give an independent view of the aircraft,” says Linden Birns, MD of Plane Talking.
Potential customers will also want to know the costs of service plans, its spare parts and its lifespan, an issue all new planes face, says Birns.
“This was the challenge that faced Denel in 1994/95 when it tried to sell Rooivalk to Malaysia and other nations &#8211; the new South Africa had just been born and there was uncertainty about Denel’s future and that it might not be around to support the helicopter in the long term.”
In the near future, Paramount plans to make 30 planes a year. That will amount to a lot of toll fees.

Is It A Car? Is It A Plane?

A couple of weeks ago I went on a real vacation. I didn’t bring my computer, I shut off my phone. The only time I even thought about work was when my mind wondered to topics of long term strategy. I didn’t worry about the day-to-day operations at my company even once. Why? I did not need to. I had a strong and capable team that kept everything moving forward in my absence.
Early in my corporate career, a manager leaving on vacation said to me, “Unless my house is burning down, don’t contact me.”
I was shocked by his brazen disinterest in work while he vacationed. “This guy is not going to last long,” I thought. Instead, it was one of the best leadership lessons I ever received. He had a chance to take a well-needed break. His team members had a chance to stretch their leadership, develop confidence, and grow. His actions were signs of an effective leader. But most leaders balk at the idea that a manager-level employee would even think of telling others that they will not be available during their vacation.
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<h4>Surviving vacation</h4>
In his Forbes article Take A Serious Vacation: A CEO’s Advice To All CEOs, Jim Moffatt, the chairman and chief executive of Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “If your business can’t survive your vacation, you’ve got a bigger problem.” He suggests that leaders and managers treat their vacations as a “test” – not just of the leader’s ability to take a break, but of what happens to the organization when they are absent for an extended period of time.
However, the inability to take a vacation isn’t limited to the corner office. A recent study by Kelton Research commissioned by the Radisson hotel chain indicates that nearly half of the total American workforce doesn’t use all of their allotted vacation days. From my experience leading HR functions at mid to large sized companies, I can confirm that the core offenders are managers and leaders. And when asked why this group of hard working professionals left vacation days on the table, most sighted their fear of losing momentum or missing quarterly or annual objectives. In other words, they felt that things would fall apart as soon as they left.
Perhaps these managers and leaders are a product of a workforce that simply has too much on their plate. Kelton’s study did find that heavy workloads were one of the primary reasons workers decided not to take more time off. If this is the case, organizations must ask a critical question – who is taking a break from the day-to-day operations to think about the long-term strategy of the business?
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<h4>The problem with doers</h4>
If corporations don’t ask and answer this important question, they may very well find themselves with an organization full of doers and no leaders. While all companies certainly need both, employees need to be able to recognize and respect the difference. An organization full of doers is simply not going to last.
The story of Edwin H. Land and Polaroid is a glaring example of the fate of an organization of doers, brilliant as they may be. As Polaroid grew, Land had teams of people working in shifts at his side. As one team wore out, the next team rotated in to continue the work. Land was at the core of everything at Polaroid and was even accused of wearing the same clothing for eighteen consecutive days because he refused to take a break. Subsequently, his successors mismanaged the company and the once-great organization headed into a downward spiral. In his 2012 book Instant: The Story of Polaroid, Christopher Bonanos tells the story of Polaroid’s competitor Kodak referring to Land’s company as “He” instead of Polaroid. In October 2001, Polaroid declared bankruptcy.
I have worked for both doers and leaders. Despite the hours doers work, I always learned more from the leaders. One of the best leaders I worked for told me that as an HR executive I should be sitting in the lobby greeting employees and reading the paper. This is a bit extreme, but what he was saying is that I needed to spend my time thinking about the big picture – our people strategy to drive our business forward. I shouldn’t be down in the weeds chasing up performance reviews, reviewing improvement plans, or attending every vendor meeting. He encouraged me to build a strong team to do that work.
The other problem with doers is that they frequently don’t lead by example. It is disingenuous when a leader tells me to stop working and take a vacation or recover from an illness, but a week later they show up to work coughing and sneezing. Some doers will boast about not having taken a proper vacation in 10 years. Working for these leaders, I never felt I was allowed to fully unplug despite their encouragement to do so. As with all aspects of effective leadership, walking the talk is the only way to create lasting change.
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<h4>Making yourself redundant</h4>
A leader is not doing their followers, boss, or organization any favors by building a team that can’t function without them. They have a duty of care to teach their followers to fish instead of fishing for them. At day’s end, the true test of effective leadership manifests itself when a leader is absent.
The one thing that all effective leaders do is make themselves redundant so they can move on to even greater challenges and help more people – knowing that the team they built will flourish and carry on the mission. All my personal success as a leader has been a result of living this principle. The only boasting I do is about taking all my vacation each year. I encourage you to do
the same.
As a leader or manager, here are three simple questions you should ask of yourself daily to ensure you are practicing effective leadership and building sustainable teams and organizations:
<ol>
<li>Can I go on vacation without my computer and phone?</li>
<li>If I get sick, can I focus on getting better without working or being in contact?</li>
<li>If I quit today, would my team/organization continue to be successful and grow with minimal disruption?</li>
</ol>
If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all the above questions, you need to either build a new team, develop the one you have, start trusting your people to work on their own making it okay to fail and learn from mistakes, or move into a role that does not require people management.

Tag: Intelligence

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How To Manage Your Sensory Threshold

Is It A Car? Is It A Plane?

Make Yourself Redundant: