Bernadette BoasExecutive Leadership Coach, Trainer and Speaker, Ball of Fire Coaching · Become the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow and No One Can Overlook.

Unlock Serotonin: The Neuroscience of Recognition and Impact

17 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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2:19

In this segment, two speakers discuss how conventional leader praise often falls short because neuroscience shows that people need visible acknowledgment of their specific contributions to trigger serotonin-driven motivation. They highlight a common oversight: reports and public recognitions usually list only the leader or a few top contributors, neglecting the many individuals who actually made an impact. By explicitly naming each contributor and describing the precise value they added—e.g., “Bernadette Boas thought of this, Richard contributed that”—leaders can significantly boost morale. A real‑world example is shared where a client began a meeting by spotlighting individual wins, which visibly lifted the team’s engagement. The speakers also note that when this recognition infrastructure is built, its effects can be measured both subjectively (feelings of impact) and objectively (documented outcomes), allowing validation of the approach.

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Most leaders think, you know, if I'm giving somebody praise, that's good enough. But the neuroscience actually says that people need the visibility of what they did mattering. And so the pattern that we're seeing, and this is something that I would say is like a really quick fix, but think of all of the people that contribute to a report. How many names are actually on that report? Usually it's like the leader's name, or maybe it's like their direct contributor. Maybe it's a team of 3. You rarely see all of the people that made an impact. And you rarely hear leaders say, we got to this point because Bernadette Boas thought of this. And Richard contributed that. And that piece of just being able to name and say key specific elements. Yeah, those pieces matter more than just that, hey, Bernadette, great job.
No, it's true. I was at a client yesterday. I'm going to throw this out real quick. Client yesterday, he was presenting to his team, setting up goals and expectations for the year. And he started off with wins. And he started off with highlighting specific individuals and the contribution and the value that they, that they brought to the team. And yet they all of a sudden would just like, you see a smile, you'd see them sit up, you'd see them like, just look around to see if other people are, are kind of giving them a Good job. It was beautiful, I'll call it. Yeah, because it definitely showed that not only the recognition, to your point, but also he discussed the impact and the contribution that they made. Absolutely.
So we know that it's— we know that when we build this infrastructure, we know that we can change the results. And because we're able to measure it, we also can not only validate what's happening within the experience, the feeling, but we're actually seeing it on paper too.