CSChristoffel SneijdersThree brains: head, heart and gut for decisions you keep deferring

How to have a true connection on Zoom or teams?

1 Mar 2021 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:33

In this talk Christoffel Sneijders explores why genuine connection feels natural in physical meetings but is challenging in virtual settings. He explains the physiological underpinnings—oxytocin release and mirror‑neuron activation—that foster heart‑based bonding when people are face‑to‑face. He then offers two concrete strategies for replicating that effect on Zoom or Teams. First, he recommends switching from gallery view to speaker view so participants focus on a single face, which re‑engages mirror neurons and stimulates oxytocin. Second, he introduces a three‑sentence communication pattern that addresses the "head," "heart," and "gut" brains: a welcoming statement (head), an expression of gratitude (heart), and a promise of enthusiasm, passion, and love (gut). These steps aim to boost participants’ sense of focus, connection, and safety, measured by the simple self‑assessment questions he poses at the start.

Chapters

How much focused are you now? How much do you feel connected with the group? And how's your feeling of safety in this group? And what you can see while you see the numbers coming in, this is a total normal score. The most important thing for making a connection is actually making a heart connection. A heart connection when you are in physical space with somebody is rather easy because your heart will send out oxytocin into your blood flow, the love hormone that helps you to connect with other people. Also, your mirror neurons will start acting out. Why it's so hard to do here, but we don't feel it. So what's the best way actually, as you look in 3 brains, to do it is when you go to Zoom, you probably will see in the right corner the view. And you can do a gallery view or speaker view. And if I now do the gallery view, I see now 20, 30 beautiful women and men looking at me, and it's really hard to connect. The moment you put them on speaker view, you only see one person. And what is already researched, that actually then our mirror neurons we have will start acting out, and the heart can actually already start excreting oxytocin while we feel a better connection with people. The other thing that really helps is also to make a real connection with people in your words if you like to talk about your heart brain. How do you do that? Now maybe you saw what I put in the chat. Okay, I said, I really welcome you all, I'm really grateful to meet you all, and I will send you the next hour or 56 minutes all my passion, enthusiasm, and To give the best to you. Because the first sentence, I welcome you, is actually saying to somebody, I see you. Head-brain connection. I'm really grateful to meet you is actually heart-brain sentence, okay? Because I'm really grateful to meet you. In the third sentence, I said, I will send you all my enthusiasm, passion, and love to give the best to you. That creates a lot of safety Because you know it's all about you, and that's actually a gut brain sentence. So if you think about tips how you can— those 3 brains already do better work on Zoom things— ask people to put them on speaker view and just make those 3 sentences, head, heart, and gut, there.