Are We Really in Control? How Neuroscience Is Forcing Us to Rethink Responsibility in the Workplace
We live in a world that praises good decisions and punishes bad ones. In business, we're trained to reward personal accountability, celebrate decisive leadership, and measure performance as if it emerges from individual choice.
But what if the idea of personal choice itself is being overturned?
Recent neuroscience, especially the work of Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky, argues that free will may be an illusion. In his 2023 book Determined, Sapolsky makes a sweeping, data-rich case: our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors are entirely shaped by biology, environment, and past experience—all of which lie outside our conscious control.
And while the idea may feel unsettling, its implications for how we lead, manage, and evaluate others are impossible to ignore.
The Brain Decides Before You Do
Neuroscientific studies dating back to the 1980s (e.g., Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments) suggest that our brains initiate decisions before we become consciously aware of them. Sapolsky extends this idea further with decades of research into human and primate behavior, hormones, trauma, and brain chemistry.
The key idea: we don't choose to want what we want.
Whether it's a risky business move, a knee-jerk email reply, or the courage to speak up in a meeting—those behaviors stem from networks of prior conditioning, neurotransmitters, stress levels, and past reinforcement.
Challenging Centuries of Thought
This isn’t just a scientific disruption—it’s a philosophical one. Sapolsky’s view confronts long-standing traditions that have centered human life on moral responsibility, from ancient philosophers to modern legal systems.
Here’s a brief look at what’s at stake:
Stoic Philosophy: The Stoics, especially Epictetus, placed the human will (what he called Prohairesis) at the core of moral life. You may not control the world, but you control your choices—that’s what gives you dignity.
Aristotle believed that rational deliberation distinguished humans from animals, and that virtue comes from habit and reasoned choice—but he also saw the limits of blame if ignorance or compulsion were involved.
Thomas Aquinas, merging Christian theology with Aristotelian logic, argued that free will was necessary for moral and spiritual life. Without it, virtue, sin, and salvation fall apart.
Religious traditions around the world have wrestled with the tension between divine will and human agency:
In Christianity, the tension between grace and free will remains a core theological debate.
Judaism embraces choice (bechirah chofshit) but also the shaping hand of divine providence.
In Islam, scholars differ on how to reconcile qadar (divine decree) with human accountability.
Hinduism explores agency through karma, where action is shaped by past lives, yet the self (atman) can rise through wisdom and detachment.
Buddhism complicates the very notion of self—suggesting that the "chooser" is just a temporary collection of causes and conditions, with no permanent agent to exercise free will.
Sapolsky's view doesn’t just challenge our personal self-image—it disrupts the moral frameworks that hold families, companies, and entire societies together.
What This Means for the Workplace
So, what do we do with this?
It doesn’t mean we throw away accountability—but it reframes how we think about it. If our behaviors are shaped by systems and histories, not isolated choices, then responsibility becomes less about punishment and more about design.
In practice, this could mean:
Performance management that takes context seriously—not just KPIs but workload, stress, social dynamics, and psychological safety.
Leadership development that shifts from charisma to compassion—understanding that influence means shaping environments, not just making decisions.
Talent strategy that evaluates not just past outcomes (which are privilege- and context-dependent) but potential and adaptability.
Rather than clinging to the idea of pure personal responsibility, we could lean into a more systemic, evidence-based approach: one that helps people become who they are capable of being, not just who they’ve been.
Compassion Is Not Weakness—It’s a Smarter Strategy
Sapolsky’s point is not that we should stop caring—it’s that we should care differently. If free will is an illusion, then cruelty and blame are unnecessary, and empathy and support become more rational than ever.
Compassion doesn’t mean letting people off the hook. It means understanding what shaped their behavior, and how we can help shape it differently next time.
In a world of teams, deadlines, and human complexity, compassion isn't idealism—it’s competitive advantage.
Further Reading & Exploration
Here are some starting points across science, philosophy, and world traditions to explore this tension between neuroscience, free will, and moral responsibility:
Neuroscience & Free Will
Benjamin Libet –
Experiments on neural readiness potential (1985). Behavior and Brain Sciences.
Experiments on subjective experience (1989). Behavior and Brain Sciences.
Consideration of subjective experience and unconscious mental functions (1993). Neurophysiology of Consciousness.
Patrick Haggard –
Studies on conscious intention (2001). Journal of Consciousness Studies.
Studies on voluntary action and conscious awareness (2002). Nature.
Studies on intentional action, conscious experience and neural prediction (2003). Consciousness and Cognition.
Studies on Awareness of Action, inference and prediction (2008). Consciousness and Cognition.
Sam Harris – Free Will (2012). Continuum Companion to Hume.
Philosophy
Immanuel Kant – Critique of Practical Reason (free will as a postulate of moral law). Amazon. Wikipedia.
Religious & Cultural Perspectives
Buddhist –
The Milindapanha, a.k.a. The Questions of King Milinda (on not-self and causality). Amazon. Wikipedia.
Final Thought: Rethinking Ownership
The workplace of the future will require more than skills or strategy—it will require a new kind of wisdom. Not the wisdom of the “self-made” leader, but the wisdom to recognize that people are shaped by forces they don’t control—and the responsibility to shape those forces with care.
Maybe we don’t always choose who we are.
But we can choose how we build the systems that shape each other.
Want to be part of the (r)evolution?
I am putting the finishing touches on the first draft of a book with a friend and colleague Andrew Lopianowski on the concept, which we are calling HumanCorps. If you’d like to learn more about the book, or perhaps have some amazing stories of people who are putting these efforts in motion to be the change we need, please drop me a line.