Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Caroline Webb for the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, check out other resources, learn more about the firm, obtain subscription information, and register to receive email alerts, please click here.

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Simple tweaks in communication and role-modeling based on the latest behavioral research can nudge employees into top form and create a more productive environment for everyone.

Once upon a time, saying “the soft stuff is the hard stuff” was a snappy challenge to business convention. Now, it’s a cliché. Everyone knows that it’s not easy to suddenly make your colleagues more creative, adaptable, or collaborative, however well-intentioned you may be.

But thanks to research on human behavior, we know what it takes for the average person’s brain to perform at its best, cognitively and emotionally—even under the pressures of the modern workplace. These new insights suggest that simple tweaks in leaders’ communication and behavior can potentially create a much more productive atmosphere for any team. In this article, I’ll describe three leaders who knew enough of this science to spark positive behavioral shifts in their organizations.

The two-system brain

Antony heads a successful technology consultancy that has grown rapidly since it was founded in 2011. Before starting the firm, he worked for a big agency with a toxic culture. “There was a sort of ‘cultural presenteeism’—you needed to look like you were always working.” At his new company, he wanted to forge a very different culture that would enable people to be both innovative and focused, collaborative and emotionally balanced. He and his two cofounders did all the usual things—hired carefully, developed an inspiring vision for the company, and designed an inviting workspace.

But Antony knew enough of the research on optimal brain function to see that more tangible measures were needed. In particular, he raised the issue of information overload and multitasking and how their team could avoid it. Antony knew that the brain’s activity is split across two complementary systems—one deliberate and controlled, the other automatic and instinctive. The deliberate system is responsible for sophisticated, conscious functions such as reasoning, self-control, and forward thinking. It can only do one thing at a time and tires remarkably quickly. The brain’s automatic system lightens this load by automating most of what we do from day to day, but as the brain’s deliberate system becomes more exhausted, the automatic system increasingly takes the reins, leaving us prone to make misleading generalizations and kneejerk responses.

That’s why multitasking is such a problem. We think we can parallel process, but each tiny switch from one conscious task to another—from email to reading to speaking on a conference call, for example—wastes a little of the deliberate system’s time and mental energy. And those switches cost us dearly. Research shows that people are less creative, more stressed, and make two to four times as many mistakes when they deal with interruptions and distractions.

Another way that the deliberate system’s limitations play out in the workplace is that decision-making quality drops the longer people go without a break. Classic cognitive biases like groupthink and confirmation bias take firmer hold, and we’re more prone to sloppy thinking in general. In one study, where hospital leaders were trying to encourage the use of hand sanitizer, they found that compliance rates fell when people worked long hours without a break.

But here’s the silver lining: If leaders can encourage people to go offline when doing their most important work, as well as taking more frequent breaks, they’ll see an uptick in productivity, innovation, and morale.

As Antony thought about how to do this, he knew that a common hurdle to taking breaks and avoiding multitasking was that people often feel they need to show their responsiveness to senior colleagues by being constantly available, whether on email, instant messaging, or in person. So he knew that his own behavior would be central to shifting norms in his organization. He decided to place a timer on his desk to signal that he was taking 25 or 45 minutes to go offline — something that also helped him focus his brain on the task at hand—and wore enormous noise-canceling headphones to amplify the message. And then, between deep working sessions, he would “bugger off for a walk,” as he puts it. The role modeling worked, he says. “It’s become a collective thing in the office now. And everyone’s decided that breaks are a legitimate use of time because we get so much more done afterward.”

Antony and his cofounders also created a “Monday meeting” for all of the staff to discuss how they were working together as a company. After some time, it surfaced that pressures were mounting, threatening to derail their commitment to focusing and recharging. “It was an emerging cultural behavior, and we wanted it to stop. So we set some rules, like ‘we encourage each other to have lunch’ and ‘we schedule breaks between meetings.’” Most important, he felt, was that “we as leaders had to take responsibility for our behavior and give out the right signals, use the right language, celebrate the right behaviors in others. So we cheered people for leaving the office to go for a run. Later, we adopted the phrase ‘leaving by example,’ encouraging people to use it instead of a mumbled, guilty excuse for taking a break.”

In the Monday meeting, the leaders took one further step to reduce cognitive overload, by asking everyone to name their two priorities for the week. Antony says “the ‘two priorities’ rule encourages people to be realistic and focused in their work. Sometimes you really have to force yourself to decide what really matters this week. But it always pays off.” They also use the meeting as an opportunity to highlight opportunities to redistribute work. “When it looks like someone has too much on, people are encouraged to offload rather than suffer in silence.” The result: great creativity and camaraderie, without a foosball table in sight.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article as well as to the videos that are included with it.

Caroline Webb is a senior adviser to McKinsey and an alumnus of the firm’s London office. This article is based on research in her new book, How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life (Crown Business, February 2016).