Adaptation is a key focus for many organizations, and the 2024 NeuroLeadership Summit: Evolve was designed to help leaders thrive through change. Drawing on the wisdom of some of today’s brightest business and thought leaders, Day 1 of Summit provided viewers with valuable strategies for navigating dynamic areas such as leadership development, DEI, and accountability.
Here are highlights from just a few of the incredible presentations that took place today:
SCARF® and Personality
Nearly 16 years ago, NLI launched The SCARF® Model, a tool that describes humans’ five most important psychological drivers: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Since then, thousands of individuals have taken the assessment and used the information to make interactions with others more rewarding and motivating.
NLI recently partnered with Andreas Lechner, Ph.D., a leadership coach, trainer, and consultant at Lechner-Insight, to explore connections between people’s most important SCARF® domains and their personality. SCARF® is a measure of values, or what people consider important, whereas personality describes how people think and behave. The purpose of the research was to uncover if a person’s SCARF® drivers (e.g., a high need for autonomy) correlate with their personality traits (such as extraversion), as measured by the Big Five Personality Test.
Interestingly, the research revealed that SCARF® and personality are mostly distinct. The exception? People who prefer structure and organization (known as orderliness) are more likely to value certainty. However, the overall independence of SCARF® importance on personality traits indicates that The SCARF® Model has broad applicability across diverse groups, so it’s a valuable tool to improve collaboration.
Accelerate Leadership
Today’s leaders face an exceptionally steep learning curve: 50% of today’s most important skills are totally new — for example, leveraging AI, managing burnout, and adapting to hybrid work. The other half of skills are more important than they used to be and also more difficult to get right, such as understanding, motivating, and developing employees.
In this session, we heard how four organizations achieved success in developing their leaders and the lessons they learned along the way. Kath Carmean, senior partner at The Aerospace Corporation, described how her organization of 4,300 people partnered with NLI to align their business and people strategies, anchoring on the three-legged stool of leadership: growth mindset, psychological safety, and accountability. “We wanted to make sure employees are as interested in how they accomplish the work as in what they accomplish,” Carmean said.
Julie Loosbrock, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, shared the positive changes that have occurred since all 3,100 employees at her organization completed NLI training. “Diversity and inclusion numbers have skyrocketed,” Loosbrock said. “Managers have improved the way they work with associates, such as providing meaningful feedback and clearly communicating expectations.”
Accountability and High Performance
Accountability isn’t about punishment; it’s about inspiring motivation and fostering growth. This session explored practical steps to embed a culture of accountability at every level so it can drive high performance.
According to Matt Summers, NLI facilitator and global head of culture and leadership, leaders must shift from holding people accountable to driving accountability. In other words, organizations must move from a culture of punitive accountability to one of proactive accountability, where accountability is viewed as a worthy challenge in which employees take ownership of their work.
“We want employees to have an owner’s mindset to be more productive and thrive,” said Priya Priyadarshini, VP and head of global talent management at Microsoft. “Punitive accountability is remedial and focused on the past, while proactive accountability helps us think about the future.”
The greatest habit that drives accountability is asking for feedback, Summers noted. Conventional wisdom says only managers need to give more feedback, but research says everyone needs to ask for feedback — and do so explicitly, broadly, and often. According to Priyadarshini, when receiving feedback, “there are five golden words: ‘Thank you, tell me more.’”
Neurodiversity: Create Inclusive Environments for Cognitive Diversity
As workplaces continue to evolve and embrace diversity in all its forms, recognizing and supporting cognitive diversity becomes essential. “Neurodiversity reflects the idea that people experience and interact with the world in many different ways,” said NLI Facilitator Kyle Olsen. “It encompasses a broad variation in neurocognitive functioning and information processing.”
“Neurodiversity” is an evolving term with different interpretations among scholars and advocates. Some definitions emphasize differences between “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical” people, whereas the umbrella approach argues that neurodiversity is a natural expression of the unique structure and function of each human brain.
“I’m not a fan of the term ‘neurotypical,’” said cognitive neuroscientist Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. “Research has shown that every cognitive trait is on a bell curve. The question is, what to do with the extremes?” Kaufman said that not only diagnoses such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism should be considered neurodiversity but also trauma, giftedness, and other cognitive traits.
Danish Kurani of Kurani Architecture said that all people need workspaces that encourage creativity, focus, comfort, and growth. Many so-called “accommodations” for neurodivergent people actually benefit everyone. Misty Freeman, Ph.D., founder of Mocha Sprout, a business that consults on bias and inclusion, discussed the importance of systems, processes, and measurement to reinforce good intentions. “You can’t improve what you don’t measure,” Freeman said. “You need structured assessments, data, and accessibility audits. Measurement isn’t a one-time process; it’s ongoing.”
For highlights from Day 2 of the 2024 NeuroLeadership Summit, click here.
