Coworkers you can count on share three key behaviors, which can be learned by anyone.
Read More →
FEATURED INSIGHT
Coworkers you can count on share three key behaviors, which can be learned by anyone.
Read More →
Since 1998, when Lisa Rock and I launched a coaching business that would become the NeuroLeadership Institute, we have been passionate about identifying language that helps people be more effective. In 2008, when we launched NLI formally, we went even bigger. For the last decade, we have been on a mission to develop a new language for leadership, culture, and learning. Today, our work is impacting millions of people in hundreds of the world’s largest companies — 30% of the Fortune 100, to be specific — always with the desire of making workplaces more fundamentally human. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Your Brain at Work, NLI’s official blog for all things neuroleadership. It’s a chance for us to pull together, in one place, the many ideas and insights we have been developing over the years. We’ve already got some amazing content we think you’ll love. Here’s just a sampling. In The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset, we present a major finding from our recent industry research project in 16 international corporations showing how managers may be unknowingly burning out their employees. In The Smartest Teams Embrace the ‘Diversity Paradox’, an excerpt from a Corporate Membership piece reveals the hidden challenge associated with diversifying a workforce. Research on power and voice forms the foundation for a thought-provoking piece called What Airline Pilots and Nurses Can Teach Organizations About Decision-Making. Leaders who hold regular performance reviews may be sending the wrong signals or making premature decisions, according to Why the Typical Performance Review Is Overwhelmingly Biased. Click here to check out the rest of our content that showcases research on culture and leadership, performance, diversity and inclusion, and more. The field of neuroleadership is only getting more exciting as the years go by, and we can’t wait to go on the journey with all of you. Thank you for reading! SEE ALSO: The Hidden Leverage of Feedback
Chris Pirie isn’t putting the future of organizational learning in the hands of gut feelings. He’s relying on hard brain science. In a recent interview with Singularity Hub’s Lisa Kay Solomon, Pirie, the general manager of worldwide learning at Microsoft, explained how companies will begin infusing research into their development processes. “We’ll start to know what it looks and feels like to pay full attention and which social and physical conditions can accelerate or throttle the learning process,” Pirie said. “Organizations like NeuroLeadership Institute are codifying the research into workable models that help [learning] designers to leverage those brain chemistry process and biases.” In addition to neuroscience, Pirie speculated that data science and social science will also inform how learning experience designers create their internal programs. “The learning scientists are coming!” he said. “Within corporations, we’re going to see a fundamental rethink of the role and responsibility of learning in organizations and the creation of a new type of learning organization.” Pirie has plenty of experience applying research to organizational habits: For the past two years, Microsoft has partnered with NLI to change its culture with the help of brain science. In mid-2016, the tech giant debuted its three leadership principles company-wide: Generate energy, Create clarity, and Deliver success. Simple as they may seem, a great deal of research suggests they put Microsoft in the best position to achieve its goals. For instance, as Pirie points out in his interview, scientists are making great strides in understanding how knowledge moves from short- to long-term memory. Specifically, we have seen the benefits time and again of making learning “sticky,” or memorable, by chunking bits of information into easily digestible pieces. We also minimize the amount of work required of the brain, since humans can’t juggle more than four or five ideas at a time. Microsoft’s leadership principles rely on that set of insights. Each principle is easy to remember, but so is the trio as a whole. We call this “coherence,” as it’s near impossible to remember one leadership principle without thinking of the other two. These strategies don’t just get people excited about making a change; they actually change behavior. As Pirie explains, this is one of the hallmarks of neuroscience-based learning initiatives, and what will propel the field into the future of learning. “I believe we will soon see diagnostic tools to help evaluate costly corporate learning programs against such standards,” he said, “and tools to help learning experience designers design for maximum impact.” SEE ALSO: The Smartest Teams Embrace the ‘Diversity Paradox’
Growth mindset has gained a lot of popularity in organizations over the past decade, now standing as many leaders’ favorite buzzword for boosting productivity. But there’s still one myth that widely persists among companies — at the risk of employee and organizational well-being. Contrary to what many leaders believe, growth mindset does not refer to a person’s limitless capacity to get things done. For the past three months, NLI has interviewed HR practitioners at more than 20 major organizations around the world, as part of an industry research project. Our goal was to find out what, exactly, leaders were doing when they implemented growth mindset around their organization. We found a range of interpretations. Some thought growth mindset was purely a focus on business growth. Others saw it as the belief that any achievement was possible, no matter how unrealistic the goal. In fact, our working definition of growth mindset is: the dual belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing your skills and abilities is the purpose of the work you do. On occasion, managers who hadn’t quite grasped this concept thought employees with a growth mindset were happy to take on projects endlessly. If they claimed their plate was full, they were seen as having a fixed mindset — a scarlet “F” around many offices. The trouble with this line of thinking is that everyone, at some point, faces issues of “capacity,” or the brain’s limit for cognitive function. There is only so much thought people can devote to their various tasks before their output begins to plateau, or even decrease. Managers who keep overloading their employees with work actually inhibit, not propel, long-term progress. What’s more, by making a judgment on people’s ability to handle more and more tasks, managers risk damaging employees’ sense of status. What initially may have been a point of pride could turn into shame over poor productivity. For the sake of employee and organizational health, leaders should align on the true definition of growth mindset. Saying your plate is full isn’t a sign that your thinking is flawed. In fact, it may be the opposite — a sign that in order to develop your skills, the most important thing you can do is pause, and focus on the job at hand. [action hash=”6cd538cd-54dd-4b69-a152-d85ebcd24518″]
The human brain can think about objects and events at various “levels of construal” — from the abstract, high-level, and conceptual all the way down to the low-level and concrete. Marlone Henderson is a psychologist who studies how level of construal affects problem-solving. Among other surprising findings, Henderson has shown that physical distance can lead negotiators to more successful outcomes by prompting them to think about the big picture. We reached him at his lab at the University of Texas at Austin in advance of the NeuroLeadership Summit in October, where he’ll be speaking. NLI: Let’s do a tour of your work on construal and negotiation. Marlone Henderson: When I was coming out of grad school, I was interested in understanding how people’s cognitive style would impact how they would approach problem-solving and negotiation. One of the big issues you deal with in negotiation is when parties have differing priorities. Negotiators tend to come to the table trying to fight out and hash out every little thing, trying to get everything they want, without realizing they may be able to identify key trade-offs where they can sacrifice things that are less important in order to gain things that are more important. I showed that if you push people to think in a more abstract manner — to take a step back from the details and look at things in a broader, more inclusive manner — they’re able to focus on what’s more important to them. When people do that, it increases the likelihood they’ll deal with multiple issues at the same time. When you’re dealing with one issue at a time, it’s harder to recognize that one is more important than another. But if you deal with multiple issues at the same time, you’re more likely to see how different priorities emerge. When you push people to think more abstractly, they’re more likely to deal with multiple issues at a time, and that increases the likelihood that they’ll recognize where different priorities lie. And that then increases the likelihood that they’ll trade off on things that are less important and ultimately come up with more win-win agreements. NLI: What are the implications for organizations? MH: It’s possible to think about this in terms of personality. There are certain people who just naturally think more abstractly. Those might be your more gifted negotiators from the get-go. So the lesson would be, maybe hire people who naturally think more abstractly. But even if you’re not that kind of person, there are situational variables that will push you to think more abstractly. The two variables I looked at were time and space. First, there’s time. If people are negotiating over issues that are more distant in the future, that increases the likelihood that people will construe the issues more abstractly — which will then foster more win-win agreements, through considering multiple issues at a time. The other variable is space. I showed that when people are negotiating with someone they think is physically farther away from them, it works the same way as time: People are more likely to identify areas where they have trade-offs, and therefore recognize they have different priorities, and are more likely to come up with win-win agreements. NLI: What if I’m negotiating with somebody face-to-face — we don’t have distance — and negotiating about something that’s happening now, not distant in time? Is there a way for me to trigger them to elevate their level of construal? MH: That’s a good question. I published one study where we directly manipulated people’s level of construal. Before people start negotiating, we show them the issues they’re going to be negotiating about. With one group, we have them look at the issues and think about how to categorize them or think about them in a broader context. Let’s say you’re negotiating over salary and vacation time. We might say, “Well, if you think about those issues, what do they really represent if you had to think about a bigger category?” They might respond, “They both deal with my lifestyle satisfaction.” With the other group, we have people take the issues and come up with specific examples. We found that when you have people take the issues and lump them together and think about them in a broader category, as opposed to generating specific examples, it works the same way as having people think about distant time. Even though they’re getting ready to do that negotiation in a few minutes and the issues are right there, relevant to them at that moment, having them broaden their horizons by categorizing them in a broader way did the same trick. I have not directly tested this, but the implication would be that even if your issues are relevant now, you might see these benefits just by having people —it almost sounds like a meditative exercise — take a moment to envision their life in the distant future. NLI: What if I have a mildly adversarial posture toward my negotiating partner? Say I walk into my boss’s office and I want to ask for a raise. I’m not saying, “Hey boss, if you don’t mind, close your eyes and I want you to meditate for ten minutes.” Is there something I can say to raise their level of construal that would be appropriate in a negotiation context? MH: Good question. That’s something that as far as I know there’s research on. In our studies, we always control the cognitive style of both negotiating partners — and the two people negotiating are always on the same level. NLI: Let’s imagine a specific situation — I’m going to a low-level construal now to talk about it, using an example. Say my boss says, “OK, how much do you want?” And I say, “Well before I answer that, let’s take a step back. Let’s think about the future. Let’s think about the overarching goal. Our organization wants to grow. Ten years down the line, we want to be
Microsoft turned to the NeuroLeadership Institute to enlist our help in designing a new approach to feedback — one grounded in the neuroscience.
Business leaders can learn a lot about diversity from college kids solving fake murders. It was 2009. Northwestern University researchers had just given groups of fraternity and sorority members mock murder cases to solve. Suddenly, each group learned they were getting a new member. Half of the groups welcomed someone from within their frat or sorority, an “insider”; the other half got a rival member, an “outsider.” When the researchers tallied the results, they found the teams that solved the most murders were those with rival members, not people with whom participants already identified. As in, teams with members from rival frats and sororities outperformed those that were all from the same group. Remarkably, this was despite team members in the diverse condition feeling less positive about their interactions, and less confident in their final conclusion, than the homogenous group. Why diverse teams are smarter The business wisdom we can glean from this study is profound, and it holds great importance as teamwork and collaboration become more essential to working life. Let’s call it the “diversity paradox.” It states that diverse teams often make smarter decisions than non-diverse teams, but — crucially — at the expense of having confidence in that decision. The smartest teams embrace this paradox, putting faith in diversity-driven outputs above comfort in consensus. Diverse teams are smarter teams because they rid the air of groupthink, a term coined in 1971 to describe the possible psychological mechanisms that led to the Bay of Pigs Invasion 10 years prior, an event widely seen as a failure of decision-making. Groupthink, in other words, is what causes groups of “smart” people to go along with “dumb” choices. As NLI recently presented in “How Diversity Defeats Groupthink,” having a mixture of backgrounds and experiences is critical for organizations to avoid groupthink. And the 2009 Northwestern study puts an even finer point on the matter. It suggests that leaders must set the right expectations — for themselves and their team members — for how interactions will feel, in order for people to stay motivated when things get tough. Trust the process, not the feeling When teams are more diverse, instead of feeling fluent or smooth, they will often feel disjointed and even a little tense. That’s because diverse teams don’t (and can’t) settle into familiar ways of thinking; people’s ideas and assumptions are inherently at odds, even if in small doses. Every decision requires thought and effort, a collection of point-counterpoint moments until what emerges is a fuller, more bulletproof idea. However, as we’ve found in our research and work with clients, that friction is essential for arriving at the best solutions. When people feel overly comfortable with one another, they may defer to hierarchy, make dangerous assumptions, use illogical thinking, or succumb to pressures of group conformity. Outsiders, meanwhile, shake things up. They put people on their toes and raise everyone’s level of sensitivity, reducing the chances of what Princeton economist Roland Benabou calls “acting colorblind in a sea of red flags.” Decision-making may never be perfect — so long as teams are composed of bias-laden and error-prone humans — but embracing the discomfort of diversity yields far greater rewards than playing it safe ever will.
If leaders want to make the best decisions possible, it’s critical for their employees to feel confident about voicing opinions that challenge the status quo — or at least what the highest-status person in the room thinks. But speaking up is hard, especially within cultures that don’t explicitly ask for others’ input. If leaders want to avoid biased decision-making, they must gather a range of opinions, not just rely on their own. That means they must wrestle with an important question: How do we get more people speaking up? Aviation and medicine may hold the answer. The almighty ‘two-challenge rule’ Mona Weiss, a University of Leipzig psychologist, has studied the practices of airline pilots and nurses to understand how teams in life-or-death situations avoid disaster. Her big insight: Successful teams implement systems that provide clear if-then plans. These if-then plans in turn help lower-status team members save the day. In both aviation and medicine, teams widely rely on something called the two-challenge rule. It’s a system developed by the U.S. Army to empower crew members to take action if their partner is unable to perform his or her duties. For instance, if a co-pilot notices his captain is confused or overwhelmed mid-flight, the co-pilot can issue a challenge — say, to adjust the altitude or position of the aircraft. If he gets no response, he can ask again. If he still gets no response, the co-pilot is permitted to assume control of the aircraft, potentially saving the lives of everyone onboard. Medicine has since adopted the two-challenge rule, and Weiss’ research has shown it radically boosts team performance. Nurses better prevent surgeons from making fatal errors and more lives get saved. High-status people make mistakes, too Organizations should have their own version of the two-challenge rule, Weiss claims. At the start of meetings, leaders should occasionally remind everyone that speaking up is a sign of status — not a strike against them — because it shows an interest in the team’s shared goals. Ideally, this knowledge will empower people to speak up if others misstep, for instance by using poor reasoning or citing flawed data. People who struggle to find their voice can remind themselves If I hear something that needs correcting, then it’s my duty speak up. The simple if-then plan works because it lets people address the idea at hand without feeling like they are attacking the person responsible for that idea. Indeed, leaders don’t need to stick to the two-challenge rule exactly to help their teams make better decisions. But they do need to think in terms of systems, so lower-status people can have a protocol for pointing out blind spots — and avoiding the crash. SEE ALSO: Microsoft GM of Worldwide Learning Says Neuroscience Is the Future in Companies
Bias isn’t just something that happens within a person. It also happens between people — namely, in meetings. Without meaning to, people at the head of the table routinely make mental shortcuts that save time, but also may impair decision-making. This expedience may feel good, but teams and organizations may ultimately suffer from the scarcity of input. The key to holding less biased meetings is diversity, a premise we explored in a recent Corporate Membership article called “How Diversity Defeats Groupthink.” The piece uses tested research to show how more diverse teams can cut through bias and improve decision-making. We’ve posted an excerpt below, featuring five strategies to help leaders change their behavior and incorporate greater diversity of thought. 1. Bite your tongue when you’re in charge As a leader, you naturally want to share what you know. But it’s important not to bias the discussion with the influence you wield. Next time you find yourself wanting to broadcast your opinion at the outset, remember to hold back until others have weighed in. 2. Solicit contrary perspectives People naturally want to get along, but that can make dissent feel unwelcome. Next time you sense team members hesitating to speak their minds, remind them it’s OK to disagree. The goal isn’t harmony, but good decisions. But you need to rotate the role of contrarian, so that it becomes a habit that people can employ. 3. Amplify quiet voices Bad decisions happen when team members keep their doubts and reservations to themselves. Next time you notice a discussion being dominated by a few vocal personalities, make a point of calling on those whose voices haven’t been heard. 4. Run the scenarios One way to defeat conformity is to change your time horizon. Next time your team’s plans start feeling too rosy, try projecting yourself into the future, running through scenarios and thinking through what could go wrong. Shifting your perspective can inject an important dose of reality and help you see through misplaced optimism. 5. Switch it up The more time you spend as a team, the closer you get. This camaraderie can be fruitful, as team members begin to share the same language and behaviors. But, dangerously, they can also think like each other. Next time that happens, make a point to shake things up. Swap in new people on the team, and shuffle roles. Change can be bittersweet, but it will help keep your team nimble and sharp. SEE ALSO: The Smartest Teams Embrace the ‘Diversity Paradox’
As the world continues to evolve, and as business, economic, and social influences emerge, the NeuroLeadership Institute is always revisiting the emerging research and our internal frameworks to make sure we’re as relevant as possible. Since so much is going on in leadership, culture — and is now becoming clear, power — we felt a responsibility to revisit the way we describe our leadership practice not only to the world, but to ourselves. Going from Leadership and Change to Culture and Leadership may seem superficial at first glance, but in my twenty-plus years of human capital experience, I have realized that words matter. We say to our clients all the time: think essential, not exhaustive. For us to focus our energies, research, and discussion internally and with clients, it wasn’t just change we were interested in impacting, but culture. So what is culture? For one thing, it’s not a mystery. In the management world, culture is often spoken of with hushed tones, as some mercurial substance, ever-changing and impossible to be harnessed. But in fact, if you look into the brain science, it’s radically simple. Culture is shared everyday habits. They are shared in that they operate between people. They’re normative: they’re common across many people. It’s not reserved for the top echelon of the house, but the sum total of how everyone in the system behaves. They’re everyday, because frequency matters. It’s the consistency and the reinforcement that we provide one another that tells us what the norms are. And they replicate from person to person over time, like genetic code. The fundamentals need to be so integrated that you don’t even need to think about them. When you’re under pressure, your precious energy at work isn’t diverted to what you ought to do, but the expected behaviors are already baked in. You can apply your energy to more urgent issues and unique, in the moment problems. Habits are the stuff of muscle memory, enabling the automatic response. And the way you do it is with frequency, practice, and focus. Habits are contagious. They radiate out from leaders, who set the norms in their teams and across the organization. Decades of social and brain science research has shown that people defer to status, hierarchy, and power in conscious and nonconscious ways. That means that shifting leadership behavior is a lever for shifting culture, the center of the nesting doll of organizational habits. Understanding what your priorities, habits, and systems are allow you to take ownership of your culture. To that end, we have a host of research, insights, and products coming this year about culture. We have upcoming webinars on the science of smarter teams, the means to editing organizational DNA, and rethinking the 9-box. We are launching DIFFERENTIATE, for taking bias out of performance reviews, and DEVELOP, for better long-term career conversations. Culture is an ongoing process. We’re excited for you to join us. Continue reading on LinkedIn… SEE ALSO: The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset
As the world continues to evolve, and as business, economic, and social influences emerge, the NeuroLeadership Institute is always revisiting the emerging research and our internal frameworks to make sure we’re as relevant as possible. Since so much is going on in leadership, culture — and is now becoming clear, power — we felt a responsibility to revisit the way we describe our leadership practice not only to the world, but to ourselves. Going from Leadership and Change to Culture and Leadership may seem superficial at first glance, but in my twenty-plus years of human capital experience, I have realized that words matter. We say to our clients all the time: think essential, not exhaustive. For us to focus our energies, research, and discussion internally and with clients, it wasn’t just change we were interested in impacting, but culture. So what is culture? For one thing, it’s not a mystery. In the management world, culture is often spoken of with hushed tones, as some mercurial substance, ever-changing and impossible to be harnessed. But in fact, if you look into the brain science, it’s radically simple. Culture is shared everyday habits. They are shared in that they operate between people. They’re normative: they’re common across many people. It’s not reserved for the top echelon of the house, but the sum total of how everyone in the system behaves. They’re everyday, because frequency matters. It’s the consistency and the reinforcement that we provide one another that tells us what the norms are. And they replicate from person to person over time, like genetic code. The fundamentals need to be so integrated that you don’t even need to think about them. When you’re under pressure, your precious energy at work isn’t diverted to what you ought to do, but the expected behaviors are already baked in. You can apply your energy to more urgent issues and unique, in the moment problems. Habits are the stuff of muscle memory, enabling the automatic response. And the way you do it is with frequency, practice, and focus. Habits are contagious. They radiate out from leaders, who set the norms in their teams and across the organization. Decades of social and brain science research has shown that people defer to status, hierarchy, and power in conscious and nonconscious ways. That means that shifting leadership behavior is a lever for shifting culture, the center of the nesting doll of organizational habits. Understanding what your priorities, habits, and systems are allow you to take ownership of your culture. To that end, we have a host of research, insights, and products coming this year about culture. We have upcoming webinars on the science of smarter teams, the means to editing organizational DNA, and rethinking the 9-box. We are launching DIFFERENTIATE, for taking bias out of performance reviews, and DEVELOP, for better long-term career conversations. Culture is an ongoing process. We’re excited for you to join us. Continue reading on LinkedIn… SEE ALSO: The Biggest Myth About Growth Mindset
Speaking up is essential to share ideas, question decisions, and challenge behaviors. Here are a few big ideas that can help any leader raise quiet voices.
Colleges play an important role in bringing diverse groups together. As such, they should make it a priority to create a sense of allyship on campus.
Inclusion is proven to be good for business, but it’s also been shown to afford employees a host of psychological and physical benefits.
There’s a cost to regarding yourself through a fixed mindset. Adopting a growth mindset can help you meet today’s challenges.
We’re not out of the woods yet, and won’t be for a while. So how do we thrive amidst all this? Research suggests there are two things to focus on.
Join millions of employees in creating culture change at scale by reaching out today.
In 2007, David and Lisa Rock and their team had been working in leadership development and executive coaching for ten years, when David coined the term “NeuroLeadership.”ef
North America
Africa
South America
Asia
Europe
Australia
© NeuroLeadership Institute 2025. All Rights Reserved