Adaptation has been a hot topic for organizations in 2024, and this year’s NeuroLeadership Summit is designed to help leaders thrive through change. Our theme this year is EVOLVE: The Science of Culture, Leadership, and High Performance.
While the Summit includes dozens of top scientists, executives, and leadership experts speaking on a variety of topics, here are three trends that are especially relevant for leaders — all related to the ongoing need to evolve.
1. Artificial intelligence
What’s the role of AI in the workplace? Is it a tool for learning? For collaborating? For creativity? A 2023 Forbes Advisor survey found that 64% of businesses expect AI to increase productivity. And yet, people are still skeptical about AI’s true potential and concerned about risks.
This year’s Summit will dive into the world of AI to explore its power as a tool for innovation. How does creativity happen in the brain, and how can AI’s current (and future) capabilities support the ways humans naturally think?
Most organizations are implementing AI for efficiency or cost-saving reasons, which can seem inhuman. The irony, however, is that effective implementation of AI requires us to understand human behavior. This year’s Summit will deliver important insights into the ways our current efforts are helping or hurting this cause.
CAN’T MISS: Innovation and Creativity In the Age of AI,featuring:
- David Rock, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO, NLI
- Christine Chesebrough, Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscientist, The Feinstein Institutes
- Batia Weisenfeld, Ph.D., Professor of Management, New York University
- Jon Schooler, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara
2. Leadership development
There’s no mincing words: Leadership development is broken. As organizational life has adopted various forms of hybrid work, executives are scrambling to figure out how to nurture their next generation of leaders. Even before the pandemic, many never deployed the science of habit activation that’s necessary to build lasting skills.
If organizations want to be competitive in 2025 and beyond, they need to get serious about the science of behavior change. Specifically, they need to pay attention to ideas like social learning, habit formation, and scaling their learning efforts across the entire organization through the right learning platforms.
For example, it’s not true that only a few senior people in the company need to learn while everyone else skates by without ongoing development. Learning works best in an “everyone-to-everyone” model, in which people are constantly sharing their insights with one another and building new knowledge. Busting this myth, and others, is essential for developing the next generation of high-performing leaders.
CAN’T MISS: Challenging Conventions in Leadership Development, featuring:
- David Rock, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO, NLI
- Moran Cerf, Ph.D., Scientist, Columbia University
- Kath Carmean, M.B.A., Senior Partner in Organization Development, The Aerospace Corporation
3. Cultures of high performance
Post-pandemic, and amid current social unrest, many leaders are struggling to balance creating a healthy and civil work culture with the needs of the organization. Do you focus on niceness and hope performance follows? Or do you prioritize results and hope people rally around that mission? We believe both are possible and necessary.
Research suggests that cultures of high performance emerge when leaders practice three cognitive skills: growth mindset, psychological safety, and accountability. That is, their team culture values getting better over being the best; people feel safe to take interpersonal risks; and leaders set clear expectations for desired outcomes, which they themselves follow.
A healthy culture and high performance aren’t mutually exclusive traits. With a focus on the right habits, leaders can unlock people’s potential and create a great place to work.
CAN’T MISS: Building a High-Performance Culture, featuring:
- David Rock, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO, NLI
- Anna Tavis, Ph.D., Department Chair, Human Capital Management, NYU
- Janet Stovall, Global Head of DEI, NLI
- Rachel Cardero, Vice President, Consulting & Practices, NLI
- Dean Carter, Chief Experience Officer, Airvet
Want to learn more? Sign up now to attend the virtual 2024 NeuroLeadership Summit from Oct. 29-30.
