Your Brain at Work

In recent weeks, we’ve examined the progression of the workplace as we know it. As organizations work to establish balance, combat burnout, and continue scaling toward the future, it has become increasingly clear it will take more than policies. Leaders are now being challenged to go beyond the surface and resonate with their employees on a human level. Empathy is commonly used as a blanket term,...

The initial challenges of 2020 have continued into 2021 for many. With pandemic-related deaths, massive job loss, and burnout on the rise- work was deprioritized on the scale of importance. As news coverage of civil unrest, political polarization, and major events became normal, we as a society were challenged to reflect beyond the scope of our 9-5 life. Fast forward and now we’re seeing the outco...

Employers have continued to fluctuate between work policies, throughout the pandemic. Repeatedly shifting strategic courses and still lacking clarity on how to effectively approach change for their teams. Many organizations, like some of you listening, have not physically seen each other in up to 22 months. Considering this isolation paired with the heightened frequency of current events taking pl...

As work – and our connection to work – keeps shifting, many popular thought pieces and research are rooted in the same foundational question: What does a manager need to do now? How have managerial roles evolved as a result of the pandemic and remote/hybrid models? One of the major ways is a shift from “surveillance” focus – i.e. “I value having strong oversight of my teams and what they’re workin...

In this Season 6 Premiere of Your Brain at Work, our panel reviews the President’s recent Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility that continues to drive positive change in the federal workspace and the organizations they impact. We'll examine some of the key points within the order through the lens of neuroscience and identify potential pitfalls that can snag even the m...

Welcome to the Season 5 finale of Your Brain at Work Live. Performance management is a huge topic throughout work in general, but it’s faded somewhat recently due to COVID, hybrid approaches, and other concerns of leaders. We come back and revisit performance management as part of the talent ecosystem in this season finale, with David Rock, Marshall Bergmann, and Christy Pruitt-Haynes.

Many companies were ready for a hybrid work model to start up this summer and fall. There were still big questions, but we were headed that way. Then a few variants emerged, and we entered into a larger vaccination discussion, and now some of these dates have been pushed back, often into January 2022 for some big brands. But -- this is good news for leaders! It gives you more time to navigate the...

Unconscious bias is a huge driver of work outcomes. While we’ve known this for generations, only recently has it become a bigger discussion in management theory and the training space. In this episode of Your Brain at Work Live, our own Janet Stovall sits down with NYU’s inaugural senior vice president for global inclusion and strategic innovation, Dr. Lisa Coleman, and Dr. Natalie Byfield, a prof...

In Season 3 of Your Brain at Work Live, we debuted with an episode on de-escalation, featuring Joe Smarro of the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary “Ernie and Joe, Crisis Cops.” At this point in Season 5, as the world attempts to reopen and we’re constantly bombarded with images and videos of situations that need to be de-escalated -- think about airlines, as one starting place -- we wanted to revisit...

In this episode of Your Brain at Work, senior Neuroleadership Institute researcher Michaela Simpson and NLI’s Director of DEI Practice Paulette Gerkovich are joined by two distinguished guests: Elizabeth Nelson, the director of diversity and inclusion at Thomson Reuters, and Jennifer Amara, the VP of Global Talent at Otis Worldwide. This knowledgeable foursome of women walks through what works --...

In this episode of Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock, the CEO and Co-founder of the Neuroleadership Institute is joined by two esteemed guests: Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and co-author of the best-seller The Coddling of the American Mind, and Alison Taylor, the Executive Director of Ethical Systems. The three shed light on the core divisions in America, how thos...

In this episode of Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock, the CEO and Co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute is joined by Dr. Jason Mitchell, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Together, they explore the concept of in-group and out-group, the effects it has on the brain and behavior, and what we can do about it to mitigate the negative effects and accentuate the positive. The two s...

The United States Congress has passed a bill declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday. The bill's passage marks the first time a new federal holiday has been established since Congress approved Martin Luther King Jr. day in 1983. More importantly, Juneteenth marks and commemorates emancipation of Black Americans. Now, organizations across the country are asking what they can and should do to mark th...

At the start of the pandemic, when many US companies were implementing remote work policies, many leaders feared that workplace culture would wither without in-person interactions. But, to the amazement and relief of many, that wasn’t necessarily true. Why? Because your culture was never your building—it’s something more. In this episode of Your Brain at Work, we unpack the science and explore the...

After more than a year of uncertainty, a large portion of the U.S. is poised to return to the office in the coming months. As employees return, organizations and employees are renegotiating how, when, and where they’ll work. This migration is a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better normal, but it won’t come without its challenges. To help leaders capitalize on this opportunity, and avoid...

Increasingly, equity is finding its way into conversations, organizations, and acronyms across the world. But there’s a lot of noise, and many misconceptions, about what equity means and how it applies to organizations. As a result, many business leaders aren’t quite sure how to define, develop, or deploy the “E” in DE&I. In Season 4’s final episode, our panel helps you reduce some of the noise by...

In this episode of Your Brain at Work we continue our discussion of equity. This time, we explore what’s happening in our brains when we’re at an advantage, at a disadvantage, and when we seek to restore equity to a situation (or don’t). NLI Senior Client Advisor Janet Stovall is joined by Senior Researcher, Dr. Michaela Simpson; and University of Pennsylvania Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Brad Mattan....

In recent months we’ve seen much debate, some productive and some not, on the concept of equity. So we, as we often do at the NeuroLeadership Institute, have looked at equity through the lens of neuroscience. In this episode of Your Brain at Work, Janet Stovall, Senior Client Strategist; Jeanine Stewart; Senior Consultant and Facilitator; and Dr. David Rock, Co-founder and CEO unpack the concept o...

In this episode of Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock welcomes Kristina Morton; Vice President Human Resources, Supply Chain, at General Mills. At General Mills, their mission is to feed the world. Hard enough on a good day, but how about during a global pandemic? Their challenges were multifaceted and complex, but throughout, factory workers went above and beyond to meet the goals of the organiza...

There are millions of people that have tasted remote work and won’t easily let it go, and further, they’re expecting it at this point. And alternatively, there are others that would prefer to return to the office. We find ourselves on the precipice of yet another very important decision for many organizations. How much autonomy should we give our people about their work environments? We probably d...

In December 2020, 156,000 people lost jobs due to the pandemic—and all of them were women. Not just a high percentage of them. All of them. This could be the biggest backward step for women’s representation in the workplace we’ve ever seen. While there are many factors at play, there is one hidden culprit that has an outsized impact—gender bias. In this episode NLI Senior Consultant Deb Campbell f...

For this episode we invited three leaders from very different companies to reveal their approaches to lifting inclusion. NLI’s VP of Client Experience, Katherine Milan leads the discussion with Romita Grover, Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging in the Card Division at Capital One, Lynn Hare, Director of Global Talent Development at Akamai, and Jon Suber, Supplier Diversity & Development Manag...

In this episode David welcomes renowned neuroscientist and author of Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Dr. Barrett and David walk us through the latest research and insights about how the brain (the physical organ) and the mind (the human consciousness that thinks, feels, and acts) interact and inform our behavior. Together, they unpack the neural mechanisms that...

Decades of research have made it clear that diverse teams are smarter and more innovative than homogeneous teams. But there are a few stubborn cognitive quirks that get in the way of building and fostering diversity in organizations. In this episode of Your Brain at Work, NLI CEO Dr. David Rock is joined by Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, Dr. Valerie Purdie-Greenaway, and...

Are you part of an organization that allows you to bring your authentic self to work? How does power and privilege impact your ability to do so? And does your organization support the authenticity of all of its employees? In this episode, Dr. David Rock is joined by best-selling author and renowned expert on covering, Kenji Yoshino, Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law. David and K...