npnHub Podcast - Neuroplasticity in Practice

What if better leadership isn’t simply about learning more skills, but developing the nervous system behind how you lead?

In this episode, Dr. Ryan Gottfredson explores why traditional leadership development can miss an important part of the puzzle: how leaders think, feel, regulate and respond. He explains the difference between the “doing” side of leadership, which includes knowledge, skills and abilities, and the “being” side, which reflects the quality of a leader’s inner operating system.

The conversation examines how fear and insecurity can surface in the workplace as micromanagement, over-control, poor delegation and reactive leadership. Through the story of an overwhelmed CEO, Ryan demonstrates how a leader’s internal patterns can affect an entire organisation and potentially turn that leader into its biggest bottleneck.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 The difference between the “doing” and “being” sides of leadership

🔹 Why mindset and metacognition matter for leadership development

🔹 How emotional and nervous system regulation influence leadership behaviour

🔹 Why fear and insecurity can lead to micromanagement and over-control

🔹 How developing the mind, body and heart can support meaningful change

🔹 Why neuroscience could shape the future of leadership development

Discover how transforming a leader’s inner operating system could transform the entire organisation.

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What if learning to sense what’s happening inside your body could help you reclaim your attention and make more conscious choices?

In this episode, Dr. Leonard Khirug explores the relationship between interoception, neuroplasticity, attention and behaviour. Drawing on decades of neuroscience experience and his personal journey through burnout, he explains how noticing internal signals such as changes in breathing, heart rate, tension and posture can deepen our awareness of how we respond to the world.

The conversation examines how automatic protective loops develop and influence behaviours such as people-pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination. Leonard also introduces his concept of “attentons” and the feel–think–move model, demonstrating how greater interoceptive awareness can create space between an automatic response and a more conscious decision.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 What interoception is and why inner sensing matters

🔹 How attention connects with neuroplasticity, behaviour and decision-making

🔹 Why fragmented attention is particularly relevant in today’s world

🔹 How automatic protective loops can become mistaken for personality traits

🔹 What the feel–think–move model reveals about human behaviour

🔹 How bodily awareness can create space for more conscious choices

Discover why learning to notice the body’s signals before automatic thought patterns take over could be an important skill for navigating our attention-driven world.

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Discover how mindful toughness can help children, teens, athletes, and adults build resilience, manage pressure, and move through adversity. Dr. Christine Silverstein shares practical tools and powerful real-life stories that reveal how the way we think, feel, communicate, and respond to challenges can shape performance and well-being.

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📕Highlights

Discover mindful toughness techniques for building resilience and navigating adversity.

Learn how parents and coaches can support young athletes without turning encouragement into pressure.

Explore breathing, positive self-talk, self-hypnosis, imagery, and emotional awareness as tools for change.

Hear powerful stories showing how childhood experiences and relationships can influence confidence, performance, and well-being.

➡️Summary

Dr. Christine Silverstein shares how mindful toughness, resilience, and supportive relationships can help children, teens, athletes, and adults navigate adversity. Drawing from her book Wrestling Through Adversity, she explains how pressure, criticism, and past experiences can shape confidence, performance, and well-being.

Through powerful real-life examples, Christine explores tools such as breathing, positive self-talk, self-hypnosis, imagery, and emotional awareness. She shows how these approaches can help people move beyond limiting beliefs, manage stress, and develop stronger coping skills.

For parents, coaches, and neuroplasticians, this episode offers practical insights into supporting the whole person - mind, body, emotions, and experience - so resilience can grow and meaningful change can happen.

⏰ Timecodes:

0:00 - Meet Dr. Christine Silverstein & Wrestling Through Adversity

1:44 - Bringing Wrestling Through Adversity to Arabic-speaking communities

3:38 - Mindful toughness: practical tools for resilience

5:25 - Supporting children’s mental well-being through sport

6:31 - A young wrestler struggling with competition pressure

7:03 - Breathing, self-hypnosis & positive self-talk

7:48 - When criticism takes the joy out of sport

8:51 - Building resilience through challenges

9:21 - Why resilience needs to be developed

10:46 - Tools for well-being and behavioural change

11:38 - How childhood experiences can affect adult performance

13:29 - Relationships, self-worth & the pressure to win

15:31 - Sports, performance & well-being

16:12 - Advice for neuroplasticians and practitioners

16:42 - Working with athletes on a feeling level

17:42 - Mind, body, emotion & the subconscious

18:04 - Taking the conversation deeper inside npnHub

18:49 - Building resilience starts with the basics

19:17 - Why practitioners need to know themselves

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ℹ️ About the npnHub Community:

We unite experts and learners in applied neuroscience and acknowledge their expertise. We offer a vivid and fun, professional environment to share, shine and learn together for more impact and growth. Our advisory board sets the standards for the discipline of the npn Neuroplastician® and acknowledges experience and training in applied neuroscience.

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Can love transform leadership, coaching and organisational performance?

In this episode, executive coach and author Corrie Block challenges conventional leadership thinking and explains why love may be one of the most overlooked competitive advantages in business.

Drawing on his experience coaching global CEOs, Corrie explains why high-performance leaders need more than traditional coaching techniques. When their decisions affect thousands of employees and billions of dollars, they need evidence-based, advisory coaching that helps them think more clearly and make better decisions.

The conversation then explores the surprising connection between love, trust, psychological safety, empathy and belonging. Corrie examines why organisations often avoid discussing love, how our understanding of it has become confused and why genuine care could improve both human connection and organisational performance.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 Why executive coaching should be approached like an Olympic sport

🔹 Why the world’s top leaders need evidence-based coaching, not only great questions

🔹 How love connects with trust, empathy and psychological safety

🔹 Why genuine care can support healthier, higher-performing organisations

🔹 How leadership can positively influence another person’s life

🔹 Why love could be the highest expression of leadership

Discover how bringing genuine care into the workplace could create better leaders, healthier organisations and more meaningful work.

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What does neuroscience really say about neuro-linguistic programming?

In this episode, neuroscientist and NLP expert Josh Davis, PhD, explores where NLP is supported by research, where popular claims become overstated and how practitioners can use these tools more responsibly.

Introducing ideas from his book, The Difference That Makes the Difference, Josh explains how neuroscience and psychology can make NLP easier to understand while adding useful boundaries and refinements to familiar techniques.

The conversation examines the science of rapport, non-verbal synchrony, mirror neurons, neural reuse and perspective-taking. Josh explains why mirror neurons alone cannot account for rapport and why psychological evidence remains essential when evaluating behaviour-change tools.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 What NLP is and how it connects with neuroscience and psychology

🔹 What research reveals about rapport and non-verbal synchrony

🔹 Why mirror neurons don’t explain rapport on their own

🔹 How adopting a third-person perspective may support lasting change

🔹 Why practitioners should distinguish between evidence, speculation and myth

🔹 How research can improve the responsible teaching and application of NLP

Discover how a more evidence-informed approach can help practitioners apply NLP tools with greater clarity, credibility and care.

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How is artificial intelligence transforming neuromarketing, persuasion and human decision-making?

In this episode, Roger Dooley introduces the ideas behind his book, The Persuasion Engine, and explains how Neuromarketing 2.0 is making advanced behavioural science faster, smarter and more accessible.

Roger shares practical ways coaches, practitioners, entrepreneurs and marketers can use AI for empathy audits, behavioural insights, marketing strategy, personal branding and customer communication. He also explores how to create an AI “dream team” modelled on leading experts and use it to approach challenges from multiple perspectives.

Throughout the conversation, Roger emphasises that AI should enhance human expertise rather than replace it. While these tools can uncover insights and improve communication, human judgement remains essential for interpreting their suggestions, maintaining authenticity and avoiding costly mistakes.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 How AI is changing the way we apply neuromarketing and behavioural science

🔹 How to perform an AI-powered empathy audit before publishing content

🔹 How an AI “dream team” can bring different expert perspectives to a challenge

🔹 Why effective prompting involves acting as the conductor of AI

🔹 How coaches and practitioners can use AI to strengthen their marketing

🔹 Why human judgement and connection remain essential

Discover how Neuromarketing 2.0 can help you communicate more effectively while keeping genuine human connection at the centre.

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How do great leaders influence the brains of the people they lead?

In this episode, Prof. Michael Platt from the Wharton School and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania explores leadership through the lens of social neuroscience, anthropology and human behaviour.

Michael explains why the human brain remains optimised for a world that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago and why rapid advances in artificial intelligence are creating new challenges for leadership, attention, decision-making and organisational performance.

The conversation examines how leaders influence the emotional and cognitive states of their teams. Michael discusses why authenticity, trust and psychological connection matter, and how subtle social signals such as facial expressions, attention and emotional contagion can shape organisational culture.

The discussion also explores social synchrony, mirror neurons, neuroplasticity and cognitive overload in the age of AI. Michael considers why protecting human intelligence and becoming more deeply human may be among the most important leadership priorities of the future.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 Why leadership involves influencing the emotional and cognitive states of others

🔹 How trust, authenticity and social connection affect teams

🔹 What social neuroscience can teach us about organisational culture

🔹 How AI may affect attention, decision-making and cognitive capacity

🔹 Why human capabilities could become more valuable as AI advances

🔹 What emerging research is exploring about GLP-1 medications, mindfulness and self-regulation

Discover how understanding the social brain could help leaders build more adaptive, resilient and human-centred organisations.

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How can emotional intelligence and better “brain prompts” help leaders move out of autopilot and into clearer, more intentional thinking?

In this episode, Dr. Justin James Kennedy speaks with Relly Nadler about leadership, coaching, emotional intelligence and the neuroscience behind better decision-making.

Relly explains why much of our behaviour runs on autopilot. The brain relies on familiar prompts, rapid responses and established patterns because they are efficient. However, when leaders remain on autopilot, they can become reactive, overwhelmed and more vulnerable to errors.

The conversation explores how better internal prompts can interrupt automatic patterns and create a gap between stimulus and response. This gap provides an opportunity to pause, reflect and choose a more intentional course of action.

Relly also introduces the Emotional Audit, a practical five-question tool that helps leaders examine what they’re thinking and feeling, clarify what they want to accomplish, recognise how they may be getting in their own way and identify what they need to do next.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 Why the brain relies on autopilot and how this affects leadership behaviour

🔹 How better prompts can interrupt familiar patterns and reactive responses

🔹 Why slow thinking, emotional intelligence and self-awareness matter

🔹 How coaching can help people strengthen their own thinking

🔹 How to use the five questions in Relly’s Emotional Audit

🔹 Why reflective thinking may become even more important in the age of AI

Discover how learning to “mind the gap” between stimulus and response can support clearer thinking, stronger emotional intelligence and better leadership choices.

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How can humour, neuroscience and human connection support meaningful transformation?

In this episode, Karyn Buxman and Tina Schweiger explore how humour and neuroscience intersect to strengthen resilience, shift unhelpful patterns and bring more joy into everyday life.

The conversation examines why laughter is more than a reaction. Karyn and Tina discuss how humour can help us move out of stress patterns, quiet the inner critic and approach challenges with greater flexibility and perspective.

Through engaging stories and practical insights, they reveal how small shifts in mindset can influence the way we lead, communicate and connect with others. The episode offers accessible strategies for bringing more clarity, purpose and lightness into both professional and personal life.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 How humour can support resilience and cognitive flexibility

🔹 The connection between joy, emotional wellbeing and human connection

🔹 Practical ways to interrupt negative thought patterns

🔹 How to quiet the inner critic and adopt a more empowered mindset

🔹 Why humour can strengthen leadership and communication

🔹 How small, intentional shifts can create meaningful change

Discover how applied neuroscience and humour can help you respond to life with greater resilience, connection and joy.

Learn more and join the npnHub community:

Connect with Tina Schweiger:

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How can you quiet your inner critic and create the conditions for greater flow, clarity and performance?

In this episode, Tina Schweiger and Karyn Buxman explore flow state, emotional awareness and the role curiosity and playfulness can have in supporting wellbeing and performance.

Through the lens of applied neuroscience, Tina and Karyn discuss how the inner critic can contribute to performance blocks and keep us trapped in familiar patterns. They explore how reconnecting with childlike wonder can encourage curiosity, flexibility and a more open approach to challenges.

The conversation also introduces the “Feel Method,” a practical framework for noticing and processing emotions. Tina and Karyn discuss techniques such as tapping and conscious breathing, along with the importance of creating a sense of emotional safety when approaching personal change.

In this conversation, you’ll discover:

🔹 How quieting the inner critic may support flow and performance

🔹 Why childlike wonder and curiosity can encourage flexible thinking

🔹 How greater emotional awareness can interrupt familiar patterns

🔹 What the “Feel Method” offers as an approach to processing emotions

🔹 How tapping and conscious breathing can be used as reflective practices

🔹 Why emotional safety matters when creating meaningful change

Discover how curiosity, playfulness and emotional awareness could help you respond with greater clarity, resilience and intention.

Learn more and join the npnHub community:

Connect with Tina Schweiger:

Connect with Karyn Buxman:

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