Your Brain at Work

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 working on,” to prioritizing focus on "outcomes", which is aligned to achieving key goals.

This is a massive adjustment for some managers and organizations- and adaptation can prove even more challenging. However, it is possible, and your turnover, profit, productivity, and culture can all benefit.

In this episode of Your Brain At Work, we dive deeper into surveillance vs. outcomes and investigate how managers can successfully shift their approach and continue to establish a positive and productive workplace for their teams.

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 most well-meaning leaders in their efforts.

Dive deep with us on the challenges of mandating a path to equity, and learn how to avoid the traps and gain solid ground towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. While this session focuses on the public sector, the insights will be pertinent to DEIA efforts in the private sector as well.

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 landscape. In this podcast, three NLI experts talk about how to navigate the world of hybrid work, including how to account for your real estate position.

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 professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at St. John's University. The three discuss bias as an impediment to innovation, bias as a cultural concern, and ways of overcoming the inherent challenges of bias.

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 the topic. This time, we discuss the neuroscience of de-escalation, and day-to-day strategies for bringing down the boil on a situation, with in-house experts Dr. Joy VerPlanck (Senior Insight Strategist, NLI), Dr. David Rock (CEO & Co-Founder, NLI), and Brian Uridge (Deputy Director Division of Public Safety & Security, University of Michigan Medicine).

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 -- and what doesn’t -- about current approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion on a global scale.

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 those divisions seep into professional discourse, and most importantly, what we can do to bridge divides. When the trio gets into strategies for bridging the divides we have, it’s less about deleting Facebook from your phone and more about what decades of brain science and social science research have taught us about practicing empathy, seeing others, and listening to opposing viewpoints.

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 scientists unpack how we can leverage that knowledge to make interactions more positive and effective, and to make organizations more human.

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 the occasion. In this episode, an esteemed panel discusses Juneteenth from a historical perspective, how it resonates and moves communities today, and where the conversation is going in the future. They explore what meaningful ways can companies, leaders, and society-at-large deploy efforts and resources to create a more just, diverse, and equitable future.