Your Brain at Work

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 data at the intersections of culture and hybrid work. Our panel, including Lisa McGregor, the Global Lead of Workplace Space Strategies at Jacobs,

and Perri Mathews, the Manager of Culture Transformation and Change at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina, shares how hybrid work settings can actually be a culture accelerator, if we follow the science.

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 the pitfalls, we kick off Season 5 of Your Brain at Work with a look at hybrid work. Dr. David Rock, NLI’s CEO and Co-Founder, is joined by Liane Hornsey, Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer at Palo Alto Networks, to share insights that will help leaders make the most of their people’s time and talent. Together, they explore what it means to “solve for autonomy, and manage for fairness;” the big concerns organizations have about hybrid work (and why they may be overhyped); and the skills managers will need to lead and succeed in a hybrid world.

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 following the science. NLI's Janet Stovall, Senior Client Advisor, is joined by Dr. Michaela Simpson, Senior Researcher, and Dr. Dominic Packer, Professor of Psychology, Lehigh University. Together they provide science-informed, applicable guidance to help solve systemic inequity and increase equity.

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. Together, they discuss the neuroscience of power, inclusion, perspective taking, empathy, and allyship. The panel sheds light on the skills employees need to increase equity, and how organizations can leverage science to build them.

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 of equity. They explain why equity is different from equality (and why that matters), how allyship can increase equity in the workplace, and why equity rounds out diversity and inclusion in the modern corporate landscape. Throughout the discussion, they debunk common misconceptions and offer clarifying science.

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 organization. Rewards were obviously in order. So leaders at General Mills experimented with autonomy and rewards to say thanks. Here’s their story (and the science behind it).

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 don’t have a choice but to face it head-on. In this episode Senior Client Strategist at NLI, Rob Ollander-Krane and Senior Director of Neuroscience Research and Dr. Kamila Sip will do just that.

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 facilitates a panel discussion with Francine Rosado-Cruz; Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer, Davis Polk & Wardwell; Janet Stovall, Senior Client Strategist at NLI; and Elizabeth Haines, Professor and Social Scientist at William Paterson University. Together they unpack the research about gender bias, how it shows up in the workplace, and how organizations can put us back on the road to gender parity.

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 Manager at Freddie Mac. Together, they review how their organizations structured inclusion programs, what obstacles they encountered, what they learned along the way, and what wisdom they can share with organizations looking to create similar outcomes.

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 explain our behavior and how this understanding of the brain can impact how we mitigate bias, increase empathy and inclusion, both in ourselves and others.