4 :: Neuroleadership

🚪TL;DR:

I’m no neuroscientist but I’ve actually considered becoming one from the first sight of the transformation potential that hacking our brains to work in our favor can produce. A PhD might be a decision for later, but learning the basics of how to do just that has been fun. Understanding the neurological basis of our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is fundamental to understanding ourselves and the people around us. Leaders included. And understanding it can prompt us to feel better, think better, and act better, hence to be better at leading and being led.

🧠 What is it?
Neuroleadership is a cutting-edge neuroscience field that explores the intersection of neuroscience and leadership. It seeks to leverage the human brain and nervous system’s capabilities, as producers and regulators of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, to develop a stronger leadership profile and boost overall performance. Neuroleaders lead their teams, organizations, and themselves more effectively because they are aware of the triggers, limitations, and opportunities, enabled by brain activation, that can influence their ideal outcomes for each individual (e.g. choosing the right stimuli to motivate action or diffusing foreseen negative reactions).

📦 Why is it relevant?
Most directly, if it can foster creativity, drive optimal decision-making, improve communication and interpersonal relationships, and build resiliency and agility in dealing with ambiguity, it is critical to innovate, and therefore any CINO should look into it. On top of that, the more you know about neuroscience and the better you understand the most intrinsic human needs, motivations, and actions, the better you understand your customers and, consequently, the better the innovations you build. So, I would go as far as arguing that any CINO should become a neuroleader, not only to be better at leading but also at innovating.

🧶 Where to learn more about it:
One of the data scientists developing the algorithms behind the AI products I manage at P&G, who is a neural networks and NLP expert, recommended the book Your Brain at Work in one of our many discussions about neuroscience. That book was the trigger for this issue when I found out about this concept that the author, David Rock, coined and started researching more about it - NeuroLeadership Journal here, to learn more about his scientific work. The other unskippable source for all things neuroscience applied to leadership (but also to health and well-being) is my favorite podcast ever (which also has the coolest newsletter ever): the Huberman Lab, with Dr. Andrew Huberman. It’s so good. You can thank me later.

See you next Tuesday! 👋