Most Frequently Requested Programs
Become a Hybrid Work Leader Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to become a hybrid work leader using evidence-based cognitive science techniques. Many leaders rely on traditional office-centric collaboration and management styles in managing hybrid teams. Yet research conclusively demonstrates that, instead of incrementally improving on the old-school office-centric approach, the best outcomes in managing hybrid teams comes from adopting a flexible hybrid-first work model. Doing so results in much higher retention, productivity, engagement, innovation, collaboration, cost savings, and risk mitigation. A hybrid-first model involves best practices adapted specifically to hybrid work contexts. Such best practices include asynchronous brainstorming, remote coworking, virtual water coolers, weekly performance evaluations, addressing proximity bias, and a culture of "Excellence from Anywhere." This training offers case studies and best practices that you need to most effectively manage hybrid staff. Through adopting the methods from this training, your team will excel in retention, productivity, innovation, collaboration, cost savings, and risk management, thus enabling you to become a hybrid leader in our increasingly-disrupted future of work.
- Learn about research on employee preferences and productivity metrics for in-office, hybrid, and remote work
- Identify where your organization might benefit from adopting hybrid-first best practices to excel in retention and recruitment, boost productivity, re-energize company culture, gain substantial cost savings, and manage a wide variety of risks
- Assess how your plans for collaboration in the future of work benchmarks to best practices based on behavioral science research and case studies from forward-looking organizations
- Develop a plan to adapt these best practices for the future of work to your organization
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes, virtual or in-person, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Future-Proofing Mastery for a Post-Pandemic World Using Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your future-proofing skills for a post-pandemic world. Future-proofing refers to the capacity to forecast and address dangerous threats while also anticipating and seizing golden opportunities. We can all agree that future-proofing is key to success in our increasingly disrupted world, yet it’s a surprisingly difficult practice to get right. That’s due to our mental blindspots, dangerous judgment errors: what scientists in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases. Fortunately, cutting-edge studies have uncovered effective future-proofing techniques that address such dangerous judgment errors. This presentation combines case studies, best practices, and groundbreaking research in future-proofing, to give you and your team the most critical skills and take-aways to excel at anticipating and defeating future threats while seizing opportunities.
- Identify where you can most benefit from improving your future-proofing skills
- Assess whether and where you or others on your team suffer from dangerous judgment errors that undermine your future-proofing
- Learn groundbreaking science-based strategies that will enable you and your team to overcome these mental blindspots in your future proofing
- Adapt these future-proofing best practices into your own future-proofing toolkit
- Develop a plan to empower others on your team to adopt effective future-proofing strategies around addressing threats and seizing opportunities
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership or project management role.
Defeating Unconscious Bias Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills in addressing unconscious bias in yourself and in others in your team and organization. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics shows that we all suffer from subtle and unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases, which cause us to make bad decisions in evaluating people. By refining your emotional intelligence, which refers to skills in understanding and managing your emotions, you will gain awareness of when your feelings are likely to lead you into these mental blindspots and prevent yourself from falling into them. You will also raise your abilities in social intelligence, the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. Social intelligence skills – including cultivating valuable relationships, engaging stakeholders, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, exhibiting leadership presence, and motivating others – will enable you to help those in your team and organization to notice unconscious cognitive biases and avoid them. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices, combined with groundbreaking research in emotional and social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and others defeat unconscious bias.
- Identify situations where unconscious bias is likely to lead you astray in evaluating others
- Boost your emotional intelligence abilities to empower you to perceive and avoid unconscious biases
- Refine your social intelligence skills to help others notice their unconscious biases and avoid them
- Discover how to use emotional and social intelligence abilities to defeat unconscious bias
- Adapt emotional and social intelligence-informed strategies on addressing unconscious bias into your own context
- Empower others in your team and organization to defeat unconscious bias through emotional and social intelligence skills
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who works in organizations of at least 25 people and has a role in addressing unconscious bias.
Leading Change Management Through Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills in leading change management by addressing people’s fears about change and inspiring them to follow you to your vision of a brighter future. To do so, the presentation uses groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics to help you gain abilities in the cutting-edge field of social intelligence. Social intelligence is the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. With our world growing increasingly disrupted and interconnected, you know how critical it is for you to empower others to overcome resistance to change. Such resistance represents a basic part of human psychology due to fears of uncertainty and loss of stability that come with any significant shifts. Social intelligence enables you to overcome these fears and inspire positive emotions about your vision of the future, through critical skills that include cultivating valuable relationships, engaging stakeholders, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, exhibiting leadership presence, and motivating your organization’s employees to achieving your change objectives. Pioneering change management leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating social intelligence-based strategies into their change management toolkit to help address fears about change and inspire others to follow them to their vision of a brighter future. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative change management leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to lead change management effectively.
- Identify situations where resistance to change is likely to undermine your change management objectives
- Evaluate where your change management strategies may be misaligned with people’s emotional drivers
- Learn best practices for how you can use social intelligence to lead change management
- Discover how the most effective change management leaders use social intelligence-based strategies to manage and lead change
- Adapt the strategies from these leaders into your own change management toolkit
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their skills at leading change management through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who works in organizations of at least 25 people and has a role in leading change management.
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters via Neuroscience
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your leadership decision-making skills to avoid the disastrous outcomes of wrong decisions. When was the last time you saw a business disaster? Perhaps it was a minor mishap such as unnecessary team conflict that harmed employee engagement and productivity. Maybe it was more significant troubles such as hiring the wrong key employee or losing a top client. Or was it a major calamity that threatened bankruptcy such as failing to foresee rapid market shifts or pursuing the wrong bet-the-company strategy? Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics indicates that most of these disasters are preventable and stem from one or more wrong decisions. Studies show that we all suffer from unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that cause us to make the wrong decisions, especially in the most important and charged leadership contexts. Fortunately, recent decision science has shown how simple yet effective decision-making strategies can enable you to protect yourself and those you lead from cognitive biases and consequently avoid disastrous decisions. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their leadership judgment processes to help the teams and organizations they lead identify and address such mental blindspots and prevent decision-making disasters. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in decision science, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those you lead avoid decision-making disasters.
- Identify situations that might cause you or those you lead to make the wrong decisions that result in disasters
- Assess whether you or your followers suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that trigger disastrous decisions
- Learn the recently-discovered decision-making strategies that will enable you and your followers to protect yourselves from decision disasters
- Discover how the most effective leaders address these mental blindspots through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on avoiding disastrous decisions from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team and organization to avoid decision disasters
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Effective Communication Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your communication skills through emotional and social intelligence. Emotional intelligence, which refers to skills in understanding and managing your emotions, is critical for communicating effectively. When facing stressful communication situations that cause you to experience anger, worry, frustration and similar negative feelings, it’s vital to be aware when your emotions are driving you to say the wrong thing or misinterpret others, which leads to communication disasters. To convey your message to others effectively, you will also need top-notch skills in social intelligence, which refers to the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. Social intelligence skills – including empathetic listening, echoing and mirroring, curious questioning, reframing, conflict mediation and resolution, cultivating valuable relationships, stakeholder engagement, and motivating others – will give you the tools to ensure that others pay attention to your messages. Pioneering communicators at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating emotional and social intelligence abilities into their communication toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from such innovative communicators, combined with groundbreaking research in emotional and social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to be a truly effective communicator.
- Identify communication situations where you might most benefit from using emotional and social intelligence skills
- Boost your emotional intelligence abilities to empower you to be aware of and manage your emotions to avoid saying the wrong thing or misinterpreting others
- Refine your social intelligence skills to ensure that others pay attention to what you have to say
- Discover how top communicators use emotional and social intelligence abilities, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt emotional and social intelligence-informed strategies from these top communicators into your communication toolkit
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their own communication abilities through emotional and social intelligence skills
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who wants to communicate effectively.
Leadership Myths Busted: Cognitive Science Reveals the Surprising Truth About Effective Leaders
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to avoid falling for the many myths about effective leadership. The essence of effective leadership involves making wise decisions. You probably heard advice for leaders to go with their guts, stick to their guns, and be confident when making decisions. Unfortunately, cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics show that following these typical pieces of advice – and many similar ones – often leads to disastrous consequences for leaders. In many cases, our gut reactions and intuitions are a poor fit for leadership contexts. Excessive confidence – while making a leader look strong – prevents them from effectively navigating our quickly-shifting and increasingly-disrupted world. Studies show that we all suffer from unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that cause us to make bad decisions when we rely too much on our instincts and stick to our guns, especially in the most important and charged leadership contexts. Fortunately, recent decision science has shown how simple yet effective decision-making strategies can enable you to protect yourself and those you lead from cognitive biases and consequently avoid disastrous decisions. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their leadership judgment processes to help the teams and organizations they lead identify and address such mental blindspots and prevent decision-making disasters. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in decision science, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself bust leadership myths and avoid decision-making disasters to be a truly effective leader.
- Identify where and when typical leadership advice can help you and where it hurts you
- Understand why and when your gut reactions are a poor fit for leadership contexts, and when your gut reactions will serve you well
- Assess whether you or your followers suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that prevent effective leadership and trigger disastrous decisions
- Learn the recently-discovered decision-making strategies that will enable you and your followers to protect yourselves from decision disasters
- Discover how the most effective leaders address these mental blindspots through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on avoiding disastrous decisions from these effective leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Develop a plan to teach these best leadership practices to other leaders in your organization to help them become truly effective leaders
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Improving Employee Engagement Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to improve employee engagement through gaining social intelligence skills. A 2018 Gallup survey showed that only 34% of all employees feel engaged in their work. Over two-thirds do the minimum required to get by and will leave your employment the minute they get a better opportunity. Such high disengagement not only undermines employee retention, but also seriously reduces productivity. Fortunately, cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics has recently found simple yet effective employee engagement strategies. Deploying them requires refining your social intelligence, the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. Boosting your social intelligence skills – including cultivating valuable relationships, empathetic listening, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, stakeholder engagement, and motivating people – will give you the critical tools you need to improve employee engagement. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating social intelligence-based strategies into their employee engagement toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from such innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to improve dramatically employee engagement.
- Evaluate where your employee engagement strategies may be misaligned with the emotional drivers of your employees
- Learn best practices for how you can use social intelligence to improve employee engagement
- Discover how successful employee engagement efforts use social intelligence-based strategies to achieve improved employee retention and increased productivity, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt the strategies from these effective efforts into your own employee engagement toolkit
- Empower other leaders in your team and organization to improve their skills at boosting employee engagement through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has a role in influencing employee engagement.
How to Defeat Work-From-Home Burnout and Zoom Fatigue Using Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to defeat work-from-home (WFH) burnout and Zoom fatigue in the context of COVID and the post-COVID recovery. Unfortunately, the vast majority of efforts to address WFH burnout treat the symptoms without getting at the root causes. These root causes stem from how organizations transitioned to WFH abruptly due to pandemic lockdowns, without adequately preparing their organizational structure, culture, systems, policies, and people for this shift. Organizations adapted our existing ways of interacting in “office culture” to remote work. Unfortunately, using office-style culture to conduct virtual work is simply forcing a square peg into a round hole. You can do it if you push hard enough, but you’ll break off the corners, in this case meaning the social and emotional glue that comes naturally from our in-office interactions. These in-office interactions bond employees into a company culture and provide a sense of fulfillment, connection, and meaning, all of which protects against burnout, according to cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics. Organizations tried to address this challenge through transposing in-person work events into virtual formats, whether weekly meetings or happy hours. Yet research shows that our emotions don’t process these interactions as truly connecting us on a human-to-human gut level, leading to a feeling of drain, exhaustion, and stress – what we call “Zoom fatigue.” Instead, what organizations need to do is strategically re-evaluate their internal culture, norms, and policies, and recreate new ways of interacting well-suited to a much more virtual environment. This presentation combines case studies, best practices, and groundbreaking research on WFH burnout and Zoom fatigue, to give you and your team the most critical skills and take-aways to needed to defeat these problems.
- Learn about the most common causes of and solutions for WFH burnout and Zoom fatigue
- Identify where your organization might be using office culture-informed norms to interact in virtual settings
- Assess how you can use research-based techniques to improve your organization’s culture of virtual work
- Develop a plan to implement effective techniques to address WFH burnout and Zoom fatigue in your organization
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes, virtual or in-person, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Prudent Risk Management Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your risk management skills by refining your ability to avoid threats and seize opportunities. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics find that the human mind is wired to make many poor decisions when assessing threats and opportunities in modern business environments. Studies show that we all suffer from unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that cause us to make the wrong decisions in risk management, especially regarding the most important and emotionally charged threats and opportunities. Fortunately, recent research has discovered simple yet effective risk management strategies can enable you to notice and avoid potential threats while recognizing and seizing unexpected opportunities. Pioneering risk management experts at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their risk management initiatives. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative experts, combined with groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those on your team and in your organization take the most prudent risks in avoiding threats and seizing opportunities.
- Identify where you can most benefit from improving your risk management skills by avoiding threats and seizing opportunities
- Assess whether you or others on your team suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that result in poor risk management
- Learn the recently-discovered risk management strategies that will enable you and your team members to notice and avoid potential threats while recognizing and seizing unexpected opportunities
- Discover how the most successful risk management initiatives address dangerous judgment errors through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on prudent risk management from these effective initiatives into your own risk management toolkit
- Develop a plan to empower others on your team and in your organization to follow prudent risk management practices around addressing threats and seizing opportunities
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has a role in risk management efforts.
How Outstanding Leaders Avoid Decisions Leading to People Disasters via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills at making excellent decisions about people. Many leaders struggle to retain important employees, lack succession plans to address key people leaving, and have no or weak internal leadership development programs to prepare future leaders to replace those who leave. Some senior leaders find it challenging to motivate those in managerial roles in their company to have difficult conversations with subordinates, leaving such conversations on the shoulders of the senior leader. Destructive leadership conflicts plague the C-suites of many organizations, whether due to personality differences, turf wars, or divergent visions of the goals of the business and the methods required to reach them. Tensions within departments or between departments - such as production vs. sales or legal vs. everyone else - result in weakened performance that undercuts market share and causes the loss of top clients. Strong emotions such as fear of failure or desire to avoid losing face drives employees to sacrifice much larger future gains for the sake of short-term profits, gravely damaging the long-term potential of their companies. These and many similar problems result in disastrous consequences for your bottom line. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics shows that the large majority of such people-related disasters stem from one or a number of poor decisions. These bad decisions result from unconscious dangerous judgment errors that scholars call cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent behavioral economic decision science has shown how simple yet effective decision-making strategies can enable you to protect yourself and those you lead from cognitive biases and consequently avoid disastrous people-related decisions. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their leadership judgment processes to help the teams and organizations they lead identify and address such mental blindspots and prevent people decision-making disasters. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in decision science, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those you lead make the best people decisions.
- Identify situations that might cause you or those you lead to make the wrong decisions that result in people disasters
- Assess whether you or your followers suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that trigger disastrous people decisions
- Learn the recently-discovered decision-making strategies that will enable you and your followers to protect yourselves from people decision disasters
- Discover how the most effective leaders address these mental blindspots through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on avoiding disastrous people decisions from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team and organization to avoid people decision disasters
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Adapting to Disruption Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to adapt to current and future disruption through refining your innovation skills. The rapid pace of social and especially technological transformation has led to our world growing increasingly disrupted. The pace of change and thus future disruption is only growing. This disruption brings you unexpected and dangerous threats as well as surprising and promising opportunities. Innovation skills involve improving your ability to adapt quickly to disruption by refining your ability to avoid threats and seize opportunities. Unfortunately, cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics find that the human mind is wired to make many poor decisions when assessing threats and opportunities, especially in the context of the ambiguity accompanying disruption. Studies show that we all suffer from unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that cause us to make the wrong decisions, especially regarding the most important and emotionally charged threats and opportunities. Fortunately, recent research has discovered simple yet effective innovation strategies can enable you to notice and avoid potential threats while recognizing and taking advantage of unexpected opportunities. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their efforts to avoid threats and seizing opportunities. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovation leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those on your team and in your organization develop the skills that you need to adapt to the threats and opportunities accompanying disruption.
- Identify where you can most benefit from improving your innovation skills of avoiding threats and seizing opportunities accompanying disruption
- Assess whether you or others on your team suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that harm your ability to adapt to disruption
- Learn the recently-discovered innovation strategies that will enable you and your team members to notice and avoid potential threats while recognizing and seizing unexpected opportunities resulting from disruption
- Discover how the most successful innovation leaders address dangerous judgment errors through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on adapting to disruption through innovation from these leaders into your own innovation toolkit
- Develop a plan to empower others on your team and in your organization to adapt to the threats and opportunities resulting from disruption via boosting their innovation skills
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has a role in adapting to disruption and pursuing innovation.
Exceptional Coaching Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your coaching ability through boosting your social intelligence. Coaching others has grown increasingly important in today’s professional world in order to accomplish your business objectives. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics has recently found truly effective coaching strategies by studying social intelligence, the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. Boosting your social intelligence abilities – including cultivating valuable relationships, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, stakeholder engagement, storytelling, and ethical persuasion – will give you the critical tools you need to gain exceptional coaching skills. Those most noted for their effective coaching are increasingly integrating social intelligence-based strategies into their coaching toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these coaching leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to improve dramatically your coaching ability.
- Evaluate where your coaching ability is strong and where it needs improvement
- Learn best practices for how you can use social intelligence to improve coaching skills
- Discover how those most noted for their effective coaching are using social intelligence-based strategies to improve their coaching skills
- Adapt the strategies from these effective efforts into your own coaching toolkit
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their coaching skills through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who wants to coach others effectively.
Stakeholder Engagement Excellence Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills in engaging external stakeholders to advance the mission of your organization. It’s easy for you to understand and appreciate the important goals, values, and mission of your organization, and the benefit you bring to external stakeholders. It’s much harder for you to communicate it to these stakeholders or for them to understand it, at least when you use traditional methods of communication. To build your stakeholder engagement capacity, the presentation uses groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics in the cutting-edge subfield of social intelligence. Social intelligence is the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. It includes critical skills such as cultivating valuable relationships, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, exhibiting leadership presence, storytelling, and ethical pursuasion. The most effective stakeholder engagement efforts are increasingly integrating cutting-edge social intelligence-based strategies into their toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these effective and cutting-edge stakeholder engagement efforts, combined with groundbreaking research in social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to improve greatly your capacity for engaging external stakeholders.
- Assess where your stakeholder engagement capacity is strong and where it requires further improvement
- Identify stakeholder engagement situations where you might most benefit from deploying social intelligence skills
- Learn best practices for how you can use social intelligence to engage external stakeholders effectively
- Refine your social intelligence skills to ensure that you can most effectively understand and influence stakeholders
- Discover how the most effective stakeholder engagement efforts use social intelligence-based strategies
- Adapt social intelligence-informed strategies on stakeholder engagement from these efforts into your own toolkit
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their skills at stakeholder engagement through social intelligence
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has a role in external stakeholder engagement.
Busting Generational Myths to Excel at Engaging Young Employees Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to excel at engaging young employees. Many myths prevail about young employees in the workplace. Very few are actually supported by cutting-edge cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics research. The prevalence of these myths stems from dangerous judgment errors that cognitive neuroscientists call cognitive biases, which gravely impair the ability of leaders to engage young employees. For example, the false consensus effect – our tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people share our perspectives and values – leads to senior personnel seeing young employees as younger versions of themselves. As a result, senior personnel are frustrated by behaviors that don’t align with what they see as appropriate for younger versions of themselves, resulting in myths of young employee laziness, lack of attention, and poor social skills. However, the young employees of today grew up in a different societal and technological context than senior personnel. They are digital natives who are more introverted and prefer to interact and work through technology rather than face-to-face, and they have excellent social skills in that context. Given the appropriate environment, young employees truly excel and are thoroughly engaged. Pioneering leaders and organizations are getting ahead by providing young employees with what they need to succeed and teaching senior personnel how to interact effectively with digital natives, resulting in outstanding young employee engagement. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to excel at engaging young employees.
- Learn about the cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics research busting generational myths and revealing truly effective strategies for engaging young employees
- Identify where your current strategies for young employee engagement work well and where they need improvement
- Assess where you or others on your team suffer from dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that harm your ability to engage young employees
- Discover best practices from the most successful leaders at engaging young employees
- Adapt these best practices on engaging young employees from these leaders into your own innovation toolkit
- Develop a plan to empower others on your team and in your organization to integrate best practices for engaging young employees
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has a role in engaging young employees.
How Effective Leaders Make the Most Profitable Decisions Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills in decision making by learning how effective leaders make the best decisions to improve their bottom line. When was the last time you saw a profit-destroying business disaster? Perhaps it was a minor mishap such as unnecessary team conflict that harmed employee engagement and productivity. Maybe it was more significant troubles such as hiring the wrong key employee or losing a top client. Or was it a major calamity that threatened bankruptcy such as failing to foresee rapid market shifts or pursuing the wrong bet-the-company strategy? Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics show that most of these disasters are preventable and stem from one or more poor decisions. Studies show that we all suffer from unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases. These mental blindspots cause us to make bad decisions, especially in the most important and charged leadership contexts. Fortunately, recent decision science has shown how simple yet effective decision-making strategies can enable you to protect yourself and those you lead from cognitive biases and consequently make the most profitable decisions. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their leadership judgment processes, to help the teams and organizations they lead identify and address such mental blindspots so as to optimize their bottom line. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in decision science, to provide you with the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those you lead make the most profitable decisions.
- Identify situations that might cause you or those you lead to make bad decisions that result in profit-destroying disasters
- Assess whether you or your followers suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that trigger disastrous decisions
- Learn the recently-discovered decision-making strategies that will enable you and your followers to make the most profitable decisions
- Discover how the most effective leaders address these mental blindspots through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on making the most profitable decisions from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team and organization to make the wisest decisions for your bottom line
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
How to Gather Quality Data to Inform Truly Effective Decision Making via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your skills in gathering quality data to inform truly effective decision making. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics shows that we all have mental blindspots called cognitive biases that prevent us from gathering quality data and lead to poor decisions, as illustrated by the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” For example, we tend to look for information that confirms our beliefs and ignore contradictory evidence; we don’t give due consideration to other people’s motives, feelings, and incentives for sharing or withholding information; we feel too confident that our plans will go well, and fail to guard against risks and problems sufficiently. Fortunately, the same fields of research have also revealed how simple yet effective information-gathering strategies can protect us from falling for garbage information, and instead enable us to gather top-quality data. Those at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating such strategies into their information-gathering toolkit. This presentation will offer you best practices from these innovators, combined with groundbreaking research, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways for gaining a competitive advantage by gathering the most relevant and accurate information and making truly effective decisions.
- Assess where you or your team members might suffer from subtle mental blindspots (called cognitive biases) that result in gathering inaccurate or irrelevant information
- Learn the recently-discovered information-gathering strategies that will enable you and your team members to gather high-quality data to inform truly effective decision making
- Discover how those at the forefront of innovation address these mental blindspots through deploying such strategies
- Adapt best practices on collecting quality data into your own information-gathering toolkit
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team to gather the highest quality data to inform top-notch decision making
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes, virtual or in-person, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who wants to gather quality information to inform effective decision making
Why Do Smart Leaders Ignore Serious Risks in the Post-Pandemic World (and What to Do About It Via Cognitive Science)
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to recognize hidden risks in the post-pandemic world and help your team members and business collaborators do so as well. Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics show that we all tend to miss risks in a time of change due to unconscious dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases. Mental blindspots such as the ostrich effect and confirmation bias cause us to deny uncomfortable facts about risks, even serious and obvious ones, due to how our brains are wired. Even when we recognize such risks, our colleagues and business partners often miss them. Our typical methods of trying to convince them through facts and arguments often fail, leading to unnecessary conflicts and often disastrously bad decisions. This presentation will offer you case studies, best practices, and groundbreaking research to provide you with the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself recognize and avoid such risks in the post-pandemic world and successfully convince your collaborators to do so.
- Assess where you or your team members might suffer from subtle mental blindspots (called cognitive biases) that result in missing hidden risks
- Learn the recently-discovered strategies that will enable you and your team members to uncover potential hidden risks
- Discover best practices to convince others effectively to recognize and avoid hidden risks
- Adapt best practices on helping yourself recognize hidden risks and convincing others to do so as well
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team to recognize hidden risks and convince others to do so
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes, virtual or in-person, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who wants to manage risks.
Successful Strategic Pivots for Leaders Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your ability to do a successful strategic pivot. Cutting-edge neuroscience and behavioral economics research shows that leaders tend to wait too long before making a strategic pivot to adapt to changing market conditions. When they do pivot, it's often done in a rapid and top-down manner, without getting nearly enough information and considering relevant alternatives. Instead, the best pivot strategy involves starting by challenging your underlying assumptions about your systems and processes for a variety of future scenarios. Next, you need to gather information from employees and other internal stakeholders as well as clients and other external stakeholders about their perspectives on challenging these assumptions. Then, evaluate potential future scenarios for external market conditions. Using all of this information, determine your broad strategy, and how it would shift depending on the various scenarios. Finally, decide on how you will operationalize your strategy in each scenario, determine your next steps, and assign responsibility for these steps to your team. This presentation will offer you pragmatic and immediately-applicable research-based strategies for doing a strategic pivot and developing a long-term strategic plan to navigate changing market conditions successfully.
- Learn about how to recognize in a timely manner that you need to do a strategic pivot
- Discover effective techniques for gathering information from internal and external stakeholders to prepare for a strategic pivot
- Cultivate your ability to explore a variety of alternatives for your pivot strategy in different future scenarios
- Tailor the best practices on doing a successful strategic pivot to your own situation and context
- Develop a long-term strategic plan to operationalize a successful strategic pivot
- This program is usually delivered in a keynote of 60-90 minutes, virtual or in-person, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone in a leadership position who wants to learn how to do successful strategic pivots to cope with changing market conditions
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your leadership skills through refining your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, which refers to the skill set of understanding your emotions and then managing them effectively, are critical for you leading yourself. When facing tough leadership situations that cause you to experience anger, worry, frustration and similar negative feelings, it’s vital to be aware when your emotions are driving you to make the wrong decisions that might result in business disasters. You also need to know how to harness and channel these emotions to motivate yourself and lead others to reach your goals. Likewise, emotional intelligence is crucial for addressing within yourself unconscious bias and other dangerous judgment errors that behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience calls cognitive biases. Using the skill of emotional awareness, you can learn to recognize the cognitive biases to which you’re most likely to be prone, and the situations when they come up. After you gain awareness, the ability of emotional management will enable you to avoid falling for these dangerous judgment errors. Pioneering leaders are increasingly integrating emotional intelligence abilities into their leadership toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from such leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in emotional intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to lead yourself most effectively.
- Identify leadership settings where you might most benefit from using emotional intelligence skills
- Boost your emotional intelligence abilities to empower you to be aware of and manage your emotions to make the best decisions and motivate yourself and others effective
- Discover how truly effective leaders use emotional intelligence abilities
- Adapt emotional intelligence-informed strategies for effective leadership from these leaders into your own context
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their own leadership effectiveness through emotional intelligence skills
- This program is usually delivered in a webinar or keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
Socially Intelligent Leadership Via Cognitive Science
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your leadership skills through refining your social intelligence. At heart, leadership is about influencing others to accomplish goals set by the leader. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics shows that our decisions and behaviors overwhelmingly stem from our emotions. Therefore, to really influence others effectively, you need top-notch skills in social intelligence, the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s emotions and relationships. Social intelligence skills – including cultivating valuable relationships, stakeholder engagement, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, exhibiting leadership presence, and motivating people – will give you the critical tools to influence others to achieve your leadership goals. Pioneering leaders at the forefront of innovation are increasingly integrating social intelligence abilities into their leadership toolkit. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from such leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in social intelligence, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to lead others most effectively.
- Identify leadership settings where you might most benefit from using social intelligence skills
- Refine your social intelligence skills, including cultivating valuable relationships, stakeholder engagement, empathetic listening, curious questioning, improving teamwork, mediating and resolving conflicts, reframing, exhibiting leadership presence, and motivating people
- Discover how truly effective leaders use social intelligence abilities
- Adapt social intelligence-informed strategies for effective leadership from these leaders into your own context
- Empower others in your team and organization to improve their own leadership effectiveness through social intelligence skills
- This program is usually delivered in a webinar or keynote of 90 minutes, with time built in for audience peer-to-peer interaction and Q&A. It can range from a brief TED-style talk of 20 minutes, to a 60-90 minute keynote, to a half-day or full-day workshop with extensive interactive exercises. Note – due to the extensive skills under the rubric of “social intelligence,” this topic is especially fitting for a half-day or full-day workshop.
- This program is well-suited for anyone who has or aspires to a leadership role.
In-Depth Sample Program for 8-Hour Workshop
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters
This sample program is designed for a whole-day workshop. It can be shortened to a half-day workshop, a 60 to 90-minute keynote, or 20-minute TED-style talk.
In this engaging, interactive, and entertaining presentation, you will dramatically improve your leadership decision-making skills to avoid the disastrous outcomes of wrong decisions. When was the last time you saw a business disaster? Perhaps it was a minor mishap such as unnecessary team conflict that harmed employee engagement and productivity, or more significant troubles such as hiring the wrong key employee or losing a top client, or maybe major calamities that threaten bankruptcy such as failing to foresee rapid market shifts or pursuing the wrong bet-the-company strategy? Cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics show that most of these disasters are preventable and stem from one or more wrong decisions. Studies show that we all suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that cause us to make the wrong decisions, especially in the most important and charged leadership contexts. Fortunately, recent decision science has shown how simple yet effective decision-making strategies can enable you to protect yourself and those you lead from cognitive biases and consequently avoid disastrous decisions. Studies show that the truly effective leaders, consciously or unconsciously, emulate many aspects of these effective decision-making strategies, and innovative leaders have recently begun intentionally integrating such strategies into their leadership judgment processes to help the teams and organizations they lead identify and address such mental blindspots and prevent decision-making disasters. This presentation will offer you case studies and best practices from these innovative leaders, combined with groundbreaking research in decision science, to give you the most critical skills and take-aways that you need to help yourself and those you lead avoid decision-making disasters.
- Identify situations that might cause you or those you lead to make the wrong decisions that result in disasters
- Assess whether you or your followers suffer from subtle dangerous judgment errors (called cognitive biases) that trigger disastrous decisions
- Learn the recently-discovered decision-making strategies that will enable you and your followers to protect yourselves from decision disasters
- Discover how the most effective leaders address these mental blindspots through such strategies, consciously or unconsciously
- Adapt best practices on avoiding disastrous decisions from these leaders into your own leadership toolkit
- Develop processes that empower everyone in your team and organization to avoid decision disasters
- Planned Agenda (480 minutes)
- 60-minute presentation on decision-making
- It will focus on where and how dangerous judgment errors (cognitive biases) pose the biggest risks for leaders and how leaders can most effectively notice and address such dangers.
- 15-minute Q&A
- 15-minute break
- 60-minute assessment exercise
- Training participants will get a free copy of the “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace” and take the assessment. Then, they will discuss the assessment outcomes in groups of 3-4. Each participant will have a chance to get suggestions for addressing these problems from other participants and the presenter. Each participant will also commit to at least two next steps and exchange information with other participants to help support each other and hold each other accountable after the meeting. At the end there will be a reporting out from different groups, to give each a chance to learn from the others. The presenter will also provide a free electronic manual with assessment templates for participants to enable others in their organization members to take the assessment. Out of this exercise, participants will get a pragmatic and specific and practical understanding where such dangerous judgment errors might be posing the biggest risks in their work.
- 15-minute break
- 60-minute technique implementation exercise:
- This segment will focus on the “Failure-Proofing” technique, a highly effective tool to address dangerous judgment errors. Participants will get into groups of 3-4. Each participant will choose a current project or process in their organization. Then, they will be asked to imagine that the project or process suffered a disaster. They will then brainstorm all the plausible threats that could cause this failure. Next, they will evaluate numerically the likelihood of each threat occurring, as well as the significance of the threat if it does come about. Then, they will brainstorm ways of addressing the threats. Finally, they will check for gut reactions and cognitive biases. Each participant will have a chance to get suggestions at each step of the process from other participants and the presenter. Each participant will also commit to at least two next steps and exchange information with other participants to help support each other and hold each other accountable after the meeting. At the end there will be a reporting out from different groups, to give each a chance to learn from the others. The presenter will also provide a free electronic manual that they can use to educate those in their organization about this strategy. Out of this exercise, participants will get not only a clear set of pragmatic fixes to potential threats to the projects and processes they oversee, but also a thorough understanding of how to apply this strategy in their day-to-day activities.
- 60-minute lunch break
- 60-minute technique implementation exercise:
- This segment will focus on the “Avoiding Disastrous Decisions” technique, a highly effective tool to minimize risks in making decisions. Participants will get into groups of 3-4. Each participant will choose a potential upcoming major decision, and then decide on the criteria for decision-making. Next, they will weigh the relative importance of these criteria. Then, they will rank the options. Next, they will multiply the weighted criteria by the rankings to get initial numbers. Finally, they will check for gut reactions and cognitive biases. Each participant will have a chance to get suggestions at each step of the process from other members and the presenter. Each participant will also commit to at least two next steps and exchange information with other participants to help support each other and hold each other accountable after the meeting. At the end there will be a reporting out from different groups, to give each a chance to learn from the others. The presenter will also provide a free electronic manual that they can use to educate those in their organization about this strategy. Out of this exercise, members will get not only a solid answer to whatever decision they chose, but also a thorough understanding of how to apply this strategy in their professional activities.
- 15-minute break
- 60-minute technique implementation exercise:
- This segment will focus on the “Addressing Threats and Seizing Opportunities” technique, a highly effective tool for making a long-term plan that incorporates addressing typical judgment errors. Participants will get into groups of 3-4. Each participant will choose a broad area of their professional activity. Then, they will evaluate the kind of resources required to address this area if everything goes according to plan. Next, they will address potential internal and external threats and opportunities that might arise in this area, the probability that such threats will occur, the ways such threats might be addressed, and the additional resources that might be required. They will also check for gut reactions and cognitive biases. Each participant will have a chance to get suggestions at each step of the process from other members and the presenter. Each participant will also commit to at least two next steps and exchange information with other participants to help support each other and hold each other accountable after the meeting. At the end there will be a reporting out from different groups, to give each a chance to learn from the others. The presenter will also provide a free electronic manual that they can use to educate those in their organization about this strategy. Out of this exercise, participants will not only get a clear vision of the future plan and resource requirements for the specific broad area of their professional activities that they chose, but also a thorough understanding of how to apply this strategy to other areas.
- 15-minute break
- 30-minute plan development interactive exercise:
- Training participants will get into pairs with a partner. They will develop a specific plan for integrating all the information presented in the program into their professional context, including how to teach these techniques to others in their organization. They will discuss this plan with their partner, address any issues, and exchange contact information to have the partner support them and hold them accountable. Out of this exercise, members will get a thorough plan for specific next steps in integrating all the information from the training into their daily professional lives.
- 15-minute conclusion presentation, summarizing and integrating all the points brought up earlier
If you’re interested in having one of these programs customized to your audience, or if you would like us to create a special program to meet your needs by using his expertise in decision-making and emotional and social intelligence, get in touch today!
