Brain Hacks: Harnessing Neuroscience for Leadership & Success

Your brain has evolved to help you survive, and its primary job is to keep you safe. The challenge is that your brain rarely distinguishes evolutionary threats (e.g. avoiding a lion) from the everyday – and ever-changing! – stressors of our chaotic and complex modern world. If left untrained, the brain will regularly trigger survival responses to mundane challenges like wading through email or even exciting opportunities like speaking in front of an audience or piloting a creative new solution to an organizational challenge.

The good news is that with understanding, intention, and practice, you can reprogram your brain to capitalize on principles of neuroscience. In this session, you’ll take a journey of brain optimization that teaches you – through evidence-based techniques – how to shift from the reactionary, survival-focused “Lower Brain” to the analytical, rational “Higher Brain,” – a source of creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking. This shift – achieved through targeted brain hacks that can actually strengthen desired neural pathways over time – empowers leaders to excel and drives teams to thrive even in the most challenging environments.

Leadership begins from within. The impact you make starts with you and ripples outwards. By using these brain hacks to bring intention to your own responses, you’ll not only enhance your own leadership abilities but create a culture of success by modeling:

The normalization of experimentation as a “courageous scientist” Embracing authenticity, vulnerability, and transparency in support of a growth mindset More confident, nuanced conversations around difficult or risky topics Fostering teamwork and innovation The embodiment of a culture of learning Increased risk tolerance Normalizing feedback and resilience Supercharged productivity through decreased fear-brain responses (e.g. anxiety, distraction, tunnel vision, and gossip) Personal ownership and accountability An innovative and agile culture In this rapidly changing world, fostering innovation and agility is key to survival and success, and taking control of the brain’s often-turbocharged anxiety and self-preservation responses help you boost the mental and physical health of yourself and those around you.

Be a catalyst for transformation and help unlock the potential of your organization’s greatest asset – its people.

Learn more about course content and register here:

https://sbdc.wisc.edu/brain-hacks/