Leadership Lessons from Neuroscience

Advances in neuroscience and our understanding of how the brain works have opened up exciting possibilities for both individual and organizational behaviour change. This has important implications for personal development and how human resource professionals approach executive development.

 All successful human endeavour depends on our mind, our emotions, our creativity, and our intuition all working well together. Neuroscience explains how the brain makes this happen, how the brain is constantly changing and evolving, and how it is possible for us to direct these changes.

The simple fact that we all have very different behaviours and thoughts today than we did 20 years ago, is evidence that our brains are shaped by experience. In fact, our brains are constantly changing in structure and organization as we learn and adapt. Each new thought or emotion if repeated frequently enough reinforces a new neural pathway, leading to changes in how our brains work and to a new way of being. This is the concept of neuroplasticity.

This process is happening all the time and continues throughout our lives, albeit with more intensity when we are children. And it happens at great speed - our thoughts come from the chemical signals that pass across the synaptic gaps between neurons. Each neuron can transmit up to 1,000 nerve signals a second and make as many as 10,000 connections with other neurons.

Neuroplasticity underpins the thinking behind Dr Tara Swart’s new book, The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life, and the methodology she adopts in the two programs she teaches at MIT Sloan: Neuroscience for Leadershipand Applied Neuroscience.

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Join Dr Tara Swart's Neuroscience for Leadership program to improve your individual leadership performance and that of your team and organization

Dates: Oct 3-4, 2019 | Mar 26-27, 2020 | Oct 15-16, 2020

Format: In-class study │ Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

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 Join Dr Tara Swart's Applied Neuroscience: Unleashing Brain Power for You and Your People program to inspire your team to catalyze innovation and increase business success 

Dates:  Oct 8-9, 2019 | Mar 31-Apr 1, 2020 | Oct 20-21, 2020         

Format: In-class study │ Location: Cambridge,Massachusetts

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Dr Swart is a neuroscientist and executive coach, with a background in psychiatry. In The Source she focuses on our ability to alter how our brains work, drawing on the latest cognitive science and her experience coaching highly successful people. This sophisticated self-help book offers a four-step plan to awaken the power of the brain, challenge 'autopilot' thinking and rewire the brain's pathways to help readers fulfil their potential.

As Senior MIT Sloan Lecturer, her teaching at MIT takes a deeper dive into the latest neuroscience concepts and how knowledge and techniques derived from brain research and psychology can be leveraged to improve individual leadership performance, as well as that of teams and organizations.

The Neuroscience for Leadership program focuses on issues such as the power of neuroplasticity in unleashing the brain’s agility and resilience, how to vision the future through storytelling, and how to create the conditions for success in organizations by leading teams in a way that shifts the culture from fear to trust. The program aims to raise participants awareness of existing leadership behavioural patterns and barriers to effective leadership, and embed sustainable behaviour change through plasticity of brain connections and pathways through deliberate practice.

The Applied Neuroscience: Unleashing Brain Power for You and Your Peopleprogram explores how the latest neuroscience concepts and techniques can help leaders motivate and inspire their teams, drive innovation, and improve organizational performance. The program explores how an understanding of the implications of neuroscience research can provide senior leaders with a new awareness of existing leadership behavioural patterns and how these effect organizational practices and culture. It can focus attention on actions that promote resilience, and ultimately can lead to significant professional and organizational behaviour change and to gaining a competitive edge.