NeuroLeadership Summits Blog

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Making New Connections in Sydney

The theme for the Asia Pacific NeuroLeadership summit was ‘Making new connections’ and we certainly achieved that and a lot more.

Here’s how we know the event was a success:

•Attendance at the preconference on Neuroscience 101, over 80 people, which was very well received
• The number of senior business leaders who actually attended most sessions (a rarity nowadays)

Neuroleadership Books • The very high number of books bought per person at the store – we had arranged just the right set of books selected for the 5 tracks emerging within this discipline
• Over one third of attendees registered for 2007 Summit DVDs membership of the Institute, giving them an opportunity to stay connected
• Sales of DVD’s from the first summit, released in Sydney

Making new connections • Strong participation in the self-organizing ‘connection sessions’.
• The fabulous comments from participants about the world class speakers

The new design of the event, based on feedback from the first summit, was New Summit Design more inclusive, and allowed for significant time for participants to digest the ideas, connect with each other and talk with the experts.

The format modeled how the brain likes to learn (intense bursts, then rest, with processes for integration such as informal and small group discussion time.)
Sydney, Australia And finally there was the great location (yes, the view in the picture was the view from the deck where we had every break) and the perfect weather, the first good weather of spring.

If you couldn’t make it to the Sydney Summit, you can order a digital summary of the event. This includes audio recordings of most sessions, as well as many of the slides and other resources. (This will be sent on a flash disk.) There is also a full audio summary of this event, and other audio resources here.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Asia Pacific/Sydney Summit Underway

The NeuroLeadership Summit being held in Sydney, Australia is in full swing and we are wrapping it up today. The Keynotes and breakout sessions have held captive audiences as they learn more about how the brain works and how they can use this information to be better coaches, facilitators and managers of people.

View the Sydney program.

NY Summit Program Confirmed

The program for the North American Summit being held in New York City is confirmed and Keynotes include:

Attention changes the brain

Know thyself: the latest science of mindfulness

Stay cool under pressure

The brain is a social animal

Drive change

Feel free to follow this link to download the NeuroLeadership NY Summit Program.

September 08 Update

Hi everyone,

The big news right now is a fantastic article in the New Yorker Magazine, that summarizes the science emerging within one of my favourite areas of study, insight. Written by Jonah Lehrer, with interviews with Mark Jung-Beeman, the article is a must-read for anyone interested in the brain and leadership, innovation, coaching and change. To me insight is at the heart of change, and real change has an insight at the core. Download the article here.

I also recently interviewed Jonah about his current book, and he is speaking in NYC at the NeuroLeadership Summit. He will be running a session with Mark Jung-Beeman, along with one of the founders of the Blueman Group, all about the science of insight. You can listen to the 30 minute interview here.

One of the most fun parts of what I do is getting to spend time with some incredibly smart people, and Jonah is one of these for sure. Jonah also runs the best blog in the world for people interested in the latest neuroscience research. It's called the Frontal Cortex, and it's well worth diving into.

There was a great article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about the NeuroLeadership field, a full page story with photos.

I am about to dive into the first of the two Neuroleadership summits. The programs are all finalized, you can dowload them on the neuroleadership site. Am also excited to be editing the first neuroleadership journal, which will come out around the NYC Summit at the end of October. We have over a dozen papers rich in insights and ideas coming together. I am publishing a paper on Influencing Others, with a summary of some of the key social neuroscience research.

Between the two summits I will be visiting Oxford University to give a talk, and spending time at CIMBA in Asolo, Italy, where I am on faculty. I look forward to working with a new group of MBA students, introducing them to the key findings from neuroscience as they start their year long MBA. It's exciting to be part of the team at CIMBA building a brain-based MBA for future leaders.

One thing I know for sure is that knowing about the brain is proving to be tremendously useful for staying cool under pressure amongst the chaos that is life. The more I am learning, the easier it is to catch debilitating patterns before they take hold. As a paper I read this week said, (by Craig Hassed who is teaching mindfulness to medical students), there are lots of trains of thought your mind travels along. I believe that knowing about your brain gives you more ability to choose which train to get onto, and more importantly, which to stay off.

That's about it for now. Please feel free to email me, davidrock@workplacecoaching.com, with any feedback about what you find useful or meaningful in this blog.