The 4 Brain Superpowers You Need to Be a Successful Leader, According to Neuroscience 10-16

Leaders who understand how brains work can make themselves and their teams more nimble, innovative, and resilient.

Kevin Chin wants his executives to limber up their brains.

Chin's investment company, Arowana, based in Sydney, Australia, is expanding into London, Los Angeles, and Asia, and "it is imperative to have a senior leadership team that is mentally agile and resilient," says Chin. Last year, the entrepreneur began working with Tara Swart, a neuroscientist, executive coach, and lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Now, he is extending that coaching to his top decision-makers so they, too, can get in touch with their amygdala.

Interest in applying neuroscience to business has been mounting for decades. One reason, according to Swart, is that leaders prefer the idea of optimizing an organ--which is tangible--to the idea of optimizing behavior--which is not. "If I say, 'You need to be more emotionally intelligent,' I have had people respond, 'I don't understand what I'm supposed to do,'" she says. "If I tell them, 'You can build a pathway in your brain that will make it easier for you,' then many are more willing to embark on that process."

Optimized thinking requires a healthy brain, and so part of Swart's advice falls into the familiar sleep-eat-hydrate-and-exercise domain. Disturbed sleep is particularly damaging. Your IQ can take a hit of 5 percent or more after a bad night. (Swart began working with Chin to combat the debilitating effects of jet lag on his sleep and, consequently, his thinking.)

A well-fed, rested, and oxygenated brain is necessary for mental resilience and peak performance amid stress and uncertainty. "When all other things are equal, mental resilience is the factor that really distinguishes the CEO," says Swart. To improve resilience and performance, Swart recommends leaders work on the following:

1. Neuroplasticity

"Everything you have experienced in your life has molded and shaped your brain to favor certain behaviors and habits," says Swart. But those behaviors and habits may not be optimal. By focusing attention on and repeatedly practicing new, desirable behaviors, leaders can redirect their brains' chemical, hormonal, and physical resources to create new pathways. The old ones, meanwhile, wither from lack of use.

Learning--particularly attention-heavy subjects like a language or a musical instrument--is the best way to enhance plasticity. "The fact that you are forced to attend to things that your brain hasn't experienced before has its own benefit apart from what you learn," says Swart. "The brain becomes more flexible, which [supports] things like being able to regulate your emotions, solve complex problems, and think more creatively."

2. Brain agility

To be nimble, you must think nimbly. Brain agility is the ability to switch seamlessly among different ways of thinking: from the logical to the intuitive to the creative. Agility may be particularly important for entrepreneurs. "The fact that the brain is likely to think in diverse ways or absorb diverse ideas means that you are more likely to spot trends, pivot, be ahead of the curve," says Swart.
Multitaskers who try to use several modes of thinking at once generally do less well at all of them. Swart recommends working on problems consecutively and looking at them from different angles. Leaders can also leverage different thinking styles within their teams.

3. Mindset mastery

People with fixed mindsets believe traits like intelligence and talent are settled. People with growth mindsets see themselves as works in progress who develop their intelligence and talent through hard work. A fixed mindset leads to stagnation: a growth mindset to innovation and progress.
Leaders with fixed mindsets should use neuroplasticity to try to move themselves toward growth, according to Swart. For entrepreneurs, that may not be a stretch. "It is about your appetite for risk and attitude toward failure, so it makes sense that entrepreneurs are more comfortable with this," she says.

4. Simplicity

A hyperactive world places impossible demands on limited brains. Stress rises. Decision-making suffers. Swart advises that leaders practice mindfulness--focusing on their bodies, breathing, and thoughts in the moment--as a way to reduce stress hormones and multiply folds in the part of the brain associated with executive function. She is also an advocate of reducing noncritical decisions. "Figure out what you are going to wear the night before or wear the same thing every day," she says.
Leaders who know how to improve their own brain function can then apply those lessons to their companies. For example, by creating cross-functional work programs they help employees forge new neuro-pathways and develop brain flexibility as they master unfamiliar knowledge and skills.
Leaders can also use their understanding of the brain to drive fear and stress out of the workplace and to develop trust. Stress spikes cortisol in the brain, which negatively affects thinking and the ability to control emotions. At sustained levels, people go into survival mode.

By contrast, "if you are in a really exciting environment where you have got lots of the hormone oxytocin flowing around your organization, you are more likely to make decisions that are not based on scarcity and survival but on abundance," says Swart. Innovation and risk-taking flourish.

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This “Smart Drug” Could Hack Your Brain Chemistry to Increase Your Intelligence. 05-12

Qualia is a 42 ingredient 'smart drug' designed to provide users with immediate, noticeable uplift of their subjective experience within 20 minutes of taking it, as well as long-term benefits to their neurology and overall physiologic functioning.

The Science of Nootropics

Nootropics, broadly speaking, are substances that can safely enhance cognitive performance. They’re a group of (as yet unclassified) research chemicals, over-the-counter supplements, and a few prescription drugs, taken in various combinations—that are neither addictive nor harmful, and don’t come laden down with side-effects—that are basically meant to improve your brain’s ability to think.
Right now, it’s not entirely clear how nootropics as a group work, for several reasons. How effective any one component of a nootropic supplement (or a stack) is depends on many factors, including the neurochemistry of the user, which is connected to genes, mood, sleep patterns, weight, and other characteristics.

However, there are some startups creating and selling nootropics that have research scientists on their teams, with the aim of offering reliable, proven cognitive enhancers. Qualia is one such nootropic. This 42 ingredient supplement stack is created by the Neurohacker Collective, a group that boasts an interdisciplinary research team including Sara Adães, who has a PhD in neuroscience and Jon Wilkins, a Harvard PhD in biophysics.

Smart Drugs

Some of Qualia’s ingredients are found in other stacks: Noopept, for example, and Vitamin B complex are some of the usual suspects in nootropics. Green tea extract, L-Theanine, Taurine, and Gingko Biloba are also familiar to many users, although many of the other components might stray into the exotic for most of us. Mucuna Pruriens, for example, is a source of L-Dopa, which crosses the blood–brain barrier, to increase concentrations of dopamine in the brain; L-Dopa is commonly used to treat dopamine-responsive dystonia and Parkinson’s disease.

The website says that the ‘smart drug’ is designed to provide users with “immediate, noticeable uplift of [their] subjective experience within 20 minutes of taking it, as well as long-term benefits to [their] neurology and overall physiologic functioning.” For people climbing their way up in Silicon Valley, it’s a small price to pay. What would you do with 10 percent more productivity, time, income, or intelligence?

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How to defend against your own mind 20-10

Image credit: Shyam's Imagination Library


New project to use podcasts, video to illuminate bias, improve decision-making. 

When it comes to some of the most important decisions we make — how much to bid for a house, the right person to hire, or how to plan for the future — there is strong scientific evidence that our brains play tricks on us.




Luckily, Mahzarin Banaji has a solution: Understand how your mind works so that you can learn to outsmart it.

The Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics and chair of the Department of Psychology is launching a new project — dubbed Outsmarting Human Minds — aimed at using short videos and podcasts to expose hidden biases and explore ways to combat them.

“The behavioral sciences give us insights into what gets in the way of reaching our professional goals, of being true to our own deepest values,” Banaji said. “The science is not new, but its message is still one most people have difficulty grasping and understanding.”

Banaji and research fellow Olivia Kang, with funding from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and a grant from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, developed Outsmarting Human Minds as a way to deliver up-to-date thinking about hidden biases in an engaging way.

“Everyone wants to know what’s happening in their minds, and they want to know what they can do to make better decisions,” Kang said. “The science is out there; the challenge is getting it to the public in a way that captures their interest.”

The impetus for the project came in part from Banaji’s perspective as a senior adviser on faculty development to Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith.

Speaking of that role, Banaji said, “I try to expose what the mind sciences have taught us about how we make decisions. The hope is that the faculty will put this information to use … in decisions about how to imagine the future of their disciplines.”

Banaji has taught on decision-making to any number of organizations, including corporations, nonprofits, and the military. Questions about how to confront hidden biases are common.



“I want to put the science in the hands of people — or rather, in the heads of people — and have them ask: How can I outsmart my own mind? How can I be the person I want to be?”

She emphasized that watching a video or listening to a podcast isn’t enough to address hidden bias.
“Learning brings awareness and understanding. It cannot itself put an end to the errors we make,” she said. “To achieve corrections that will matter to society, we must learn to behave differently.”

Said Kang: “We want to deliver this information to people in a way that doesn’t make them feel that they’re a bad person if they have these biases. The fact is, we all do. This is about acknowledging that hidden biases are a product of how we’re wired and the culture we live in. And then agreeing that we want to do something about it — that we can use this knowledge to improve the decisions we make in life and at work.”

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What Insights lie at the intersection of Neuroscience and Marketing 07-02

Research into the interplay between the discipline of neuroscience — which studies the brain and the nervous system — and marketing could help to explain how people make decisions, how they react to stimuli and what triggers might amplify or diminish the impulses that drive social interactions or even innovation in a business setting. Such research also raises ethical questions on how those insights might be used, and how to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands.

Those are the opportunities and challenges for the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, which was launched in September 2016, according to Michael Platt, its director. Platt, a neuroscientist, is also a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, the department of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the marketing department at Wharton. Creating the neuroscience initiative “at the intersection of medicine and business … is a provocative idea,” said Platt. But he is convinced that “it sends a clear signal to business schools, universities and people in industry that neuroscience is here, and the future of business is in neuroscience.”

Technological developments in the space also make it an opportune time for such an initiative, according to Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson, who is managing director and senior fellow of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. She pointed to the “huge boom” in wearable neurotech, and the proliferation of devices such as heartbeat monitoring watches, sleep monitoring gadgets and brainwave headbands. “[Students] need to know how to tell hype from what’s practical,” she said. “We need them to be savvy about that.” Platt and Johnson were previously colleagues at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences.

Platt and Johnson discussed the intersection of neuroscience and business on the Marketing Matters show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)


How We Tick, Why We Tick

Businesses and marketers need to get up to speed on the use of neuroscience in advertising and marketing, according to Catharine Hays, executive director of the Wharton Future of Advertising program, who co-hosts the Marketing Matters show. “The essence of the initiative is grounded in helping people, understanding how we tick, why we tick, and then using that information to make sure that we tick well,” she said. It helps that Penn has a large neuroscience community, she noted.
Platt expanded on Hays’s comments and said, “Knowing something more about how we tick as individuals and how we tick together sometimes and sometimes we don’t could impact the way we do business and educate the next generation of students….”

According to Platt, the “tremendous strides” in neuroscience over the last couple of decades will help people with brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Those same advances in neuroscience will also help businesses and individuals “reach their maximum potential to create value for society,” he added.

The Wharton Neuroscience Initiative this year started an Introduction to Brain Science for Business course. It essentially uses business as a vehicle to teach students neuroscience, and also a means to convey some of the emerging areas for applications, said Platt. Some of those are in the area of marketing, to test the effectiveness of advertising such as engaging people and predicting sales, he explained. The idea is to broaden the domain of neuroscience beyond attention or decision-making to social neuroscience or studies of creativity, he added.

“The brain is trying to figure out ambiguity, and is trying to find solutions for what we see and what we perceive.” –Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson

Takeaways for Businesses

Research being conducted by Platt and Johnson could find numerous applications in the world of business. Johnson’s research includes studies in vision and color vision. For example, she would examine why different people identify the same color differently, such as some seeing blue as black or white as gold. She pointed to applications, for example, in the cosmetics industry. “We spend a lot of time looking at whether or not we can make ourselves more attractive” by adding different colors, she said.

Johnson saw big opportunities for research into those varying perceptions of color. “People had very emotional responses when they realized that what their friends saw was different from what they saw, even though it is same [color],” she said. The neuro-scientific explanation for people seeing colors differently is still being probed, she added.

“Inherently … what you perceive is all in your head, which as neuroscientists we always knew,” Johnson said. “We also know that the brain is trying to figure out ambiguity, and is trying to find solutions for what we see and what we perceive.” She has also begun to research how colors on people’s faces change depending on their emotional state “and the signals that we might be getting but we don’t think about,” such as when people blush.

Hays noted that 80% of the decisions or choices people make are based in their subconscious. “[In] bringing them to the fore and making them explicit, the business applications are mind boggling,” she said.

Platt said his research includes trying to understand at “a very deep level” aspects of interpersonal interactions. That begins with how people perceive each other to “higher-order processes” such as how that might prompt people to be kind or deceptive, he explained.

“We are working out the circuitry [and] trying to understand how we might turn up the volume on some of those signals and turn down the volume on some others,” Platt said. “So, could you do various kinds of nudges to promote more social behavior, to make us more attentive to each other, or [to become] better able to read social cues and be better listeners?”

“Could you do various kinds of nudges to promote more social behavior, to make us more attentive to each other, or [to become] better able to read social cues and be better listeners?” –Michael Platt

A Measured, Cautious Approach

Penn research is focused on using those insights to test new therapies to treat people with disorders, including both medicines and non-invasive brain stimulation, Platt explained. “We need to do research to figure out how to do it right, and how to do it safely.” Some of those therapies are being put into practice at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he added.

Platt’s research extends to studying decision-making and how people weigh trade-offs between continuing to exploit something they know well versus taking risks to explore new ways of doing things. “That is where the spark of innovation comes from,” he added. As that research advances, it will also try to uncover the mechanisms of that process, measure it on individuals unobtrusively through a wearable device or “stimulate that circuitry on people whose job it is to be innovative.” The research work will also extend to innovating on devices at an ideas lab to improve quality and make them cheaper so they can be used more in everyday lives.

Platt acknowledged that such research raises “important ethical questions,” but clarified that they are not specific to neuroscience in a business context. He said that among other resources to grapple with those issues, he wants to tap into the deep expertise in bioethics at Penn. Johnson called for continuing debate on these issues to come up with the right applications.

Reproduced from Knowledge@Wharton