By Khalil Smith, Heidi Grant, Kamila Sip & Chris Weller

You and about 20 of your coworkers are sitting around a crowded conference room table, discussing the details of some project. Some people are fighting for attention, trying to get a word in. Others won’t stop talking. Others have tuned the meeting out, retreating to their laptops or phones.

By Khalil Smith, Heidi Grant & Kamila Sip

Organizations have rightly started making diversity and inclusion top priorities. And accordingly, managers have become more sensitive about who they hire, promote, and assign to projects. They’ve also become more sensitive to sharing information equitably among their staff, and worked harder to give people the right amount of exposure within the department or organization.

By Dr. David Rock, Beth Jones & Chris Weller

Research shows that using feedback is how organisms — and organizations — stay alive. Here’s how leaders can make the most of the anxiety-producing process.

By Heidi Grant, Mary Slaughter & Andrea Derler

Like any psychological concept that booms in popularity, growth mindset — the dual belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing your skills and abilities is the purpose of the work you do — is ripe for misinterpretation.

By Beth Jones Khalil Smith David Rock

When we talk about bias, we often tie it to acts of discrimination or prejudice. But according to cognitive science, everybody, by virtue of having a brain that’s constantly seeking efficiency, is biased in some way — and not all biases make us actively malicious.

By Khalil Smith

Once we are aware of the shortcuts our minds take when deciding who to listen to, we can take steps to block those shortcuts. At the beginning of every meeting, a question hangs in the air: Who will be heard? The answer has huge implications not only for decision making, but for the levels of diversity and inclusion throughout the organization.

By Khalil Smith, Dr. David Rock

The concept of unconscious bias, percolating for years now, is becoming better established, thanks in large part to a wave of scientific research. Every week, it seems, a study or book comes out that offers new and important insights about the subtle ways human beings discriminate against one another, robbing certain groups of important opportunities and depriving institutions of the skills that members of these groups possess.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

Do you hear Yanny or Laurel? Believe it or not, the same science that fuels this debate—it’s definitely “Yanny,” by the way—can also help explain why it’s difficult to overcome bias in the office.

By Mary Slaughter, Dr. David Rock

Remember being in middle school and preparing for an exam? Chances are you spent your study time paging through your class notes or rereading the textbook. Maybe you highlighted important details as you went.

By Dr. David Rock, Khalil Smith

Good-faith attempts to champion diversity often backfire for a pretty intuitive reason: The more an organization points out the differences among employees–even in order to celebrate them–the more likely it is that some employees will feel less included, and behave accordingly. 

By Dr. David Rock, Mary Slaughter

At Apple, Steve Jobs led much of the industrial design charge, while the softer-spoken Steve Wozniak bulletproofed the engineering. In the world of theater, famed lyricist Oscar Hammerstein dreamt up beloved classics such as “The Sound of Music” and “The King and I,” but it was Richard Rodgers who found the music in his partner’s words.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

Few of us enjoy asking for help. As research in neuroscience and psychology shows, the social threats involved—the uncertainty, risk of rejection, potential for diminished status, and inherent relinquishing of autonomy—activate the same brain regions that physical pain does.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

If you work in an office, you probably spend more time with your colleagues than you do with even your closest friends — and the quality of those relationships can mean the difference between a joyful workday and a minefield of stress and conflict.

By David Rock

The technology to see very small things up close showed us we had much wrong about health. The technology to see big things far away showed us we are not the center of the universe. More recently, a technology called fMRI, that lets us collect images of oxygen use inside an active brain, has shown us that some of our long-held beliefs about human motivation may be wrong.

By Dr. David Rock (Director, The NeuroLeadership Institute)

When Joe Whittinghill came into his role as general manager for talent, learning, and insight at Microsoft, the tech giant’s leadership model was characteristically thorough.

By MARY SLAUGHTER

Of all the things you learned in school, chances are the right way to learn wasn’t one of them. To make it through academic life, most of us opt for what psychologists call “massed practice,” better known as cramming: It’s Monday and your test is Friday, so you save studying for the night before. One four-hour session can nab you a passing grade, so why not?

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

Striving to increase workplace diversity is not an empty slogan — it is a good business decision. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

In numerous studies, diversity — both inherent (e.g., race, gender) and acquired (experience, cultural background) — is associated with business success. For example, a 2009 analysis of 506 companies found that firms with more racial or gender diversity had more sales revenue, more customers, and ...

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

Although diversity and inclusion training is prevalent in corporate America, its impact is inconsistent. According to the evidence, sometimes the programs even have the opposite effect of what they intend...

By JAY J. VAN BAVEL & TESSA V. WEST

Why is it that many of the world’s most advanced companies struggle to create diversified workforces, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity training and recruitment? Implicit bias may be partly to blame..

By Michael Schein

Attending a conference is a surefire way to make important connections, meet creative thinkers and explore new ideas. That being said, not all conferences are created equal. That's why I decided to go to a diverse group of events this year to uncover the most innovative and powerful experiences...

By DAVID ROCK

Business leaders have a choice during the next few months in the way they speak publicly about political affairs. The Brexit referendum, the U.S. presidential election, and the growing support for nationalism in many countries have all made it impossible to ignore politics — because every aspect of major businesses is affected by globalization.

By Laura Garnett & Josh Davis

The future of work is all about innovation and agility. We have to be prepared for ever-changing circumstances, and that means being open to learning new things. Learning is no longer something we just do in schools. We can't rely on just the skillset we knew when we entered the workforce--that will guarantee career stagnation.

By DAVID ROCK

Humans evolved in social hierarchies, and, as a result, we have significant cognitive resources devoted to identifying and then empowering potential leaders. However, incompetent or even malevolent individuals can take advantage of the cues we use to identify potential leaders, and rise to power even when they may be poor leaders, or even worse.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

“I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police…” said Hillary Clinton, at the first presidential debate. While the claim ruffled some listeners (‘Wait, did Hillary Clinton just call us all racist?’), it truly appalled one listener in particular: Mike Pence. At the VP debate, Pence called Clinton out for her “bad mouthing.” “The demeaning accusation” of implicit bias “has got to stop," he stated.

By DAVID ROCK & JOSH DAVIS

The owner of a graphic design firm worries that her clients have dried up despite her best efforts. Even a seemingly bulletproof marketing plan that worked in the past is now yielding crickets. What should she do? And how exactly should she go about deciding what’s best for her business?

By Rachel Nickless

This morning I walked five metres across the office to talk to a colleague and he mentioned that he was sitting "in Siberia". It might sound like an exaggeration, given that he's at a desk on the edge of a busy newsroom, but it struck a chord with me after a recent interview with a neuroleadership expert.

By Rachel Nickless

This morning I walked five metres across the office to talk to a colleague and he mentioned that he was sitting "in Siberia". It might sound like an exaggeration, given that he's at a desk on the edge of a busy newsroom, but it struck a chord with me after a recent interview with a neuroleadership expert.

By Laura Garnett

I sat down with Dr. David Rock, who is paving the way in "neuroleadership." With his team, he brings together global experts to develop the science of leadership development. The world is certainly going through a shift in the way we think about leadership these days. Executives have begun to recognize the importance of a people-first approach to business.

By David Rock

Every year the field of talent management goes through change as it responds to evolving market conditions, shifts in technology and changes in the nature of work. We expect 2016 to be a year of faster changes in how we think about and manage talent than we’ve ever seen before...

By David Rock, Josh Davis &Beth Jones

Evidence is mounting that conventional approaches to strategic human capital management are broken. This is particularly true for performance management (PM) systems—the appraisal approaches in which employees (working with their managers) set goals for the year; managers interview others who have worked with them and write up an appraisal; employees are rated and ranked numerically; and salary, bonus, and promotion opportunities are awarded accordingly.

By Justine Hofherr

Though most companies have yet to kill off the annual evaluations, a growing number of organizations are moving away from the practice, and with good reason, as a new study from The NeuroLeadership Institute found widespread benefits among companies that abandoned them.

By Chana R. Schoenberger

In recent years, giants like Microsoft Corp. and Eli Lilly & Co. have dropped the standard model of performance reviews where an employee meets with a manager once a year and gets a grade. They’re moving toward setups where bosses and workers have frequent, low-pressure conversations about performance and expectations, and they’re ditching grades in favor of more nuanced ways to judge performance.

By Jeanne Sahadi

You work hard all year. Your projects go well. Your company makes bank. Yet at the end of it all you have a stilted, scripted conversation with your boss, in which you learn you're a "3" because you "met expectations." This, despite all your manager's happy talk during the year.

By David Rock & Beth Jones

A few years ago, I noticed around half a dozen courageous companies beginning experiments to remove ratings from their performance management systems. Companies such as Juniper and Adobe stopped giving people a one-to-five rating or evaluating employees on a “performance curve,” also known as the “forced ranking” approach. They were still differentiating performance in various ways, and still using a pay-for-performance approach, just not through a simple rating system.

By Heidi Grant, Ph.D.

Imagine that you are hiring an employee for a position in which a new perspective would be valuable. But while reviewing resumes, you find yourself drawn to a candidate who is similar in age and background to your current staff. You remind yourself that it’s important to build a cohesive team, and offer her the job.

By Alina Tugend

LESLIE YALOF GARFIELD, 54, a professor at Pace Law School, faced an empty nest as her last child headed off to college. Ilona Shinkar, 42, is a former French teacher living in Larchmont, N.Y., with three children at home. Ms. Shinkar wanted to find a new career. Ms. Garfield wanted to pursue a new challenge. So both decided to become life coaches.

By David Rock

The shift away from formal numerical performance ratings is at an interesting tipping point. According to a recent CEB study, approximately 6% of the Fortune 1000 have removed ratings, 15% of companies are in the process of deciding whether to do so, and 28% of companies would consider it.

By David Rock

The shift away from formal numerical performance ratings is at an interesting tipping point. According to a recent CEB study, approximately 6% of the Fortune 1000 have removed ratings, 15% of companies are in the process of deciding whether to do so, and 28% of companies would consider it.

By David Rock

There is overwhelming evidence that a lack of sleep is not being taken seriously enough in our society. Sleep deprivation drastically dampens our reaction time and attentiveness. The engineer of the NYC metro train that derailed recently reportedly began drifting off as the train reached speeds nearly three times the limit. This person's lack of sleep derailed more than just a train, it also ended the lives of 4 New Yorkers and ploughed into the plans of more than 60 others.

By Rachel Nickless

NeuroLeadership expert David Rock believes companies are going about staff management entirely the wrong way. In fact, the man who helped kick-start the international trend of applying brain science to the workplace is partial to abandoning performance management and forced ranking altogether. “You can’t have a coach who is also the judge. It doesn’t work. But organisations completely ignore that,” he says.

By Adam Bryant

It’s really a summary of what motivates us, the things we feel most passionately about, both positively and negatively, that are driving our behavior all the time. They’re almost like the primary colors of intrinsic motivation.

By David Rock

In the last decade, we’ve seen tremendous changes in our workforce. With all of the recent advancement in technologies, nearly three-quarters of employers give their employees the tools they need to work remotely, giving employees more freedom to pick the hours they work.

By David Rock

When cars first became popular 100 years ago, there were no road rules or speed limits to begin with. Inspired by the freedom of their speedy new toys, drivers zoomed around as fast as they could. Crashes were a constant.

By Priyanka Sangani

David Rock has a simple agenda - to make people think about how they think. Rock started out doing something a lot of people do; he was a leadership facilitator helping people hone their execution abilities. Over time he realised that the quality of ideas and insights was significantly higher when they discussed softer issues, but in a scientific manner.

By David Rock

Bad management appears to be an epidemic, costing the economy a total of$360 billion every year in lost productivity. Some 65 percent of employees say they would take a new boss over a pay raise, andthree out of every four employees say their boss is the most stressful part of their job.

By David Rock

History is often made when adversaries with well-established biases overcome expectations to find common ground: Ronald Reagan negotiating arms reduction with Mikhail Gorbachev, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signing a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, or Saudis joining the first Iraq War coalition as staunch allies. These events become history because they are so unusual.

By David Rock

A new study just out from James Gross of Stanford University and six other researchers has shown that the higher people go as a leader, the less stress they experience. It turns out that being the CEO is less stressful than being a senior manager. It’s an intriguing idea, as it flies in the face of the current thinking about leadership, which has supported the notion that top leaders are under enormous stress.

By David Rock

If you are one of those people like me who think for a living, then you've probably noticed just how much clearer your mind is after a break of some sort. Especially a break where you haven't thought about work at all.

By David Rock

I recently sat down with an executive from a Fortune 500 financial services firm to talk about how they had built their leadership development curriculum. “We created various levels of leadership within the organization,” the executive said, “such as first time leaders, and leaders of leaders.

By David Rock

We hear people going on tirades about their bosses all time. Whenever a group of coworkers go out to eat, it's a safe bet their boss will be a hot topic of conversation. One of the most common complaints about leaders is that they are promoted for their technical skills, despite the fact that they often have poor social skills.

By David Rock

Want to be a leadership researcher? All you need are eyes and ears, and the ability to notice and describe patterns. Or if you want to test your theories, you might need to know how to set up social science experiments.

By David Rock

Looking for strategies to overcome distraction and work smarter all day long? Then David Rock’s book Your Brain at Work will help you understand why your brain feels taxed and what you should do to take full advantage of your mental resources. In the following excerpt, three common problems we all face in a work setting are outlined, with the solutions the book has to offer.