Thinking together: The new science of collective intelligence
ChrisChabris, Ph.D., and Steven Rice 

The final day of the summit began looking at how we work together in teams. It turns out that team intelligence is variable, measurable, and most surprisingly correlates more to the social intelligence of the team members than to the team’s IQ. 

Collective intelligence is actually about communication, either non-verbal and implicit or verbal and explicit.  Women tend to be better at reading social cues (implicit), and research shows that a higher % of women in a group correlates with higher group intelligence.  For a more intelligent team; make the group diverse, and encourage all members to take turns speaking.

With a fresh focus on teams it may be time to reassess individuals versus groups in a successful workplace.  Studies show that hiring a ‘star’ performer is unlikely to hit the mark.  It can take five years before a ‘star’ reaches previous performance levels unless hiring the support team too.  Star performance is apparently a group effort. 

Steven Rice, global head of HR of technology giant Juniper Networks, discussed how Juniper is drawing upon this and other neuroscience research to reimagine work design, drive innovation, and deepen engagement with major customers. 

Day two started with an early morning session with Josh Davis, one of NeuroLeadership Institutes faculty giving an outline of what we know about the NeuroLeadership field (summarized in a paper in the fourth NeuroLeadership Journal). Josh also gave a high level taxonomy of the field, a work in progress, as well as led a discussion on postgraduate student research studies. Where the research needs to focus to build out the field further was a final discussion.

Focus your AIM: A social cognitive neuroscience model for goal pursuit
with Elliot Berkman, Ph.D., and David Rock 

Berkman and Rock outlined new insights around successful goal pursuit. They identified three critical Antecedents to achieving the goals important to our personal and professional lives: stickiness, motivation, and social context. To make progress toward our goals on a sustained basis, it’s critical that we engage the parts of our brain that help ideas and behaviors stick.

The brain uses two types of motivation: one to approach good things and one to avoid bad things. Fresh research underscores that setting gain-frame goals tends to achieve longer-term, more sustainable results in western culture, however does not fit for all groups or individuals.

Social context is a critical piece to add to models in helping leaders and companies’ work on goals. We know the social networks in the brain crave group context and connection; many goals involve other people, or groups of people, allowing for in-group dynamics to prime for success.

Integration of how we think about and how we do goal achievement is where the ‘rubber meets the road’. Goal hierarchies are a useful and well-grounded model for goal pursuit. Shifting gears up and down the hierarchy, or between the why (higher) or how (lower) of goals is essential in today’s complex world.

Maintenance is about about managing rewards and anticipation. The brain loves to anticipate and “predict” receiving rewards. This motivation is crucial to changing behavior and successful goal pursuit. Habits are formed through small victories and resulting rewards.

Social regulation: How we help others manage emotions
with Kevin Ochsner, Ph.D., and Jim Whiting 

We interact with others either explicitly, with clarity of intent, or implicitly, without clearly defining or communicating our purposes. Through a combination of neuroscience and behavioral data, we’re starting to see how the implicit and explicit forms of social regulation of emotion play out.

Specific kinds of social cues—facial expressions, utterances, or actions—generate emotions. From research, we know the presence of other people experiencing particular emotions can automatically evoke emotions within us. Mirroring is a behavior that engages our emotions in social situations. We know from contagion research that motor systems in the brain in frontal and parietal lobe are activated by seeing someone else smiling.

If we maintain cooperative social relationships based on a sense of fairness, the brain encodes that. If we fail to regulate our emotions and generate excessive competition and conflict, this activates the parts of the brain connected to strategic control. When leaders or coworkers behave selfishly or unfairly, others predictably have less empathy for them.

This underscores the importance of using explicit social regulation to influence another individual’s emotions, preferences, or attitudes. Framing is a key strategy, when we give people a positive, approach-focused frame to events—their anxiety and threat response is reduced.

Scanning the pipeline: the neuroscience of leadership transitions
with Grace Chang, Ph.D., Erica Fox, and Karen Stefanyszyn

Any kind of significant change in role, such as moving to managing others, generates uncertainty. When employees go through a leadership transition—i.e., from self-managing to managing others to leading a department—there are three brain functions that go through significant change and growth at the same time: self-regulation, attention and goal focus, and rewards.

Self-Regulation: New managers need to mentally shift how they think about responsibility and performance. A key part of the self-regulation transition is being more “reflective” in thinking. Before becoming a manager, an employee’s number one priority was to accomplish tasks. Now as a manager, the critical responsibility is to help employees accomplish tasks in an outstanding way.

Karen Stefanyszyn of Aviva pointed out the company instills self-regulation in new leaders through intense meditation and mindfulness training and a strong culture of physical fitness.

The Attention and Goal-Focus Transition: Managers expend more energy from their social brain than in their past roles, because their focus is to interact with people and represent employees to the larger company. This new role as a manager also means shifting motivation and goals. Workers set goals for themselves, as managers they establish goals for others. New managers need to develop their mentalizing capacity—understanding what’s happening in other people’s heads.

Erica Fox of Google shared a number of practices at the famed company that directly address these findings. One is by “priming collectivism”; Google talks to managers about being keepers of the culture and encourages them to broaden their views beyond their immediate work.

The Rewards Transition: Successful managers must also navigate a third leadership transition: how they think about rewards. Managers no longer get immediate feedback, and must adapt to evaluating others with regular, insightful advice, while receive less “hand holding” from their own superiors. Managers begin to understand they will receive different types of reward that trigger different kinds of reward regions in the brain—rewards that are more uncertain. Managers must also cope with another underestimated hurdle: making the transition from being “part of the gang” to being more isolated.

The brain and aging
with Dan Radecki and Anna Tavis 

This session engaged in the question of ‘how do we manage the aging brain’s decreasing capacity?’ While the science doesn’t look good for the brain as it ages there are ways to mitigate the damage, including sleeping well and exercise.

The changes in the brain may alter how leaders interact with others. For example older leaders are far more empathetic than younger leaders.

Leadership messes with the mind:
Ruby Wax and a panel of experts discuss leadership and the brain 

The panel was a lively discussion on the general mental condition of leaders moderated by Ruby Wax, including David Rock, David Reimer CEO of Merryk and neuroscientist, Ethan Kross Ph.D.

Ruby started by poking fun ‘Do you have to be crazy to be head if an organization? I say yes. Asperger’s is a big plus’ She also suggested that psych wards might be a good place to source CEOs. David Rock agreed ‘To be a leader you need to see things others cannot see, but this also is close to being a definition of madness’.

While historical figures of CEOs include generalizations such as arrogance and narcissism this might not be accurate for future successful leaders. Studies show that arrogant bosses are not as successful, however narcissists generally interview well and are seen as excellent candidates.

But once they have the job, then what? A study across 50 CEOs by Merryk suggests that CEOs are not as stressed as you might imagine. CEOs reportedly spend 55% time under moderate stress 19% under extreme stress. However this may be because they are well paid and pass on their stress to others. Successful strategies for leaders to manage stress include exercise, mindfulness, and social time.

So what does a ‘sane’ leaders look like? The most desirable leadership traits: flexibility, resilience, adaptability and capacity to develop others. Self-regulation, curiosity and authenticity may also be crucial skills needed to develop in Leaders.

Ruby asked ‘Can you believe we need to teach people how to be real?’ If that‘s what it takes for better future leaders.

More than 300 attendees filled the Hudson Theater at the Millennium Broadway Hotel for day one of the 7th Neuroleadership Summit, “Leadership and the Collective.” David Rock, Executive Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, opened with an overview of the program with first day focus on big picture ideas; the second day on core theory; and the third centered on systematic application.

‘The Paradox of Caring’

George Kohlreiser

with George Kohlreiser Ph.D. and Naomi Eisenberger Ph.D.

Former hostage negotiator, author, and consultant George Kohlreiser believes that most of us are hostages in different ways— to emotions such as fear or ambition. To escape from these emotional hostage situations, each of us needs a secure base—a person, place, goal or object that provides a place of protection, gives a sense of comfort, and a source of energy. In the workplace, leaders who provide that secure base and sense of safety empower others to embrace the risks of pursuing success. To do that, you need to build stronger attachments with employees, so they are more secure.

Naomi Eisenberger discussed studies that inform how the brain responds to caring in workplace and personal relationships. Brain mapping confirms that our brains evolved to seek social connection and avoid social isolation. In fact, the ‘hurt’ when we feel excluded is experienced in the same regions of the brain that experience physical pain.

Kohlreiser and Eisenberger addressed strategies and insights for instilling a more productive and secure attachment, as studies show that giving support is beneficial for both the giver and the receiver.

Susan Sobbott

‘Why Culture Matters’
with David Amodio Ph.D. and Susan Sobbott, President American Express Open

NYU associate professor of neural science and psychology David Amodio introduced the neural basis of intergroup perception, showing how and why our brains develop and experience biases around people who are in-group vs. out-group. The brain sorts all information in categories, including people, Amodio explained. Bias perceptions are a misapplication of the categorization drive in the brain; they tend to happen automatically in the brain at an unconscious level. The brain makes instantaneous judgments when we encounter new people and sorts them as a threat or non-threat.

Susan Sobbott of Amex opened a discussion with Amodio about the source of these sorting biases and whether our brains are wired through nurture or nature. Amodio explained that the “coding” that programs this part of our brains begins in early childhood. What as leaders and individuals can we do to overcome these biases between groups, Sobbott asked, since in her experience leaders can be taught to overcome some of these biases?

Amodio presented a number of strategies for overcoming in-group/out-group dynamics; these include establishing a “superordinate goal” that unites the various sub-groups into the concept of a larger group. Military conflicts are an example of how superordinate goals will cause various groups in a nation to enlarge their boundaries as a group. Similarly, a major business goal with broad-based benefits can unite previously warring corporate factions. Education and clearly articulated goals are effective in overriding bias impulses.

Our cultural differences in how we perceive groups and people can become strengths when people are managed wisely. Sobbott applied this insight to American Express’ recruitment practices where leaders are challenged about their hiring decisions—too often, people tend to hire people who are like themselves, rather than people who best suit the position.

‘The Reality of the New Leader’
with Edward Reilly, Robert Tobias, Terry Hogan, and Michael Morris, Ph.D. 

Michael Morris asked the panel to identify the mental skills leaders need today more than ever before. The panelists cited skills including agility, resilience, communication and collaboration, authenticity, and stress management, among other skills. Morris cited his research identifying the importance of cultural metacognition in groups of different cultures working together.

Terry Hogan, director of global talent management at Citigroup, identified assessments as important in identifying leaders with these skills and the potential to develop them. A leading characteristic for effective leaders at Citigroup is a willingness to learn, Hogan said, and leaders are expected to transfer their own learning experiences back to their direct reports.

Edward Reilly, the president of the American Management Association, noted over the spectrum of the 160 courses they offer to corporate America, they have identified a clear trend—a permanent change from “prescriptive management” to “managing by intent.” This shift is seen even in the US military; in fact, military leadership is embracing this shift and showing how effective it can be to delegate a great deal of strategy to operational managers who are the closest to the challenges on the ground.

Robert Tobias who directs the leadership development program at American University, in part focused on the importance of leadership students getting in touch with their values, and having a deeper understanding of their inner lives. It simply is imperative in building relationships and working collaboratively that leaders understand their core values and drives: this authenticity helps overcome the distrust and fears common in high-stress, high-anxiety situations in government and political situations.

‘Can Radical Transparency Drive Business Results?’
with Ryan Smith, Marc Effron and Dan Radecki 

Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics believes that the biggest reason companies fail is because people lose focus and get off track. It’s particularly true of young, fast-growing companies driving to meet stretch revenue goals and keep their investors happy.

Qualtrics didn’t want to fall into that trap so Smith made the brave decision to make all employees’ performance data available to everyone in the company. By doing so, Qualtrics removes the distractions, fears, and negativity that sap concentration. The entire workforce has access to a host of information about the performance and practice of each employee that includes a variety of data points.

Sharing data had surprising benefits and implications with employee and organizational focus, engagement and growing talent at Qualtrics.

Dan Radecki pulled apart the neuroscience of why the system works the way it does, with significant impact and freedom in the areas of certainty, autonomy and status, freeing up mental processing and the left prefrontal cortex for the most useful things.

Work is a team activity more than ever. The team that can solve the toughest problems is likely to be the one that succeeds. A new field of study, collective intelligence, is measuring the ability of a team to solve problems. It turns out that the collective intelligence of a team is measurable, variable, and most surprisingly, correlates more to the social intelligence of the team members than to the team’s IQ.

Join one of the key researchers in this area, Chris Chabris, as he shares the key findings around collective intelligence. The research will be debriefed by the Executive Vice President of HR at Juniper Networks, Steven Rice, who will explore the implications and applications of this research inside today’s networked organisations.

Chris Chabris is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Union College in Schenectady, NY. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology at Albany Medical College and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. In 2004 Chris and Dan Simons received the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology "for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else - even a woman in a gorilla suit." Chris & Dan co-authored a book titled The Invisible Gorilla that was inspired by this experiment and the response to it. For several years Chris has also done consulting work for research labs, corporations, and government agencies.

Steven Rice is the Executive Vice President, Human Resources at Juniper Networks. Steven has built a 25-year career spanning a range of HR leadership positions with Hewlett-Packard. His last position at HP was Vice President of Human Resources, Global Operations, with responsibility for more than 900 HR professionals supporting 145,000 employees around the world. Rice joined Juniper Networks in 2006 and leads the human resources organization that supports the company's operations worldwide. Rice also chairs the Juniper Foundation, Juniper's primary philanthropic arm, which supports children, education, and lifelong learning in the communities where Juniper has a significant employee and customer presence.

Leadership transitions are notoriously difficult, with many high performers failing as first time managers, and many mid level leaders failing to develop the level of thinking needed for more senior roles.

For the first time, a team of researchers and practitioners are exploring the neuroscience of why transitions are so hard. Using the leadership pipeline concept as a framework, this session explores five neural circuitries that need to go through significant change in order to succeed in a transition. Identifying these neural capacities and the specific changes that need to happen with each at various transition points can help us to better select, prepare, and support people through difficult transitions.

The session will be led by Grace Chang, one of the key faculty on NLI's Education programs, in partnership with Erica Fox, Director, People Development Google Inc, and Karen Stefanyszyn, a global HR executive at Aviva, with David Rock on the research team.

	Grace Chang received her B.S. in Psychology/Neuroscience from Duke University and her Ph.D. in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA. Grace’s main research focus is learning and memory. She has conducted numerous learning and memory studies involving rats, young adults, older adults, and Parkinson’s Disease patients. Grace is also a lead professor at the NeuroLeadership Institute.
	Erica Fox is the Director of Learning Programs within Google’s cross-functional learning & development team. She works with a global team to provide Googlers a wide array of classes, cohort-based programs and learning resources, including Noogler (new hire) Orientation & On-boarding, people management curriculum, leadership development, professional skills, language instruction, emotional intelligence, creativity & innovation, and personal effectiveness.
	Karen Stefanyszyn is Head of Leadership & Culture at Aviva Group and is responsible for delivering leadership & culture change, including design and delivery of senior manager development, embedding of a strengths based philosophy throughout the employee life-cycle and thought leadership in behavioural change.

The average leader 20 years ago managed 20 relationships. Now it is 50-70. 20 years ago they looked after over $100m of revenue, now it is over a billion. Along with all this complexity, leaders today work in a world that is increasingly virtual and massively global. Join four global experts in the field of leadership to explore the kind of world leaders have to lead in today, discover the specific mental skills that today's leaders need to have, how we are educating for these in various ways, and explore where neuroscience may be able to help. Edward T. Reilly is the CEO of the American Management Association. In this role he is deeply interested in the skills that leaders and managers need to succeed today, across the US and across the globe. Terry Hogan looks after the development of the top few hundred leaders at Citibank globally, and is widely published around global leadership. Robert Tobias develops some of our most important future government leaders in his role as Director of Key Executive Leadership Programs at American University.   Michael Morris Ph.D. is a professor at the Columbia Business School, who recently completed some fascinating new research on the biological differences of successful global leaders.    For any questions about the summit email summits@neuroleadership.org

The fields of organizational change and Neuroscience have much in common: They are both relatively “young” They both have significant multi-disciplinary impact They are both the focus of much current attention in research and practice The fields also have a fundamental difference in their unit of analysis: the individual versus the collective (organization). What, if any, are the connections between these fields? This panel explores the connection between organizational change and neuroscience by asking these questions: What is the state of organizational change? What are the strengths and weaknesses in research and practice? Can Neuroscience add to our understanding of organizational change? If so, how? What is the state of Neuroscience research focused specifically on Change? What types of Neuroscience research are needed to further increase our understanding of Change? What, if any, are the limitations in conducting Neuroscience research focused on Change? Panelists include:   Maria Darby President of the Association of Change Management Professionals A Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, Maria Darby leads the firm’s strategic communications business, including capabilities in organizational communications, stakeholder relations, change communications, public and media relations, social media and risk communications. In addition, Ms. Darby serves as a co-lead of the Firm’s Change Management Board where her responsibilities include leading training and professional development for the firm’s change management practitioners, and conducting outreach and engagement across industry on promoting and advancing the practice of change management. Maria is the Vice President of the Association of Change Management Practitioners (ACMP), where she serves in a leadership role to evolve this professional association focused on advancing the practice of change management worldwide. Cecile Demailly Board member of the Change Leaders Now consulting for multinational corporations on organizational change, Cecile Demailly is a former blue chip executive (IBM, AT&T, GE). She is a board member in charge of innovation for the Change Leaders, a structured international community of change practitioners associated with Oxford University and HEC Management School, Paris. She is also a fellow of the Institute of Neurocognitivism which operates in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Morocco. In her regular practice, she focuses on disruptive change and new trends – such as Enterprise 2.0 (collaboration, collective intelligence), corporate social responsibility, diversity, disruptive technology innovation impacts and adoption. She uses neurosciences to diagnose the change readiness of an organization on the systemic level, map change resistance and address it in a way that helps both the corporation and its stakeholders. Walter McFarland Board Chair elect of the American Society of Training and Development The center piece of Walter’s career has been as a consultant focused on large-scale improvements in organizational performance by focusing on the human factor. Walter has led consulting engagements focused on: transforming the Internal Revenue Service; creating the Department of Homeland Security; and realigning the US Intelligence Community—to name a few. Walter’s work in organizational change has earned: the Hammer Award, the IRS Commissioner’s Award, the Director of National Intelligence Innovation Award, and recognition from the Smithsonian Institution. Amy Lui Abel Ph.D. Director, Human Capital Research The Conference Boar Amy Lui Abel is director of human capital research at The Conference Board and leads research efforts focusing on human capital analytics, labor markets, workforce readiness, strategic workforce planning, talent management, diversity and inclusion, human resources, and employee engagement. Amy was previously a Director of Leadership Development with Morgan Stanley supporting high potential senior leaders globally. She has also held roles at Accenture, Adobe Systems, JPMorganChase, and led a private consulting organization performance practice. Amy has taught at New York University Stern School of Business in management and organization studies and served on the Board of Directors for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) New York Chapter. She was named ‘Outstanding Alumni of the Year’ from New York University Business Education Program. Based on her doctoral research study about corporate universities and organizational learning, Amy was recognized for ‘Best Workplace Learning Dissertation’ from the American Educational Research Association Workplace Learning Group. Amy was recently published in The Handbook of Workplace Learning by Sage Publications, Human Resources Development Quarterly Journal, and ASTD’s T+D (Training and Development) Magazine. She holds several degrees, including a PhD, from New York University in information technology, business education, and organizational learning and performance.    For any questions about the summit email summits@neuroleadership.org