Brain-Based Practices for Leaders

Seven leadership practices that work. We explain the research behind why each practice works and offer suggestions on how you can use it to improve personal and professional success.

Overview of Brain-Based Practices

Strengthen Your Willpower—Use precommitments and replenish your willpower before making key decisions.

Monitor Your Thinking—Learn when to trust your gut feelings and when to slow down and involve others in decisions.

Make Use of Mistakes—Reflect on things gone wrong to strengthen learning pathways in your brain.

Spread Positive Emotions—Smile. Your non-verbal, emotional cues have a greater impact on people than the content of your message.

Build Emotional Intelligence—Listen for what people are thinking and feeling in addition to what they are saying.

Use Exploratory Feedback—Reframe feedback as an exploratory dialogue to avoid provoking denial, defense and dislike.

Handle Reactions to Stress—Cultivate deliberate calm to reduce your automatic response to perceived threats.