Conflict surrounds us: armed struggles abroad, political attacks at home. We also know conflict in our personal lives – at home, in the schoolyard and at work. Here is a video about coping with conflict. Maybe even making it a rich learning experience. In it, I share with you my three ‘go-to’ ways of handling […]

“The thoughts in our minds are not facts.” This is a quote from Joseph Nguyen’s “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”. When I was studying psychology, I was asked to keep a thought diary and capture as many of my thoughts as possible. I discovered that our thoughts are both fleeting and largely conjectural. I remember […]

“The readiness is all”, Hamlet said to Horatio. What does it mean to be ready?  In my line of work, it’s frequently about overcoming fear.  I meet people who are ready to change. They can imagine themselves being more assertive. They dream of their promotion. They visualise themselves in a new role. They can almost […]

“There are more fake gurus and false teachers in this world than the number of stars in the visible universe.” – Shams Tabrizi For the past two weeks, I was moved to discuss how we transform. I proposed that courses only inform – when they don’t bore. I shared my view that AI, wonderful and […]

“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.” —Jean Baudrillard Mark’s comment on last week’s post led me to reflect on the potential impact of AI on coaching. Can AI coach? AI can certainly be supportive in a number of ways. In particular, generative AI will be able to […]

HR is once again reminding me about the leadership course I “absolutely must attend.” I have always had a lot of respect for these dedicated HR folks who consistently try to engage employees in development programs, training sessions, and team-building events. For many years, I was one of those employees, and I remember how conflicted […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! Are you enjoying the summer? I’m writing from the South of France and it’s just blissful! Today, I’d like to address decision-making. Remember that I posited in an early post that “there is no thinking which is not emotional which in turn implies that our decisions and […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! In this third – and final – blog on the topic of facilitating learning, let me build on the positive implications of harnessing emotion and of maximising attention and engage you on the themes of meaning generation and chunking. At this stage of the game, I have […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! For those of you who teach, did you think that leveraging emotions was a good idea? If so, how did you practically do so? For those among you keen learners, did you agree that emotions facilitate both the processing and later the recall of new knowledge, as […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! What did you think of my suggestion back in April to leverage language to influence how you feel? Did you tell yourself you ‘only’ felt your negative emotions – to hasten their passing? – and that you were your positive emotions – to encourage them to linger […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! And I promise, no more about paying attention! I appreciate that four articles – fascinating though they were, weren’t they? – on that topic is enough. But before we move on, wasn’t it interesting to see how neuroscience – and notably understanding how our brains process stimuli, […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! Last month, we discussed other-awareness and landed on the notion that disagreement – about beliefs, values and behaviours – is more likely to be the norm. I advocated tolerance but also proposed that you put on a metaphorical Detective Columbo’s raincoat (no need for the cigar nor […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! Last month, we discussed how paying attention to yourself – self-awareness – can benefit you in terms of enhancing your emotional intelligence but also bolstering your resilience and adaptability. In addition to making emotional self-management smoother, I have noticed in folks gaining in and practicing self-awareness a […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! And of course: best wishes for happy 2018! In last month’s blog, we discussed the fact that voluntary attention – what we consciously focus on – is the instrument thanks to which we can shape our reality – rather than it being just the result of an […]

Hello and welcome to this month’s neuro blog! Let’s see: where have we got to? Three articles in, we know about the three parts of the human brain (read about the triune brain) and the dominance of the unconscious. We also know that one of the main purposes of the human brain is sense-making (read […]

Hello and welcome to the third article of my neuro blog. In the first one, I described the three parts of the human brain (see image to the left for a reminder of the triune brain), notably the importance of the unconscious. In the second article, I suggested that one of the main purposes of […]

Hello and welcome to the second article of my neuro blog. In the first one last month, I described the three parts of the human brain (see just below for a second representation of the triune brain), notably the importance of the unconscious. In future posts, I expect to delve into how the fact that […]

Hello and welcome to the first article of my neuro blog. Since 2013, I have become increasingly interested in what neuroscience, the scientific, multi-disciplinary, study of the nervous system can teach us about the brain. My assumption was that understanding the brain would in turn illuminate my comprehension of the mind. The two are definitely […]

TELL™ Them What’s Gone Wrong (click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!) For many, December is synonymous with Christmas. For others, Hanukkah is the highlight of the last month of the year. But, in the office, for millions around the world, December is the month of performance evaluations. For this […]

Getting under Someone Else’s Skin (click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!) How did you find using “SWAY”©? For those readers who may have missed the article on this model of persuasion, a very brief recap: ‘S’ is for ‘Significance‘ where you investigate the interest and need of your audience […]

Persuasion Tools (click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!) As promised last month, in this article on how to influence others, I’m going to show you the core elements of a persuasion strategy. I will share with you a four-step model called “SWAY”©. I have called it “SWAY”© because when […]