Build Better Brains

Build Better Brains

A Leader’s Guide to the World of
Neuroscience

Dr. Martina Muttke

Build Better Brains: A Leader’s Guide to the World of Neuroscience

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2020.

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 Abstract
Build Better Brains is a fascinating story of applying news from neuro­
science to understand our brain and improve our leadership. In a time
where Maslow’s basic needs are fulfilled, expectations of the modern
workforce demand different leadership concepts. The challenge leaders
face is to understand what’s going on in their people’s brains, and how this
knowledge can make them more successful.
Leadership and our minds are complex domains. Build Better Brains
connects the puzzle pieces and shows how by combining the two worlds
we can build an environment of trust, motivation, and purpose. By inte­
grating our organs, literally, into the game, leadership is evolving from
sociological models to a science of biology—the biology of leadership.
The newly introduced GMC model integrates individual leadership
styles and neuroscience. Exploring a leader’s natural tendencies to be a
gardener, magician, or captain is key to learn how we can Build Better
Brains and help others build their own better brain.
Build Better Brains lets the reader discover what lies inside the box on
top of our head. By providing scientific but not difficult, fascinating but
not esoteric, entertaining but not “for-dummies” information for leaders,
it shows how our brains can be built for success.
Packaged into reasonable pieces with plenty of real-life stories, tools,
tips, and tactics, Build Better Brains is ready to demonstrate that leader­
ship has become measurable—not with psychological instruments—but
through neuroscience!

Keywords
neuroscience; leadership; management; brain; business; performance;
effectiveness; systems; purpose; trust; coaching; neurohacking; genera­
tions; psychology; motivation
 Contents
Testimonials������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix
Acknowledgments�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi
Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii

Chapter 1 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too?���������������������1

Chapter 2 Neuroscience Through the Looking Glass�����������������������17
Chapter 3 Three Brains to Build and Balance����������������������������������33
Chapter 4 Three Hats to Take and Tailor�����������������������������������������53
Chapter 5 Three Leadership Styles to Explore and Experience���������71
Chapter 6 Tools, Tricks, and Tactics for Tailoring the Better
Brain������������������������������������������������������������������������������91
Chapter 7 Lead to Win with the Cosmic Ordering Service������������121
Chapter 8 The Better Brain Company�������������������������������������������135

Conclusions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������149
About the Author��������������������������������������������������������������������������������151
Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������153
 Testimonials
“This is an extraordinary achievement, written in a unique and very per-
sonal style, super rich, inspiring, exciting! Recommended for everyone in a
leadership position.” —Gunther Schwarz, Former Senior Partner &
Managing DirectorThe Boston Consulting Group, Germany

“Creativity is about bringing different things together. By integrating lessons

from her experiences in the contrasting disciplines of medicine and leader-
ship, Martina created a unique way to impart practical wisdom that’s much
needed in the modern era—in a manner that’s fun and refreshingly simple to
read. This book certainly opens up new avenues for tapping into our very own
potential to meet the generational challenges of this century.” —Dr Timothy
Low, Board Director for Farrer Park Hospital and past CEO for
Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore

“Congratulations for such a fine accomplishment. I read the book with

much interest. It reads smoothly, is entertaining in most parts, and per-
sonal in the sense that you get a feel for the person behind the book, which
I appreciated a lot.” —Peter Muller, Professor Emeritus, Department
of Oceanography, University of Hawaii

“As a busy CEO, I am so glad I invested time in reading this pioneering leader-
ship book. As well as learning how to unlock the latent potential within myself
and the brains of those around me, I found that, page by page, I was picking
up game-changing techniques that have made me a more effective leader!”
—Guy Foxell, CEO, One YMCA, UK

“Martina’s book is the next best seller in Leadership. Making neuroscience

knowledge and research simple and applied would appeal to every reader not
just those with a particular interest in Leadership.” —Alexia Papageorgiou,
Professor of Clinical Communication, University of Nicosia Medical
School, Cyprus
x Testimonials

“Exceptionally researched and written book that provided immediately

actionable advice. This helped me as a CEO to boost my team’s motivation
and performance in a matter of weeks. This is truly the first leadership hand
book that you should keep on your desk for quick reminders on building a
better brain.” —Pärtel Tomberg, CEO & Founder of Bondora, Estonia
 Acknowledgments
Writing this book was a spontaneous decision inspired by a couple of
people and incidents.
I thank the chair of a scientific symposium in Beijing for congratu­
lating me on my presentation with the words “you should be a teacher.”
I thank my mother, who actually was a teacher, for making me wish
to be able to explain difficult topics in a simple manner.
I thank my father, who some day told me about the book he always
wanted to write, titled Managing by Gardening. The gardener somehow
got stuck in my subconscious mind.
I thank Kim and Kemal, the leaders in my book who really inspired
me with their magician style.
I thank Debbie Jenkins, who as my book coach made it possible to
organize my thoughts, structure my writing, let me dream and laugh and
tell stories, and taught me how to write a book in the first place.
I thank my publisher for believing in the work of an unknown Ger­
man who wasn’t even on Facebook and Twitter.
I finally thank my partner João and Milly the Cockapoo, for loving
me and caring for me so well that I trusted myself to do this.
 Introduction

Be aware that as you read you will change your brain.

As you continue to read you will change your brain even more.
One of the fascinating and scary insights from neuroscience is
that all of our experiences, relationships, behavior, and activities
constantly change our brain.

I spent six years studying medicine, then pursued and completed a busi­
ness education at Harvard, served as a leader in large corporations, and
have been coaching other leaders and their teams for almost 25 years.
But the truth is, I always felt confused by the flood of leadership books,
concepts, and theories. I couldn’t figure out how to match Systems 1 and
2 with concepts around Emotional Intelligence, Strengthsfinder, and Myers-
Briggs, while making sure I Lean In the right way and don’t lose my Grit.
Most leadership concepts are either too complex for my liking, too
simplified, or they seem to be missing something. I observed that every
leader is different depending on the generation he or she belongs to, their
culture, individual style, goals, needs, and so on, and that all our brains
react differently. This observation led to my fascination with neurosci­
ence, encouraging me to investigate it further, and suddenly I was able to
connect many dots.
The introduction to the Twilight Zone sums up the excitement that
neuroscience has for me:

It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is

the middle ground between light and shadow, between science
and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the
summit of his knowledge.

Although the brain is at least as scary and mysterious as my all-time

favorite TV series, neuroscience offers fascinating insights into unlocking
xiv Introduction

the brain’s hidden potential, and this knowledge can provide the link to
the missing parts around leadership concepts. It’s startling but not new to
see that leadership is very much a biological science and not purely based
on sociology.
Cutting-edge neuroscience allows us to see the associated parts in our
brain light up when we squeeze our toe with our fingers. We can pinpoint
the area where neurons are activated in the brain when we visualize a goal.
We can demonstrate that the 100 million neurons in the human gut have
the same complexity as a cat’s brain. Yet a leader can’t understand why he
procrastinates, is unable to get a great night’s sleep, nor can he help his
team to fulfill their potential.
What if we could use our brains consciously to reach our goals and moti-
vate each other? What would happen to human relationships?
While neuroscience is discussed widely and pseudo-scientifically
applied to personal development, it is also deeply rooted in the realm
of mystery. Leaders remain in the field of “unconscious incompetence”
when it comes to figuring out the emotions, thoughts, and dreams of
the people they lead. As neuroscience unravels its secrets, we are moving
into the area of “conscious incompetence” and realizing the inadequate
job we are doing as leaders. We have a chance to explore the capabilities
of our brain as well as an exciting opportunity to reach the next levels of
“unconscious” and then “consciously competent” leadership.
Leadership has become measurable not with psychological instruments but
through neuroscience.
In the world of neuroscience, a myth still prevails that we only use
20 percent of our brain capacity. In reality, we use 100 percent of our
brains almost all the time. If we could use certain domains, functions, and
mechanisms of the brain consciously and then learn to build better brains,
which we can train, and engage at will, how would leadership change?
Leaders benefit not only from demystifying a science that appears
both esoteric and highly complicated but from learning how to mas­
ter their brains for better leadership. By demonstrating the connection
between behavior and the workings of the brain, we can understand the
results of good or bad leadership and see why employees become moti­
vated, get scared, procrastinate, or thrive.
 Introduction xv

It’s not that easy though. Even when we are finally in a place where we
have everything to move leadership from a social science to biology, the
truth is, operationalizing scientific insights is still really confusing. We are
aware that an integrated leadership model might be a good idea, but it is
not clear how to apply the pieces of knowledge that are thrown at us from
the strange area of neuroscience.
At a time when Maslow’s basic needs are mostly fulfilled, modern
workforce is in dire need of different leadership concepts than the ones
propagated in the last decades. Many of them were based on social sci­
ences and were proposed before neuroscience evolved. The new challenge
today’s leaders face is to understand what’s going on in their people’s
brains, and how using this knowledge would make everyone more effi­
cient and successful.
Our goals as leaders remain unchanged: creating value for your cus­
tomers, your company, your team, and yourself. But there’s a fresh way to
get there by aligning the overarching purposes of all stakeholders, activat­
ing trust and motivation as the fuel, and enjoying the rewarding journey
to the goal. How? By freeing our brains and literally involving our organs
in the game, leadership is evolving from experiences and sociological mod­
els to becoming a science of biology—the biology of leadership.
The exciting news is that leadership has become measurable in the brain.
The better news is that you don’t have to wait until you’re dead to measure it!
With the help of Build Better Brains, we will explore ways to learn
about your natural tendencies as a leader, and how you can leverage those
together with the capabilities your brain has laid out for you.
Build Better Brains shows how the balance of the most important parts
of our own brain and of our employees’ brain and chemistry, responsi­
ble for creating threat and reward, stress and relaxation, can be built for
success.
Build Better Brains will connect the dots of the many pieces of wisdom
floating around that currently have no utility. Many of the pieces of the
puzzle around leadership and neuroscience fit together. There’s no one
formula. Instead, it’s a discovery of our brain and our leadership using
a model that I developed for myself, the leaders I am coaching, and the
practitioners of leadership out there in the world.
xvi Introduction

Leadership and our minds are complex domains; Build Better Brains
shows us that by combining the best of those worlds, we can manage
ourselves and our people in a more efficient manner. The GMC model is
an integrated approach, connecting individual leadership styles and neu­
roscience, demonstrating how we can Build Better Brains.
Leadership became confusing because neuroscience allowed us to dis­
cover the underlying mechanisms through biology. Therefore, it is from
neuroscience that we should seek simplicity and guidance for today’s leader
to help us survive the jungle of the brain in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain,
complex, and ambiguous) world of millennials, boomers, and GenX mixed
with antique styles and necessities. So, because we can now link the two
worlds, we have a responsibility to connect the workings of the brain(s)
with the way we lead people. We can make this easy, exciting, and really fun!
The first part of the book describes how we as leaders today are chal­
lenged by competing expectations: to be strong yet easygoing, passionate
but firm, charismatic but focused on the bottom line. We find ourselves
managing a highly independent, purpose-driven workforce that demands
more than merely direction-setting. To make it more complicated, our
teams are made up of different generations of people with varying goals
and expectations: the “traditional” baby boomer or GenX employees who
aim but struggle to show their value, wish to still be developed, or at least
remain safe; the confident millennials stepping out into the world need a
purpose, along with a sense of belonging.
We recognize the scary truth that traditional skill-based leadership
doesn’t work any more. The thousands of books, articles, and courses
offering standard leadership tools, training, and advice don’t give us
insight nor skills to take on these conflicting demands. In a world of
change, chaos, and uncertainty, we become aware that it will be difficult
but crucial to tailor leadership to both our own capabilities and the indi­
vidual needs (brains) of our people.
The next chapter of the book speaks about neuroscience, starting with
the hope that some sophisticated wisdom around the brain will serve as
a magic potion to become better leaders. Unfortunately, the news we get
from neuroscience often confuses rather than enlightens, and 99 percent
of the interested leaders get scared or lost. Do we have one brain? Two?
Or three, or more? There’s a brain in the brain, one in the heart, and
 Introduction xvii

one in the gut. No, there are different brains in the brain, but what do
they do again? Press headlines and TV shows reveal exciting news around
epi-something and Neuro-Play Doh (epigenetics and neuroplasticity)
and tell us that whatever is up there in our head since birth is actually a
constantly changing construction site. Even the bacteria in our gut can
change our brain, and leaders influence the chemistry in their employees’
brains every time they yell at them.
Understandably, leaders are confused. What we really need is accessi­
ble information that will make a direct impact on our own brain and our
daily interaction with people. Build Better Brains dedicates Chapter 2 to
explaining the relevant topics around neuroscience, and how understand­
ing the workings of the brain can help leaders to learn how to read minds,
interpret emotions, and direct a team to success.
The conclusion of Part One of Build Better Brains is good news: we are
finally in a place where we have everything we need to move leadership
from a social science with models, guesswork, and inexactitude to biology
with facts, figures, and proof.
Part Two of Build Better Brains leads us in simple terms to an under­
standing of the key systems, players, and action modes in our brains,
the impact on our behavior, our emotions, and how this reflects on our
leadership. By introducing the GMC model, the centerpiece of the book,
we learn that nobody is perfect but instead has innate tendencies and
capabilities to cherish and grow.
The GMC model offers leaders a way to discover their natural leader­
ship style. It doesn’t matter if your tendency is to be a gardener, a magi­
cian, or a captain, the brain-based model supports you in building tools
and tactics to lead teams. It shows you how to utilize the brain’s capabili­
ties to balance minds and hearts (and guts!) to be brave and inspiring, and
set the direction for success.
Finally Build Better Brains sets the stage for the Better Brain leader:
A leader who knows how to use the biology of their brain(s) to tailor
and master their leadership. In Chapters 6 through 8, I use more of my
personal perspective to illustrate through case stories, anecdotes, and
straightforward tools, tips, and tactics how leaders can build their brains
to evolve into the Better Brain leader in a Better Brain company, a work­
place that caters to very different types of needs.
xviii Introduction

Build Better Brains: A Leader’s Guide to the World of Neuroscience is

neither a leadership book nor a book on neuroscience. It merges the best
of these two worlds to serve a new type of leader emerging within con­
temporary organizations, catering to the needs of generations that now
and in future would populate our workforce.
Passion for learning, a passion for people, and practicability are char­
acteristics of the Better Brain leader and are the underlying principles for
the content of this book.
 CHAPTER 1

Your Dog Loves You—Your

Millennial Too?
You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not
leadership.
—Dwight Eisenhower

“Welcome to our company, before starting you need to do the test to see if you’re
yellow, green or red.”
What? My first day in a new role as a senior leader and I was being
forced into a box, a personality type, a straitjacket of social science, based
on my own fabricated answers to a dubious set of questions. What’s the
meaning of life? It’s still 42.1
From Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to DISC behavioral assess­
ment, from Gallup Strengths Finder to the Big Five Personality traits, our
desire to understand ourselves and those around us has boosted the pop­
ularity of social sciences, assessment centers, and profiling. We have will­
ingly put ourselves through the intellectually reasoned tests and trials, and
accepted our color-coded fate, but really is this still the best we can do?
While the tests at least encourage us to start thinking about individual
personality types in the workforce, and that we may need to adapt our
leadership style to suit their needs, they do nothing for showing us how.
The plethora of books, courses, and buzzwords thrown at new leaders,
which starts with emotional intelligence and ends with vulnerability, isn’t
making them better leaders. Learning more about leadership doesn’t work
anymore and we don’t really know why.

1
 In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 42 is the “Answer
to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” calculated by a
supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years.
2 Build Better Brains

Traditional leadership still focuses on power and skills, yet we increas­

ingly see the need for a culture of trust and purpose, especially for the new
generations, because the people we lead today are not like the people we led
yesterday. The new workforce will not wish to put their fate into the contrived
tests because they are fearless, skeptical, and hyper-informed. We won’t know
whether they are blue or INTJ, how ambitious they really are, or whether
they are better at executing or influencing. So, how then will we lead them?

Leading the Fearless: The Need to Reboot

There’s a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Valley who have
arrived since 2000, after the dotcom bust. They’re completely fearless.
—Marc Andreessen, Generation X

Jim, an experienced, seasoned, 50+ leader came to me for a coaching

session. He explained that he’s on the board of a company that had just
bought a startup. It seemed quite a normal business progression, so why
was he so agitated?
Jim started to explain:

I spoke to one of the partners in the startup and he only works a

four-day week. I mean, don’t misunderstand me, it’s not like he
is home-office-ing the rest of the week, he simply does not work
for an entire span of 72 hours! And it gets even worse. His people
only work three days a week. Can you imagine that? I seriously
was about to reconsider our due diligence.

Jim was shocked and had voiced his concern to the four-day week
partner, who responded, “Well, that’s how it is. We’ll be the last genera­
tion who exploits themselves.”
By 2025, roughly 75 percent of the global workforce will be
millennials.2

2
  Global Generations: A Global Study on Work-Life Challenges Across Generations:
https://ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Global_generations_study/$FILE/
EY-global-generations-a-global-study-on-work-life-challenges-across-genera­
tions.pdf
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 3

More than three-quarters of your team will be made up of people

born in the 1980s and 1990s, who some papers unfairly describe as lazy,
narcissistic,3 job jumpers with unrealistic expectations of working life.
Are they? Or do they just put the stakes higher for you as their leader?
A Deloitte4 survey in 2019, based on the views of 13,416 millennials
born between January 1983 and December 1994, across 42 countries and
territories, and 3,009 Gen Zs born between January 1995 and December
2002 from 10 countries found they

• are less trusting of employers;

• have a lack of faith in societal institutions;
• are more skeptical of your businesses’ motives; and
• value experiences and are motivated by making an impact.

The upcoming generations are skeptical of your motives, and rightly

so. They don’t trust businesses that prioritize their own agendas over their
impact on society. They wouldn’t hesitate to leave a company that didn’t
share their values. And they don’t particularly care for your contrived psy­
chological tests.
They don’t want a boss, they want a leader they can trust. They don’t
want a job, they want a purpose. Trust and purpose are the currency in
today’s workplaces.

From Maslow to Millennials

Today’s leaders are mostly from the Baby Boomer and Generation X
cohorts, born between 1940 and the end of the 1970s. We’re in our for­
ties, fifties, and sixties, we’re the lost souls, and nobody in the workplace
understands us. The younger generations make fun of us, with articles

3
  Millennials: The Next Greatest Generation?: http://nation.time.com/2013/05/
09/millennials-the-next-greatest-generation/
4
 The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019: Societal Discord and Tech­
nological Transformation Create a “Generation Disrupted.” https://www2.
deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/deloitte-
2019-millennial-survey.pdf
4 Build Better Brains

asking: “Why are Gen X and baby boomer employees valuable assets in
the workplace?”5 They inform us that we may still enjoy The Goonies and
Donkey Kong. Where is our place among the fearless? Are we really able
to lead them?

What Do You Want, Boomer?

A friend and fellow leader told me he needed to give some instructions

to one of his team members. As my friend approached the employee, the
32-year-old overachiever asked him, “What do you want Boomer?” My
friend found that terrifying.
The new workforce doesn’t respect power or authority. They respect
intelligence and creativity. Can the older generations still be taken seri­
ously and become inspirational and charismatic to the new Gens?
My parent’s generation, the baby boomers, had a very specific set of
values, and their dreams were mostly about pure, financial achievements.
There was no self-examination, and people were socialized into the life of
a hard-working father and family-oriented mother. For this generation, it
was all about financial security. Could you build or buy a house for your
family? Could you keep your job until you got to retirement? Was your
pension stable? You needed to work hard for your goals, and there was no
question that you needed to get up every morning, work the same time
every day, and do everything for your job.
Management systems, leadership practices, and communications pro­
cesses that we use today were built during the Industrial Age of work.
They assume that people are prepared to commit a large portion of their
lives to their employer and everything else (self-actualization, holidays,
and family) needs to be built around work and slotted into the gaps. This
used to work in the days when men were the “breadwinners” and went
out to work, leaving their wife to manage the home and children.
With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day6—a trend that will
continue for another 11 years—these “tame” employees are walking out

5
  How to Keep Gen X-Ers and Baby Boomers Engaged at Work: https://culture­
summit.co/articles/keep-gen-x-ers-baby-boomers-engaged-work
6
 Gibson, W.E. 2018. https://aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2018/
census-baby-boomers-fd.html
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 5

the door with decades of experience and industry knowledge. How can
today’s leaders establish authentic, efficient, cross-generational relation­
ships and keep the “oldish guys” entertained and engaged enough to con­
tinue providing their valuable experience of many years?

Generation BlackBerry

Some millennials speak kindly of Generation X, my cohort, because

although we are a bunch of hedonistic materialists, at least we haven’t
started a war.7 And, don’t forget, we leave a heritage of the original and
truly great movies such as the Star Wars Saga. We lived through them all.
Generation X worshiped the extremes: BlackBerry overflow, the Gold
Card from an airline, at least 150 unread e-mails, collections of little hand
creams assembled during hundreds of long-haul flights (or was that just
me?), a nonexistent work–life balance, a desperate assistant racing behind
trying to squeeze one more meeting into the busy schedule. We were
proud to still be alive at the end of an 80-hour week filled with endless
meetings and constant jet lag. These were the Generation X badges of
success.
I remember getting my first BlackBerry, and I was so proud. This
gadget accompanied me day and night. If I had a hundred new e-mails in
the morning I told at least five people directly, because that was “success”
for me. I felt like I was someone important.
I also remember how my dad, a baby boomer, proudly told his Rotary
Club friends that his daughter had gone again to her “favorite restaurant
in Brazil.” This was partly true; it was a meat-chain rodizio (Brazilian style
steakhouse) called Fogo de Chao, and I actually went there whenever
I could convince my team, colleagues, or friends during the trips. (I went
mainly because of the warm cheese bread, which was made of Tapioca
flour, one of the rare delights I could eat being blessed with a gluten intol­
erance.) He was proud that his daughter had a “jet-set lifestyle,” waking
up on one continent and eating dinner on another.

  Ganesh, J. 2019. “A Millennial’s Hymn to Generation X.” Financial Times,

7

October 25.
6 Build Better Brains

Ask my dad now about his daughter, and he is very (baby-boomerish)

unlikely to state: “My daughter quit the corporate world and is working
on self-actualization instead of money.”
Inform the people you interview with these days that part of their job
will be to take three to four, long-haul flights per month, and they say,
“Are you crazy?”
Sometimes, the question that hits me and my baby boomers and
GenXers colleagues is, do we still matter?
According to my previously cited favorite book, the answer is proba­
bly 42. Let’s keep calm and stick with our towels; many of us are still the
leaders of this world. However, there’s a need for action, to shift from a
command-and-control mentality that 75 percent of the workforce will
reject, to a leadership style that empowers people and builds on trust and
purpose.

Maslow Rebooted
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs8 is a motivational theory in psychology that
has a five-level model of human needs, frequently drawn as a pyramid
(Figure 1.1). At the bottom we have physiological needs of air, food,
water, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction. The next level of needs
are safety, love, belonging, and esteem. The peak of the pyramid is self-ac­
tualization, achieving one’s full potential. One of my friend’s kids just
reminded me that there are two new levels to be added to the original
model: Wi-Fi and battery life.
Today we are able to provide the bottom level of the most imminent
needs for the people we work with. They have shelter, enough to eat,
housing, and security. This is definitely a great achievement and funda­
mental to everything—work relations, happiness in life, success as lead­
ers. But where to go from here? How can we help ourselves and the new
generations reach the upper levels?
The workforce of today and tomorrow demand self-actualization and
esteem. Their goals need to be linked to a purpose. Besides providing

8
  Maslow, A.H. 1943. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psycho-Logical Review
50, pp. 370–96.
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 7

Figure 1.1  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

unlimited and ubiquitous accessible Wi-Fi and battery life, are we able
to provide a workplace that lets them fulfill their purpose? Let’s remain
hopeful. There’s a lot our brain can teach us, and we will see how to work
on that as leaders during this book.
Let’s take a quick look at the top of the pyramid—esteem and self-ac­
tualization. What did that mean for my dad as a baby boomer and myself
as a Generation X? When I was a teenager my dad, a CEO, listened to
one of my speeches around this mystical purpose word, our need to search
for meaning, and how to truly find yourself. He said: “What BS! Why do
you need to find yourself? Have you ever lost yourself somewhere?” The
topic of self-actualization was over. Forget about the fact that the GenXers
mostly cared about themselves, their BlackBerry, and maybe the next Star
Wars episode. What does trust and purpose mean for the people we lead
today, and who will be the workforce of tomorrow?
Maslow’s model is seeing a revival and can be reimagined according to
our changing society. “Maslow Rebooted,” assuming physiological needs
are met, will need to include trust and purpose (Figure 1.2).
I was mentoring a bright guy who was doing a double study of medi­
cine and business at Harvard. He was at a decision point in his career, go
for a job as a surgeon, or work for an independent consultancy? He was
8 Build Better Brains

Figure 1.2  Maslow rebooted

concerned about the very structured organization of working at a hospital

and the circumstances at this workplace.

I realized when working at the hospital I didn’t get a good night’s

sleep for a very long time. I felt exhausted. It reflected on my
eating and exercising habits. When I worked in the management
consultancy over the summer, I could have ideas, they let me do
things. I could be flexible and creative. I’m sure I can organize a
much healthier lifestyle for me there, plus I will have more auton­
omy. So that’s what I’m going to do.

A career as a surgeon is safer, with a good salary (surgeons are in high

demand) and is valued highly in society. A career as a consultant has a lot
more risk, and lacks financial security and job stability. My mentee was
choosing quality of life and a healthier work–life balance over stability,
money, and status. His purpose, what made him feel good about himself,
wasn’t measurable in dollars and glory.
Motivators for our workforce must become different, since the gen­
erations of today have different goals for health and well-being, auton­
omy, and personal development. Employers need to appeal to people with
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 9

more creative and individualized motivators, in order to attract and retain

talent.
Let’s take a look at the safety piece of Maslow. Everyone wants to feel
safe—to be creative, to speak up, to be able to trust. To trust that we will
be backed up by our leader.
For a leader, safety means the ability to play around with his leader­
ship and tailor it to the individual needs. In the old leadership schemes we
still work in, this creative approach is often not possible and seems risky.
The truth is, great things can happen when you explore new ways of lead­
ership. You can earn unlimited loyalty and trust, and achieve great results.
An angel investor at an innovative startup told me how he deployed a
CEO, young Quant guy, for setting up the business while he was search­
ing for investors. It was just the two of them at the start of the venture.
The CEO was perfect for this, but there was one seemingly insurmount­
able flaw in the beginning: he wished to work while living on a sailing
boat, cruising between Hawaii and Europe. At first that seemed impossi­
ble; it didn’t fit with any of the known working concepts. Two years later
they have successfully launched the venture, completed the seed round,
and already have investors interested in funding their series A.
Maslow was completely right. Before you can dream about self-actual­
ization, you need to feel safe and you need to be able to trust. Trust must
go both ways, which seems to be a major obstacle in our business world.
Keith Ferrazzi, author of Who’s Got Your Back, mentions: “People crave
transparency, openness, and honesty from their leaders. Unfortunately,
business leaders continue to face issues of trust.”9
According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, one
in four workers say they don’t trust their employer, and only about half
believe their employer is open and upfront with them.10

9
  Ferrazzi, K. 2015. “7 Ways to Improve Employee Development Programs.”
Harvard Business Review July 31.
10
  American Psychological Association. 2014. “Employee Distrust is Pervasive in
U.S. Workforce.” April 23.
10 Build Better Brains

The Foundation of Trust

The foundation of trust is safety, belonging, and meaning. But trust is

fragile. People don’t even trust the institutions we rely on11—trust in reli­
gion, governments, and the press is low—these are the institutions that
bind, direct, and lead us. Trust is so important that the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) set up Trustlab,12 an
innovative initiative to improve existing measures of trust, and to under­
stand what drives trust, a concept that is still poorly understood.
Leaders frequently don’t feel safe, or capable enough, to lead their
teams with confidence and subsequently this lack of trust in themselves
is transmitted to the culture of their teams. Many teams do not experi­
ence safety, belonging, and importance; therefore a culture of trust can’t
exist. What happens when we have a culture that is full of fear, stress, and
confusion?
In my work as coach and mentor, 80 percent of all problems we talk
about are grounded in issues of trust. Lack of trust as a leader toward your
people, your lack of trust to your boss, the lack of trust for your team,
your family, and yourself.
How can we become the trusted leaders our teams need? Let’s first
take another look at why trust is so important.
When I am coaching a new leader, I’ll start the conversation about
team culture at the bottom of Patrick Lencioni’s pyramid of highly func­
tional teams—trust. Lencioni shows in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
(which is widely considered one of the best books on team building) that
the first and most important “dysfunction” of a team that isn’t working is
trust—or rather, the lack of it. Trust is at the heart of every relationship,
and that holds true for our relationships in the business world.
Like many other authors and leaders have suggested, trust is the
first and most critical foundational piece for building strong teams. In a

11
 “How Americans Lost Trust in Our Greatest Institutions: It’s Not just
Washington. Across the Country, Citizens’ Faith in their City Halls, Newspa­
pers, and Churches Is Fading.” The Atlantic, https://theatlantic.com/politics/
archive/2012/04/how-americans-lost-trust-in-our-greatest-institutions/256163/
12
  Trustlab, https://oecd.org/sdd/trustlab.htm
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 11

leadership context, trust means that employees expect their leaders to treat
them well, and, as a consequence, are comfortable being open with their
leaders. With trust in place, more significant steps can be taken toward
new goals. Complex and difficult conversations can be approached with­
out fear, teams will feel that they can overcome challenges together.
In his book The Speed of Trust, Steven Covey discusses the importance
of leaders inspiring trust. Transparency is critical to those seeking to earn
and inspire the trust of their staff. Trusting also means respecting every­
one’s opinion, personal approach, and input in a reflective and nonjudg­
mental manner. Managing for trust is critical in order to drive motivation
and increase business performance.
A bit later in this book we’ll see how we can utilize neuroscientific
insights to understand and create trust.

The Importance of Purpose

Purpose is increasingly important for leaders and the teams that are
formed from the mixed generations, because purpose will be different for
everyone. Leaders often forget to ask, “What do you want?” of their team
members. “What do you want?” is the most important and most power­
ful question to ask before engaging your teams in activities and projects.
When going on a long journey, you must know exactly what you want.
As a medical doctor working for almost a quarter of a century in
research and development, I have seen many study programs fail, although
the molecules were highly promising. Many times the reasons were not
a flaw in the mechanism, or a problem with the safety. Some of these
drugs could have been very successful in their development. The mistake
was that the question “what do you want to get out as a result?” was not
properly asked before starting the study.
One leader in a pharmaceutical company told me about an antibi­
otic they developed for children. Everybody worked in silos, with little
cross-departmental communication. Finally, just before launch, some­
body had the idea to taste the new product. It tasted horrible; it was
absolutely impossible to put it on the market.
What went wrong? They asked the wrong questions, and they didn’t
really know what they wanted. The question they asked was probably,
12 Build Better Brains

“how do we design an efficient drug against bacterial infection X,” not

“how can we manufacture a medication which the children like to take
in order to get them healthy?” It’s all about creating coherence and col­
laboration in the team working toward a purpose. Without purpose, you
stifle innovation.
The first company I worked with was developing a drug against influ­
enza. It was a wonderful drug that you could inhale and it worked really
fast, destroying the viruses and preventing them from replicating. Our
competitor had a pill, which was much easier to take but reacted more
slowly.
Who gets influenza? Old people and kids. Our wonderful, compli­
cated drug delivery device needed you to insert a platelet, open a packet,
budge a little thing through another thing to open up the container where
the powdered substance was, and then you had to make sure you used the
proper, complicated technique for inhaling it. Forget it, nobody was able
to use the medication without guidance from outside. Our competitor
had a pill, and with this, had simplicity.
It doesn’t matter if you have a wonderful idea, or the best product,
it’s about creating a real purpose for everybody to get behind. You need
the collective intelligence of people working together on some com­
mon goal, where everybody gets to use creativity and intelligence, and
feels safe and trusts enough to speak up. That’s when you reach the best
outcome.
As coaches, when we are starting to work with a new client, we ini­
tially ask this question “what do you want?”. Asking “What do you really
want,” or “what is your biggest dream” links to something which reaches
beyond the objective, the goal. It links to the underlying purpose and will
prime our brain for action. Creating purpose in the brain is as important
as creating the goal itself, and fundamental to prepare for the journey. It
initiates a cascade of neurochemicals to get your motivation and excite­
ment going.
We cannot assume everyone has the same purpose. Leaders pro­
vide physical safety and belonging as prerequisites for being able to
trust. Mostly though they provide their staff with some tangible perks
like money to feel secure—and this probably satisfies the Boomers and
GenXers. Leaders often fail to realize that the new generations are not
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 13

working for money or the stability of a job, they’re working for interest,
esteem, excitement, and intrigue. They want something exciting for the
next one or two years. If you want to work with the new generations in
the long term, you need to provide things that they really crave. In order
to bring them closer to you, and make them trust you, you need to offer
more than cash—you need to offer purpose. Purpose is the basic prereq­
uisite to get to the top of Maslow’s Rebooted pyramid and be ready for
self-actualization.
According to the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
report titled “Millennials at Work—Reshaping the Workplace in Finan­
cial Services in Asia,”13 corporate social values become more important to
millennials when choosing an employer once their basic needs, like ade­
quate pay and working conditions, are met. The report states that “mil­
lennials want their work to have a purpose, to contribute something to
the world and they want to be proud of their employer.”
Most people in today’s workforce expect a leader to not only give
themselves a purpose but also provide a valid purpose for the company.
The objectives you are setting should be meaningful to them, but in addi­
tion they need to be meaningful for society, so they sign up for a purpose
they can fully support.
A global survey of 474 executives found that most executives believe
purpose matters, but only a minority said their company currently runs
in a purpose-driven way.14 Knowing the purpose, needs, and realities of
your team or customer is vitally important. Things can go badly wrong
when you don’t.
Speaking to the future generations who prefer working from their
boats, many of us are not only astonished but unable to manage these
strange new humans. The big challenge will be to cater to the needs of
individuals who ditch the monthly pay check for the ability to do their

13
 PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Millennials at Work—Reshaping the Workplace
in Financial Services in Asia.” https://pwc.com/gx/en/financial-services/publica­
tions/assets/pwc-millennials-at-work-in-asia.pdf
14
  Read Deloitte’s Culture of Purpose research. “‘Purpose driven’ Companies Are
Twice as Likely to Grow and Almost Three Times More Innovative.” https://
www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/culture-of-purpose.html
14 Build Better Brains

work location-free, to be entitled to eight hours of sleep per night, and

to have one day of the week for their own, personal projects. The magic
they aim for is not the Diamond Air Miles Card, a stamp of continuous,
air-bound slavery but to be able to utilize the brain’s reticular activation
system (RAS), which allows them to visualize and reach their goals (the
RAS is actually able to perform quite magical things in your brain, and
we will come to that later in the book).
The respect for a good life, and the fact that our health and our val­
ues are critically important for this kind of existence, has resurfaced. The
dialectic leadership model born in the industrial age doesn’t take into
account how we can tune our brain, attitudes, emotions, and leadership
in a way that resonates with every individual.

Disrupting the Paradigm:

Leadership is Biology, Not Sociology
There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it
or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought
in the reading brain because it implies choice.
—Maryanne Wolf

In the living room of his home in Atlanta, neuroscientist and author of

What It’s Like to Be a Dog, Gregory Berns has built a magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) scanner. He trained a rescue dog, Callie, to voluntarily
enter the scanner and become the first dog to have her brain scanned
while fully awake and unrestrained. Why? So he could figure out what
dogs think and feel.
It came as no surprise to me, owner of Milly, an affectionate and slightly
loopy Cockapoo, that animals have feelings very much like we do. In fact,
our dogs love us. We can scientifically measure love. We know where the
reward centers, the places where we feel positive emotions, in the brain
are. They are activated and light up when we get rewards. Treats and food
activate these pleasure centers as much as cuddles, kisses, and praise.
Neuroscience gives us the possibility to measure emotions. If we can
measure emotions, can we measure the feelings of trust and purpose? Can
we measure the chaotic world of leadership?
 Your Dog Loves You—Your Millennial Too? 15

Leadership has always been confusing; otherwise we wouldn’t have

tons of books out there trying to solve the puzzle and map out the best
way to become an inspirational, charismatic, and successful leader.
Some months ago, a former colleague who is “reinventing” himself
asked for recommendations for great leadership books. I struggled to sug­
gest some. I had given up reading after the first few chapters of almost
all the recent leadership books. They were all connected to skills, or were
mere encyclopedias, they were either boring, repetitive, or I simply felt
not intelligent enough for them.
That same day I read an article postulating that leaders in the future
should take into account the decision-making qualities of their three
brains—head, heart, and gut. I was confused. All the tools and psycho­
metric assessments I had done and made my people do during my career
were skill-based. They did not involve a brain, and for sure not three of
them!
I had advised another colleague to take it slow and trust his gut when
taking a decision on the various job offers he could choose from. A couple
of days later my partner, who also is a senior leader, told me that Daniel
Kahneman, Israeli American psychologist and economist (a guru, who
won a Nobel prize), explicitly states in his book to not trust your gut
feeling!
To make things worse, I had just posted an article on LinkedIn describ­
ing the recently discovered science showing how little particles of our gut
bacteria direct the output of neurochemicals and send them via a direct
speedway to the brain! It’s claimed that these chemicals are able to make
us happy, sad, and depressed, give us energy, and influence decisions.
If we are already consulting our gut for leadership, how much are we
utilizing the insights science can give us about our first head brain? Or
about our heart, which is the “little, second brain”?
Let’s try to understand why it makes sense to take leadership to a
biological level and connect—instead of psychology and sociology—the
observations and innate possibilities that our anatomy offers us.
Social tests of behavior, and social science as such, will become a
different type of science in the very moment that you are able to dis­
play human feelings and behavior on a screen: the insights will be dif­
ferent because you visualize with new technologies, the outcome will be
16 Build Better Brains

different because you suddenly start seeing the bigger picture. By demon­
strating the connection between behavior and the workings of the brain,
we understand the results of good or bad leadership,15 and we literally are
able to see now why employees become motivated, scared, procrastinate,
or thrive.16
Leaders benefit not only from demystifying a science that appears
both esoteric and highly complicated, but from learning how to master
their brains for better leadership.
The brain is becoming tangible and with this leadership is moving from
sociology to biology. This idea is not new. We don’t need to rely on the
self-reported personality tests and deductive methods to measure our
effectiveness. That’s just one part of the puzzle. In addition to the per­
sonality tests we can now detect and pinpoint the “fluffy stuff” around
emotions like trust and motivation.
When you treat your people well, this will activate in their brains feel­
ings of affection, love, and trust. We can see that in dogs, but can you see
that in your team of Boomers, GenXers, and millennials? This should be
our goal. Why? Because as we have seen before, that’s your chance to win
them over. They will reward you with eternal loyalty. They will literally
give you their best and they will love to do it intrinsically because they
have all the motivators they need for themselves.

15
  Boyatzis, I.R. 2011. “Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights.”
Business Journal. January/February.
16
  Arvey, R.D., N. Wang, Z. Song, and W. Li. 2014. “The Biology of Leadership.”
In Oxford Library of Psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organiza-
tions, ed. Day, D.V. pp. 73–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Index
Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refers to footnotes.
Acetylcholine, 38 CEO, 136–138
Adams, Douglas, 1n1, 91, 149 Chapman, Gary, 76
Adams, John Quincy, 64, 77 Charismatic leader, 49–52, 66
Adams, Scott, 128 Clock your effort, 118
Adrenaline, 39, 41, 45, 62, 113, 144 Coaching, xiii, xv, 2, 10, 55, 79, 94,
Aerobic exercise, 103 104
AIDS, 77 Cognitive neuroscience, 18
Alzheimer’s disease, 18, 26, 95, 96, Complex carbohydrates, 111–112
109, 110, 112, 113 Conley, Chip, 53
American Psychological Association, 9 Consensus, 61–62
Amino acids, 113 Copperfield, David, 78
Andreessen, Marc, 2 Cortisol, 24, 31, 39–41, 45, 46, 58,
Antioxidants, 113 60, 62, 64, 74, 77, 87, 89,
Aristotle, 115 93, 144
Autonomic nervous system (ANS), 45 Cosmic ordering, 122
Autonomy, 60 Covey, Steven, 11
Crumbaugh, James, 31
Baby boomers, xvi, 4–6, 12, 16, 89,
144, 149 Decety, J., 73
Bacon, Francis, 74 Decision making process, 15, 18, 27,
Bailey, Liberty Hyde, 71 42, 48, 57, 65, 73, 86, 87,
Balancing, 40–41, 123 117
Béland-Millar, Alexandria, 48 Dekker, Thomas, 93
Berns, Gregory, 14 Deloitte survey, 3, 3n4, 13n14
Better Brain Company, 70, 136–144, DeSalle, Rob, 21
146, 150 Diana, Princess, 77
BlackBerry, 5–6 Dopamine, 20, 30, 35, 36, 40, 46,
Blair, Hugh, 101 52, 54, 55, 63, 72–74, 76,
Boyatzis, Richard E., 47 77, 80, 82, 96, 101, 102, 106,
Brain boosters, 111–113 108, 110, 111, 117–119, 131,
Brain-friendly food, 140 142, 146
Business, 3, 9, 11 Dopamine reward cycle, 30, 36, 74,
76, 142
Canfield, Jack, 123 Douglas, Donald Wills, 80
Captain leader, 55, 57, 64, 84–90, Doyle, Arthur Conan, 19
146 Dream manager, 132–133
Cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise, 102 Dream Manager, The (Kelly), 82
Carnegie, Dale, 50 Dream sleep, 96
Carrey, Jim, 128
Central nervous system (CNS), 113 Einstein, Albert, 112, 121
154 Index
Eisenhower, Dwight, 1
Eliot, George, 75
Emotional contagion, 78, 105–106
Emotional Intelligence: Why It
Can Matter More Than IQ
(Goleman), 39
Empathy, 73, 74
Endorphins, 37, 55, 64, 80, 82, 87,
89
Energy-saving mode, 117–118
Eternal construction mode,
19–21
Excitatory neurotransmitter, 38
Executive function, 86
Exercise, 101–103
Fairness, 60
Fatty acids, 112
Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The
(Lencioni), 10
Five Love Languages, The (Chapman),
76
Frankl, Victor, 30
Functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), 18
Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA),
35, 38, 110
Gamma waves, 99
Ganguly, Sourav, 84
Gardener leader, 54–55, 57, 63,
71–77, 118, 142
Gardener, magician, or captain
(GMC) model, v, xvi, xvii,
54, 56, 62–67, 71, 82, 90,
144–147
General Theory of Love, A (Amini
and Lannon), 73
Generation X, xvi, 3, 5–7, 12, 16,
28, 144
Ghosn, Caroline, 67
Gibbs, Nancy, 87
Glutamate, 35, 38, 102
Goleman, Daniel, 39
Google, 139
Gratitude, 104–108
Gut brain, 21, 23, 25–27, 65, 106,
138
Haig, Matt, 17
Happier Human, The, 105
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public
Health, 92–93
Head brain, 15, 21–23, 27, 65
Heart brain, 21–25, 65
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The
(Adams), 1n1
HIV, 77
How To Win Friends and Influence
People (Carnegie), 50
Immune system, 23, 24, 26, 45, 46,
96, 99–101, 107, 141
Jobs, Steve, 135
Kahneman, Daniel, 15, 26, 41–43
Kelly, Matthew, 82
Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy,
41–44, 46, 49, 87, 88, 103,
116
King, Marilyn, 127–128
Korb, Alex, 106
Laughter: A Scientific Investigation
(Provine), 81
Law of attraction, 122
Leaders
and brain, 54–56
captain, 55, 57, 64, 84–90, 146
gardener, 54–55, 57, 63, 71–77,
118, 142
good, 144, 145
implications for, 59
magician, 55, 57, 63, 77–83
Leadership, xiii–xviii, 1, 19, 49, 51,
52, 54, 56–60, 62, 84, 107,
145, 146, 149, 150
GMC model, 64–66, 71
natural, 67–70
neuroscience, 28, 65–66
personal, 68
sociology to biology, 14–16
traditional, 2
Lee, Blaine, 71
Leipzig, Adam, 32
Lencioni, Patrick, 10
 Index 155

Limbic resonance, 72–74, 78 Neurohacking, 111

Limbic system, 18, 22, 29, 32, 37, 42, “Neuron on a chip,” 18
43, 46, 55, 59, 66, 73, 81, 85, Neurons, 20, 47–48
87, 88, 116, 117 Neuroplasticity, xvii, 17, 19–21, 27,
46, 48, 85, 101, 126, 141,
McLuhan, Marshall, 91 149
Mad Man, 114 Neuroscience, xiii–xviii, 14, 17, 34,
Magician leader, 55, 57, 63, 77–83 42, 58, 78, 122, 149, 150
Maholick, Leonard, 31 eternal construction mode, 19–21
Management, 4, 8, 23, 29, 55 gut brain, 25–27
Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 30 heart brain, 24–25
Martineau, J. T., 73 interaction between brains, 21–23
Maslow, A.H., xv leadership, 28, 65–66
hierarchy of needs, 6–7, 89 purpose, 30–32
to millennials, 3–4 reticular activating system,
rebooted, 6–9, 13 129–130
SCARF, 57–59 tangible brain, 18–19
Meditation, 55, 68, 91, 101, 109, 137 trust, 29–30
and mind wandering, 97–99 vagus nerve, 23–24
neurothingies, 99–100 Neuroscientific research, 124
Messier, Claude, 48 Neurothingies, 33–41, 45, 49, 50, 54,
Microsoft, 139 55, 58, 64, 72, 74, 82, 87,
Millennials, xvi, 2–5, 13, 16, 28, 49, 90, 96, 99–100, 102–104,
144, 149 106–108, 125, 136
Milton, John, 115 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30
Mindfulness Awareness Research Non-presenteeism policy, 140
Center of UCLA, 107 Nootropics, 109–110
Mind wandering time, 100–101 Noradrenaline, 35, 38–41, 45, 55, 64,
Miss Piggy and Kermit, 41–44, 46, 73, 87–89, 93, 96, 113
49, 87–89, 96, 103, 116 Nutrients, 114–115
Mohr, Barbel, 121
Monthly Energy Audit, The, 141–142 Oxytocin, 29, 35, 37, 40, 46, 50, 52,
Motivation, xv, 6, 11, 12, 16, 21, 28–32, 55, 62, 63, 75, 78–80, 83
34–36, 40, 46, 49, 50, 58, 74,
78, 83, 89, 101, 102, 109, 117, Paleomammalian brain, 42
119, 129, 131, 132, 142 Parasympathetic mode, 41, 46
Multiuser hub, 140 Parasympathetic response, 47
Myth or magic, 122 Parasympathetic system, 47
Performance, 11, 86, 95, 110, 113,
Nervous system, 23, 34, 38, 41, 45, 116, 119, 141–143
66, 95, 107, 113 Phospholipids, 112–113
Netflix, 139 Physical exercise, 103–104
Neural pathways, 124 Pills, 109–111
Neurobics, 103–104 Porter, Michael, 28
Neurochemicals, 12, 15, 20, 26, 31, Positive affirmations, 122–124
33–36, 39, 45–47, 49, 52, Positivity, 124–126
54, 63, 66, 72, 73, 77, 82, Prefrontal cortex (PFC), 42, 44
96, 137 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 13
156 Index

Procrastination, 115–116 Systems

Provine, Robert, 81 autonomic nervous system, 45
Psychology, 6, 15, 29, 43, 48, 117, dopamine, 36
140 glymphatic, 95–96
Purpose, 11–14 immune, 23, 24, 26, 45, 46, 96,
Purpose in Life (PIL), 30–31 99–101, 107, 141
Pychyl, Tim, 42–43 limbic, 18, 22, 29, 32, 37, 42, 43,
Pychyl, Timothy A., 117 46, 55, 59, 66, 73, 81, 85, 87,
88, 116, 117
Racine, E., 73 management, 4, 8, 23, 29, 55
Rapid eye movement (REM), 94 nervous, 23, 34, 38, 41, 45, 66, 95,
Relatedness, 60 107, 113
Renewal mode, 41 prefrontal cortex, 42, 44
Response to threat, 60–61 reticular activation system, 14,
Reticular activation system (RAS), 14, 129–131
129–131 sympathetic and parasympathetic,
Reward, 119 46–47
Rock, David, 59
Rohn, Jim, 82 Tangible brain, 18–19
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman),
SCARF model, 57–64, 144 26
Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs), 44 ThinkUp app, 126
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 128 Tiger, 45–47
Secretan, Lance, 49 Time, 47, 100–101, 116–117,
Self-affirmations, 122–125 149
Serotonin, 35, 40, 46, 52, 54, 63, Tolkien, J. R. R., 23, 97
72–74, 77, 80, 102, 106, 108, Toothbrush time, 100–101
110, 111, 119, 137, 141, 142, Trust, xv, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9–16, 28–30, 32,
146 34, 35, 37, 40, 44, 49, 55, 56,
Sleep, 49, 93–94 58, 62, 64, 66, 70, 71, 75, 76,
deprivation, 95–96 78–80, 82, 83, 107, 125, 132,
memories, 94–95 142, 145
neurothingies, 96 Trust Factor: The Science of Creating
Smith, Will, 128 High-Performance Companies
Social neuroscience, 58–59 (Zak), 29
Speed of Trust, The (Covey), 11 Trustlab, 10
Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, Twain, Mark, 109
43–44 Tyson, Neil de Grasse, 18
Status, 60 Tzu, Lao, 85
Strasberg, Lee, 33
Stress mode, 46 Upward Spiral (Korb), 106
Sullenberger, Chesley B., 88
Sympathetic nervous system, 41 Vagus nerve, 23–24
 Index 157

Visualization, 119, 122, 127, 128, Woods, Tiger, 127

131–134 World Health Organization
(WHO), 41
Weber, Max, 51
Williams, Pat, 72 Zak, Paul J., 29–30
Wolf, Maryanne, 14 Zeigarnik Bluma, 117
Wood, Joanne, 125 Ziglar, Zig, 104–105