Hi everyone,

The big news right now is a fantastic article in the New Yorker Magazine, that summarizes the science emerging within one of my favourite areas of study, insight. Written by Jonah Lehrer, with interviews with Mark Jung-Beeman, the article is a must-read for anyone interested in the brain and leadership, innovation, coaching and change. To me insight is at the heart of change, and real change has an insight at the core. Download the article here.

I also recently interviewed Jonah about his current book, and he is speaking in NYC at the NeuroLeadership Summit. He will be running a session with Mark Jung-Beeman, along with one of the founders of the Blueman Group, all about the science of insight. You can listen to the 30 minute interview here.

One of the most fun parts of what I do is getting to spend time with some incredibly smart people, and Jonah is one of these for sure. Jonah also runs the best blog in the world for people interested in the latest neuroscience research. It's called the Frontal Cortex, and it's well worth diving into.

There was a great article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about the NeuroLeadership field, a full page story with photos.

I am about to dive into the first of the two Neuroleadership summits. The programs are all finalized, you can dowload them on the neuroleadership site. Am also excited to be editing the first neuroleadership journal, which will come out around the NYC Summit at the end of October. We have over a dozen papers rich in insights and ideas coming together. I am publishing a paper on Influencing Others, with a summary of some of the key social neuroscience research.

Between the two summits I will be visiting Oxford University to give a talk, and spending time at CIMBA in Asolo, Italy, where I am on faculty. I look forward to working with a new group of MBA students, introducing them to the key findings from neuroscience as they start their year long MBA. It's exciting to be part of the team at CIMBA building a brain-based MBA for future leaders.

On the commercial side, I am pleased to see my consulting firm Results Coaching Systems growing steadily, with operations now in Eastern Europe, and about to open in Latin America. We are thrilled to be working with some great organizations in over 10 countries now, helping to build coaching cultures using a brain-based approach to coaching. The project we ran with EDS, developing coaching skills in over 3,000 leaders, is continuing to deepen. If anyone is interested in a case study on this I will email it out on request.

One thing I know for sure is that knowing about the brain is proving to be tremendously useful for staying cool under pressure amongst the chaos that is life. The more I am learning, the easier it is to catch debilitating patterns before they take hold. As a paper I read this week said, (by Craig Hassed who is teaching mindfulness to medical students), there are lots of trains of thought your mind travels along. I believe that knowing about your brain gives you more ability to choose which train to get onto, and more importantly, which to stay off.

That's about it for now. Please feel free to email me, davidrock@workplacecoaching.com, with any feedback about what you find useful or meaningful in this blog.