Hello all! The weekend before Thanksgiving I got to attend the IEEE Women in Engineering USA East Leadership Forum. Here are my notes from some of my favorite talks at the event.
A) The Neuroscience of Inclusion
This talk was given by Dr. Asma Abuzaakouk, a neuroscientist at the Mitre Corporation. She started by stating that Inclusion + Diversity + Psychological Safety = Creativity & Innovation, and that there was hard science to backup the imperative to have a culture of inclusion.
She described how human brains "feel before we think", because the outermost layer of our brain is the Reptilian fight or flight response (it takes 8 ms for a response to be generated by your reptilian layer), followed by the Limbic response (which controls needs like hunger, thirst, reproduction, etc.) followed by the Neocortex (which takes 40ms to generate a response). She phrased it that human brains are hardwired to scan for threats first, and not reward, and a response to the perceived threat will be out of our mouths before our neocortex has processed the information.
She argued that social exclusion creates a state of threat, impeding the best possible thinking from employees, and showed some scans indicating that social exclusion lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain or threats. She described some ways to control the three types of chemical "brain messengers" - Norepinephrine, Dopamine, and Serotonin - to decrease the sense of threat:
1) Breathe intentionally - this slows your reactions and allows you to actually formulate a response
2) Engage in Appreciation/Gratitude - this produces positive brain signals, countering threat state
3) Engage in short tasks - this occupies the outer layers of your brain and gives the neocortex processing time
4) Shift your questions - ask what outcome you want and focus on outcome rather than threat input
She also noted that humans will mirror the neuron patterns of other humans when engaged in conversation, and that it's faster (i.e. easier) to mirror the neural pathways of your in-group, so bias is biologically inevitable - but that we can intentionally counter those unintentional neural shortcuts to create an environment where everyone can do their best thinking.
B) Leadership Secrets of an ex-CIO
This talk was given by Dean Lane, a four time CIO, military veteran, and book author (https://www.amazon.com/Chief-Information-Officers-Body-Knowledge/dp/1118043251).
He opened his talk by asking how many of us self-identified as managers, and when only about a third of the audience raised their hands, said, "you're all managers - you all managed to get here on time!" He then challenged us that true leadership would take it to a different level, and had ten characteristics that could move you from a leader to a manager. They were:
1- SPIRIT, a vital principle that gives life to organisms and decides temper, especially when animated
2 - MOTIVATION, the incentive to do well, to consistently play hard and rarely admit defeat
3 - INTEGRITY, firm adherence to a code of values, "doing the right thing even when no one looks"
4 - PROBLEM SOLVING, finding a solution by examining, assessing, advising, acting, and assuring
5 - TEAMWORK, work done by several associates, each doing a part but subordinating personal preference or prominence to the efficiency of the whole
6 - DECISIVENESS, inferring on the basis of evidence the final judgement on what to do ("she who hesitates is lost")
7 - SENSE OF HUMOR, the ability to say funny things and see the funny side of things
8 - ATTITUDE, a mental position regardless of fact, your feelings or emotions towards fact (Optimism vs. Pessimism)
9 - DETERMINATION, firm intention to achieve a specific desired end
10 - TIME MANAGEMENT, managing what gets done in a day and prioritizing what you need to do
C) Social Media - Toxic or Tonic?
This talk was given by Veronica Wendt, a researcher and educator at the National Defense University.
She opened her talk with a brief history of information exchange in human history, highlighting how the printing press (in the 1400s) changed communication from one-to-one spoken word to one-to-many with the advent of broadcast news. From then to now, mostly communication has evolved as a broadcast capability, built around trust agencies like the government or corporate news organizations. From home radios (1930s) to home telephones (1940s) and home TVs (1950s), all technological development had improved the speed with which you could have one to one or one to many conversations, and you could always assume you could trust the party on the other end (either because they were your friend or because they were a trusted organization given permission to broadcast). When home computers and web browsers were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, the nature of communication changed. At this point, we no longer had to worry about being in the same place at the same time to communicate (as with telephones) and could no longer trust the people on the other side of communication. The web shifted us from one-to-many to many-to-many communications.
She showed a clip from a 1999 (twenty years old!) David Bowie interview, where he predicted this future. She defined information (facts provided to learn about something or someone), disinformation (false information intended to mislead) and propaganda (misleading information used to promote a political cause). She then cited the MIT study "How Lies Spread Online" (https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/how-lies-spread-online/) and talked about cascading of different types of information/disinformation/propaganda occurs. This study proved that a lie spreads six times faster than the truth online, based on the following principles of disinformation: dismissing the truth as false, distracting from the truth with lies, distorting the true information, dismaying the audience, and dividing the audience.
At this point, she provided a series of countermeasures to disinformation:
1 - self assess your online behavior, how likely you are to click and why
2 - recognize what the space is, and what it can be, when online
3 - acknowledge the power of algorithms to sway you
4 - add some unpredictability to your digital patterns
5 - acknowledge the addictive nature of social media
6 - choose your platforms deliberately
She closed her talk with some stories of social media "bright spots", like the online WIE forums, and encouraged us to be the bright spot, realizing that as an individual, we should all view how our behavior (choosing to engage with someone online or not,) sets the tome of the whole ecosystem.
D) Connect to Lead - Human Skills for Future Ready Leadership
This talk was given by Rachel Druckenmiller of Unmuted Life
Rachel's talk started by highlighting how we are more connected digitally than ever, and how that leads to less overall human intimacy. She challenged us that our leadership needed to be based on real human connection, and stressed that was not possible with a phone or other devices. She then provided three simple steps to human connection:
1 - Be Conscious. Have self-awareness and be willing to let others expose your blind spots. Understand your skills and the skills or others. Understand how you show up when it comes to stress - are you a turtle (who retreats into a shell and needs some space to process) or a tiger (everyone knows when you are angry, and you need people to have your back and support you)? Be conscious of how you are wired, and buddy up with your opposite.
2 - Be Curious. Everyone you know is carrying an invisible backpack of experiences that effects how they show up to the meeting with you. It's up to you to be curious about what's inside. Notice their load without judgement and listen. Empathy is listening and accepting (without always agreeing) - understanding, recognizing their feelings, and accepting their perspective. She argued that the most under-utilized words as a leader are "tell me more about that?" and that leaders should also be asking about their own opportunities for growth (what's one thing I did well - to build confidence - and one thing I could do differently - to build competence without criticism)
3 - Be Connected. Make other people feel seen. Look for your opportunity to be the difference in someone's life. Bet on yourself - your skills, your humanity, your relationships and experience - and make a moment for someone else.
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