As a woman leader, business owner, and student of the brain and leadership for the last several decades, I believe it is time for us to change the conversation and mindset about women in the workplace. As G.D. Anderson said, “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”

In the spirit of this year’s International Women's Day theme of #ChooseToChallenge, here are 4 areas we should all challenge ourselves to change perceptions. 

The video featured here is part of a series of Whole Brain Thinking topics presented by Ann Herrmann-Nehdi. 

CEOs and key leaders need to be more agile than ever in today’s onslaught of change impacting organizations. This requires a stretch for many leaders I am working with.

Note: This post was written pre-COVID-19. However, the engagement tips are extremely relevant and the team wanted to reshare! For more tips, check out the rest of our remote work blog series here.

We made a big move at the end of 2016. After three decades in our headquarters, Herrmann went completely virtual.

This virtual workplace reflects the increasingly global and dispersed nature of our organization—even here in the U.S., many of our employees are scattered across states and time zones. At the same time, technology is offering more ways than ever for people to stay connected and interact with each other, whether they’re in the same building or not.

But we also recognize that you can’t just flip a switch and expect everything to continue business as usual. So we’ve been approaching this move from a Whole Brain® perspective: The goals and objectives are clear (A quadrant), and we’re keeping our eye on the future (D quadrant), but we also have to prepare for the journey (B quadrant) and keep people engaged every step of the way (C quadrant).

It is always thrilling to see the application of Whole Brain® Thinking have significant impact! This week in South Africa I was delighted to honor that achievement by bestowing our Big Thinker Award to Pieter du Toit for his application of Whole Brain® Learning Design to Higher Education.

Even in normal times, managers in the core of any company face significant challenges; they have to communicate up, down, and laterally in order for everyone to be productive. But, in a merger all of those relationships change all at the same time.

When we talk about the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions, we’re usually looking at things from a big-picture perspective, using financials as our main units of measurement.

The raise, the product pitch, the vacation destination, the big purchase decision—in work and in life, negotiation is a constant presence. And naturally, we each want to get our own way. But there’s no reason one side has to end up feeling like a loser in a negotiation.

To be satisfied with the end result and keep your relationships intact, try these 7 negotiation tips.

The other day, a friend shared with me this nightly after-dinner routine at her house: She and her husband clear the table. She loads the dishwasher. She leaves the kitchen. He stays behind and rearranges all the dishes in the dishwasher.

“He always complains about how I load it,” she told me. “He says I don’t use the space efficiently enough. So we just have to run it more often! I’d rather do that than spend all day trying to organize every dish in there just so.”

I’m not going to weigh in on who’s loading the dishwasher correctly, but I do get where he’s coming from. There’s nothing more annoying than watching someone tackle a task when you know there’s a better way. No matter what you say or do, they won’t listen to reason, even though your way is the more precise way. Or the more efficient way...or thoughtful...or creative...

You know, the right way.

Sometimes, it feels like we spend a lot of energy trying to make sense of each other and the world around us. Whether we’re navigating the dishwasher protocols of our significant others, delegating a task to a direct report at work, or trying to find our way to the solution to a nagging business challenge, one thing is clear: Other people don’t always do things the way we would do them. And that can be pretty irritating.

The question is, why do people approach tasks, problems, decisions, ideas, and, yes, even the dishwasher, in completely different ways? Why do we all take different routes to the same destination?

The brain loves novelty, and it's a good thing, because our world at Herrmann is brimming with newness: new products and platforms, interesting new applications of Whole Brain ® Thinking, new technologies expanding the reach of our systems, new thinkers engaging in new places around the world, and fantastic new practitioners adding to our global community. What better time than now to transform our “face” to the world and as we grow into the future.

Since March 13-19 is Brain Awareness Week (BAW), we thought it was the perfect time to compile a few of our favorite thinking-related tips and “brain hacks”—some “collected intelligence,” so to speak. And since we’re celebrating our 35th anniversary this year, we had a nice number to shoot for as we put together our list.

Start celebrating Brain Awareness Week with the 7 tips below, and then be sure to download the full list (at the end of this post) of 35 tips and ideas shared by our global network of HBDI® Practitioners and colleagues.