8 September, 2022

Neuroscience for Project Managers with Carole Osterweil | Video


Neuroscience is not just a management flavor of the month. It is a solid scientific discipline that is generating a body of useful evidence for how we can get better results at work. Carole Osterweil’s new book is ‘Neuroscience for Project Success’, so I asked her all about Neuroscience for Project Managers.

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Carole Osterweil

Carole Osterweil has trained many of the most senior project managers in the UK, through her work with Ashridge, Cranfield, Atos, and the UK Government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority.

She has also authored two books on the neuroscience of effective project performance. She launched the second of these, Neuroscience for Project Success, at the annual conference of the Association for Project Management, with one of the most impressive platform presentations I have seen.

The measure of her impact is simple. By lunchtime, the APM’s bookshop had run out of copies of her new book. Luckily, I have mine here and it is excellent.

That’s why I wanted to speak with Carole about Neuroscience for Project Managers.

Our Conversation about Neuroscience for Project Managers

  • Carole Osterweil, author of Neuroscience for Project Success

What is Neuroscience for Project Managers?

  • Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain
  • The Fight or Flight response
  • Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Flop
  • How we go through our day
  • Sources of information to your Brain
  • The role of emotions
  • The big 5 avoidance emotions
  • Our behavioral responses
  • Approach responses
  • Approach behaviors
  • The flawed assumption you may have been making
  • Your Thinking Brain and resourceful decision-making
  • Defining Neuroscience

Why is Neuroscience important to Project Managers?

  • What can Project Managers gain from studying Neuroscience?
  • How much of the time is your Thinking Brain online?
  • Neuroscience and Emotional Intelligence
  • What can we do to keep our Thinking Brain online?
  • How can PMs get the best from their teams?

Psychological Safety: What is it? Why does it matter?

  • How can you create an environment of Psychological Safety?
  • Calm demeanor vs Authenticity

Last things to add…

  • A challenge for people
  • The value of reflection
  • Neuroscience for Project Success is a book full of practical resources
  • Contacting Carole Osterweil

Contact Carole Osterweil

Recommended Books

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What Kit does a Project Manager Need?

I asked Project Managers in a couple of forums what material things you need to have, to do your job as a Project Manager. They responded magnificently. I compiled their answers into a Kit list. I added my own. 

Check out the Kit a Project Manager needs

Note that the links are affiliated.

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For more of our videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management

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Mike Clayton

About the Author...

Dr Mike Clayton is one of the most successful and in-demand project management trainers in the UK. He is author of 14 best-selling books, including four about project management. He is also a prolific blogger and contributor to ProjectManager.com and Project, the journal of the Association for Project Management. Between 1990 and 2002, Mike was a successful project manager, leading large project teams and delivering complex projects. In 2016, Mike launched OnlinePMCourses.
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