The Social Brain: Cultivating Leadership and Building Team Chemistry

Speaker

Michael Platt

James S. Riepe University Professor

The Wharton School

Professor of Marketing; Professor of Psychology; Professor of Neuroscience

The Wharton School

Michael Platt’s Biography

Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Option 1: Friday, April 9th at 9:00am ET

Option 2: Friday, April 16th at 12:00pm ET

This session will be interactive with group discussion.

Course Description

Trust, teamwork, leadership, negotiation, and sales all depend on social connection. Social skills and temperament are thus keys to business success. In this session, we will discuss the brain mechanisms that support our ability to connect with others. We will first describe how we perceive others, understand their emotional state and orientation of attention, and predict their behavior. We will then discuss individual variation in social skill and temperament, and practical interventions that can boost our intrinsic ability to connect with others. We will also discuss the origins of bias in the neural circuits that mediate identity and strategies to mitigate these biases. We will demonstrate how we can access physiological biomarkers of strong social connections and discuss ways to use this data in management decisions. We will conclude with a discussion of the potential to use these insights to amplify brand loyalty.  This session will be a deep dive into the brain mechanisms underlying social connection and the application of neuroscience to promote team chemistry, cultivate leaders, reduce bias, and increase brand loyalty.

Learning Objectives:
  • Appreciate human specializations for complex social behavior
  • Describe the “social brain circuit” that mediates our connections with others
  • Identify key mechanisms of social perception, empathy, and mentalizing
  • Understand the role of neuromodulators like oxytocin, vasopressin, serotonin and dopamine in regulating social functions
  • Describe biomarkers of strong social connections
  • Discuss the implications of these findings for team-building, employee onboarding, cultivating leadership, reducing bias and branding.