BrainSmart LEADERSHIP & LEARNING
Keynote speaker Anette Prehn is an expert and pioneer in the field of NeuroLeadership. She makes the complicated field of neuroscience research and social psychology understandable for all types of audiences. And she helps clients develop their mindset, make change stick, lead, and collaborate. All her motivational talks are spiced up with humor and thorough research.
Why you should book Anette Prehn
- Anette presents unforgettable keynotes that are insightful and inspiring.
- Your audience will gain useful tools and knowledge that can be easily applied. On top of that they interact with each other and strengthen their sense of belonging with one another.
- Anette is one of the most requested and popular keynote speakers in Denmark.
Anette Prehn is a social scientist (MA), leadership trainer, motivational speaker and a bestselling author of more than 20 books and mini books.
BrainSmart LEADERSHIP & LEARNING
Keynote speaker Anette Prehn is an expert and pioneer in the field of NeuroLeadership. She makes the complicated field of neuroscience research and social psychology understandable for all types of audiences. And she helps clients develop their mindset, make change stick, lead, and collaborate. All her motivational talks are spiced up with humor and thorough research.
Why you should book Anette Prehn
- Anette presents unforgettable keynotes that are insightful and inspiring.
- Your audience will gain useful tools and knowledge that can be easily applied. On top of that they interact with each other and strengthen their sense of belonging with one another.
- Anette is one of the most requested and popular keynote speakers in Denmark.
Anette Prehn is a social scientist (MA), leadership trainer, motivational speaker and a bestselling author of more than 20 books and mini books.
BRAINSMART LEADERSHIP
How often do you come across a leadership book that leaders keep reading? A book they call their “Bible”, metaphorically speaking.
Such a book is BrainSmart Leadership. It opens up NeuroLeadership in an original way leaving its mark by being easy to understand, remember and apply.
Anette Prehn encourages readers to explore the chapters that seem appealing, like one would use a cookery book. Most people get an overall sense of a cookery book and then dive in for a closer look according to their interests, motivation, and the situation. Read more about the book here.
From this bestselling book, you’ll learn:
- Why “good” advice often goes unheeded and why feedback is so easily misconstrued
- How to promote a flexible mindset when you and everyone around you are stuck in old habits
- How to unburden the brain in a busy life and prevent negative stress
- How to benefit from becoming an expert at handling the brain’s threat response
- How to turn procrastination into productive aha! Moments
- Why emotions should be taken with a pinch of salt, while values should be taken deadly seriously
- How your approach to leadership influences the brains of your employees
- How to make your organisation – and this includes you – more BrainSmart
“In a specific situation, our insight into the rules of the brain saved us six months’ work. I simply can’t put it any more plainly – this book is an excellent investment.”
J.T. Ravn, Warrant Officer, Royal Danish Air Force
“A wonderful book! Anette Prehn has a gift for provoking leaders’ thought patterns and habits. She writes brilliantly, making complex facts about the brain fun, accessible and applicable. World class!”
Trine Brahm, Head of Leadership & Talent, Novozymes
“Anette Prehn offers unique insight into how we, as leaders, can help our teams and ourselves to tackle change and challenges.”
Michael S. Kehlet, VP Talent, LEGO Group
“Provocative and well communicated. A wise and entertaining book on a complex subject.”
Ulla Bechsgaard, reviewer for Jyllands-Posten
PLAY YOUR BRAIN – THE BOOK
Do you want to:
- Turn your brain into an ally not an opponent?
- Create that crucial readiness to change yourself and others?
- Build a stronger repertoire in whatever you do?
Then get to know the eight keys on your inner piano. Award-winning trainer Anette Prehn and neuroscience researcher Kjeld Fredens introduce a groundbreaking approach to coaching yourself: through knowledge of how your brain works, combined with a playful, flexible, musical attitude in working along with it. Here are simple yet powerful tools for achieving the goals in your life and career.
“A pioneer work in the emerging field of applied neuroscience, Play Your Brain likens the brain to a jazz band in its capacity to improvise and make new connections. The authors show how to maximise its enormous potential, through immensely thoughtful, practical and brain-based suggestions. Highly recommended!”
Paul T. Brown, Visiting Professor in Organisational Neuroscience, London South Bank University
“This book humanises science, by exploring how things work in relation to how we work. The brain as jazz band is a delightful analogy a collection of cells that plays and improvises in harmony.“
Stephen Hough, classical pianist, composer & writer
BRAINSMART HABIT CHANGE
The brain follows certain rules, but most of us are unaware of these. However, when you want to change habits it is crucial to understand and respect these rules. You can thus strengthen the relevant connections in your brain that will help you achieve the habit change you wish for.
Many people pursue habit change by fighting their old habits. This is BrainClumsy and works against the rules of the brain. Other people forget to take stock of their core values when aiming for habit change. Their approach becomes situational rather than rooted in identity. Habit change isn’t always the answer. Sometimes you are better off reframing a current habit – or to make the most of the habits already “installed” in you.
Anette Prehn’s course on BrainSmart habit change helps you and your organisation grow more useful habits with the brain’s neuroplasticity in mind. The art lies in turning the brain into an ally rather than an opponent.
Contact Anette Prehn (MA) and Centre for Brain-Based Leadership and Learning on info@hjernesmart.dk if you want to be able to change habits in BrainSmart ways.
BrainSmart Leadership: Lead with the Brain in Mind
Great leadership becomes easier when you understand the brains you are leading.
The human brain follows several fundamental principles. Yet many organisations unknowingly work against them, creating unnecessary stress, resistance, mental overload and wasted potential. You can turn a brain into an ally, but you can also turn it into an opponent without realising it.
In this inspiring and highly practical keynote, Anette Prehn turns insights from neuroscience and social psychology into leadership tools that can be used immediately.
Applying the hard data from neuroscience about how the brain actually functions – and drawing on her bestselling book BrainSmart Leadership – she shows how seemingly small shifts in leadership behaviour can have a significant impact on focus, collaboration, learning and performance.
Discover how leaders can:
- Reduce unnecessary threat and preserve people’s capacity to think clearly
- Strengthen trust, focus, learning and mental flexibility
- Create conditions that support learning, performance, collaboration and innovation
- Help people navigate pressure and change without simply asking them to “cope better”
- Navigate difficult interactions with greater flexibility and “flip” their perspective
You cannot lead without influencing brains. The question is whether you do it accidentally or intelligently. Work with the brain rather than against it, and both people and performance benefit.
Create change mindsets
Change is inevitable. Resistance does not have to be.
Most organisations know what they want to change. The harder question is how to get people’s brains genuinely on board.
Because good intentions, ambitious strategies and persuasive PowerPoints are not enough. If change is experienced primarily as uncertainty, loss or threat, people may become defensive, passive or preoccupied with everything that could go wrong.
In this inspiring and highly practical keynote, Anette Prehn turns insights from neuroscience and social psychology into leadership tools that can be used immediately. Drawing on her bestselling book BrainSmart Leadership, she shows how leaders can create the conditions in which people become more curious, flexible and capable of engaging with change.
You will discover:
- How to reduce the threat responses that change can easily trigger
- Why people need more than a rational business case before their brains “play along”
- How to help employees see both the meaning and the possibility in change
- How to work actively with interpretations and mindsets
- How to build greater mental flexibility throughout an organisation
Successful change is not only about changing structures, systems and processes. It is about helping people change the lens through which they see what is happening — and what is possible. That is where reframing becomes a powerful leadership skill.
Make change AND LEARNING stick
Why does new learning disappear the moment everyday pressure returns?
Organisations invest enormous amounts of time and energy in new strategies, leadership initiatives, training programmes and behavioural change. People may leave a workshop inspired and fully convinced only to slip back into old habits a few days or weeks later.
The problem is not necessarily motivation. It is that new behaviour must compete with deeply established neural patterns, busy schedules and environments that keep reinforcing the old way of doing things.
In this inspiring and highly practical keynote, Anette Prehn – author of the bestselling book BrainSmart Leadership – shows how leaders can make change and learning far more likely to stick by working deliberately with attention, habit formation, repetition and the brain’s capacity for neuroplastic change.
You will discover:
- Why insight and good intentions are rarely enough to create lasting behavioural change
- How everyday pressure pulls people back towards familiar habits and automatic responses
- How to practise Attention Choreography and harness the brain’s capacity for neuroplastic change
- Why relying on willpower alone is rarely a sustainable strategy
- How leaders can create BrainSmart environments that reinforce new learning instead of unintentionally rewarding old habits
Change does not stick because we hope it will. It sticks when the brain is repeatedly given the conditions it needs to practise, strengthen and consolidate new patterns. That is what a BrainSmart environment is designed to do.
Boost Collaboration with the Brain in Mind
Some of the most powerful signals in a team are never spoken aloud.
A raised eyebrow. A sigh. Turning away. Leaning in. Interrupting. Smiling at one colleague but not another.
These tiny signals, micromessages, continuously influence whether people feel included, respected and safe enough to contribute. Most teams dramatically underestimate their impact.
In this inspiring and highly practical keynote, Anette Prehn – author of the bestselling book BrainSmart Leadership – makes the invisible visible and shows how leaders and employees can use micromessages to strengthen both collaboration and performance.
You will discover:
- How subtle non-verbal signals can affect confidence, participation and mental capacity
- Why seemingly insignificant behaviours can strengthen or weaken psychological safety
- How to recognise interaction patterns that unintentionally undermine colleagues
- How to address difficult micromessages without escalating tension
- How small behavioural adjustments can create surprisingly large changes in team dynamics
Collaboration is not only shaped by what we say. It is shaped by hundreds of tiny signals that tell other brains: “You belong here” or “Watch out.” BrainSmart leaders notice micromessages and know how to address them, tweak them and make them work for the team.
Feedback with the Brain in Mind
Why can perfectly reasonable feedback trigger resistance instead of reflection?
Feedback is never just about words. The brain is constantly scanning for signals of threat, status, belonging and intention, and if the alarm system is activated, even well-meant feedback can become difficult to hear, process and act upon.
In this inspiring and highly practical keynote, Anette Prehn – author of the bestselling book BrainSmart Leadership – reveals how to make feedback safer, sharper and far more likely to create learning and change.
You will explore:
- Why feedback can trigger defensiveness before the other person has fully processed what you are saying
- How in-group and out-group dynamics influence trust and receptiveness
- What happens when the brain’s threat response reduces access to reflection, flexibility and self-regulation
- How to give feedback in ways that increase the likelihood of genuine learning and behavioural change
- How to keep your own mindset agile when conversations become sensitive
Understanding how people interpret their own performance and development is a crucial part of effective feedback. That is where BrainSmart feedback begins: with the other person’s perspective, not simply your own.
HOW TO NUTURE COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN A VUCA-ENVIRONMENT
What is needed to perform and thrive in ever-changing environments, facing a future that is unsure to say the least?
Professions across the world are faced with this situation and looking for powerful ways to cope. Anette Prehn contributes to leadership conferences across the world – like here in Indonesia.
Anette Prehn integrates the power of the Framestorm® method in her keynotes on change. It is essential to grow our cognitive flexibility in the 21st century, i.e. our ability to view a challenge from numerous, meaningful perspectives.
Cognitive flexibility is a crucially important function in the brain, especially when experiencing VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). It correlates with commercial success. The individual who learns how to Framestorm® gain enormous freedom and strength when coping with life.