BrainSmart Leadership has been published!
I am happy to announce that my newest book – BrainSmart Leadership – has now been published and that the first 100 signed copies have been sent off to Danfoss professionals in India, US, Germany, Finland and Denmark. They will bring new insights and great tools for enhancing collaboration and performance. All the best for your common journey with the rules of the brain in mind!
WHY BRAINSMART LEADERSHIP?
BrainSmart Leadership is a guide to the rules of the brain for leaders and others with an interest in human interaction. The brain follows certain ground rules, but only few of us have the understanding and ability to put them into practice. Unfortunately, this means that leaders and employees alike are missing out on the keys to fruitful cooperation that boost learning, performance, innovation, and emotion regulation.
This book is an invitation to become a BrainSmart leader – to learn to pick up on and understand social interaction in a new way and to be willing to think and act in a manner that works with the brain’s logic as opposed to against it. The tools in this book will improve your ability to help your organisation through change and create working environments that minimise negative stress, tackle online pressure and respect the brain’s limited capacity.
Anette Prehn boldly challenges and provokes standard practice, stressing that leading without proper understanding of the rules of the brain is like leading with your eyes blindfolded. The question isn’t whether you, as a leader, leave a mark on your employees’ brains, but rather what kind of mark you leave …
This book answers questions like:
- Why does “good” advice often go unheeded and why is feedback so easily misconstrued?
- How do you promote a flexible mindset when you and everyone around you are stuck in old habits?
- How do you unburden the brain in a busy life and prevent negative stress?
- How would you benefit from becoming an expert at handling the brain’s warning bell?
- How can procrastination be turned into productive aha! Moments?
- Why should we take emotions with a pinch of salt, but take values deadly seriously?
- How does your approach to leadership influence the brains of your employees?
- How can you make your organisation – and this includes you – more BrainSmart?
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE BOOK
“To those that say management is just common sense, I’d say isn’t it a pity that it’s not more common then. But perhaps it will be if today’s business frontrunners get a copy of Anette Prehn’s new book BrainSmart Leadership. Unlike some of the stuff that emerges from academic research, this is a useful and practical digest of all the latest thinking on the neuroscience of leadership. Its pages offer a combination of clever insight and original, workable tools to use on today’s tricky strategic problems. It’s all presented with Prehn’s infectious brio, which shows how we can leverage the competitive advantage of the neuroplastic brain!”
Paul Christopher Walton, Brand Historian, Futurist and Founder, Strategic Leaps
“Which book should you read if you want to improve your negotiation skills? Anette Prehn has written a fantastic book called BrainSmart Leadership, and in my world its title could just as well have been BrainSmart Negotiation because both leadership and negotiation are about the ability to move and influence other people, and how other people influence us.”
Morten Kragh-Sørensen, Director Agree Consulting & Lecturer, Niels Brock International Business College
“A wonderful book for leaders looking to boost their authority. 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
“This is a book you can read over and over again, and find new value every time! BrainSmart Leadership has vastly improved my ability to create the space of mutual understanding and respect required to discuss contentious topics and find good solutions. Anette Prehn explains the logic behind practising ‘soft skills’ – quite simply making life easier for technical managers like me. At first, I thought the book would just inspire my leadership approach, but it also gives plenty of food for thought about my personal approach to life. Unique science-based communication that hits the mark!”
Allan Nyland Christensen, Director Corporate IT Portfolio Management, LEGO
“At a time when the production of organisational management and psychology literature has sky-rocketed – much of it neither well-written nor contributing anything new or significant – I would like to offer some pointers for those interested in this topic. If you are a leader or consultant, or merely curious about how you can communicate smartly with the brains around you and give them – and our own brain – the best possible working conditions, I warmly recommend that you read BrainSmart Leadership. Reading BrainSmart Leadership has given me great inspiration, and I draw extensively on the BrainSmart approach in my work with the psychological work environment and leadership and organisational development. In a class apart, Anette Prehn effortlessly and engagingly communicates the fastest way, by far, to understand and incorporate neuro-scientific perspectives into one’s own practice, conduct and reflections.”
Rasmus Gorell Mackenhauer, organisational psychologist, Danish Ministry of Defence Personnel Agency,
“When you’re working on the frontline, you have to understand what’s going on under your colleague’s helmet and your own. What sets off the brain’s alarm bell, the amygdala? And when? And how do we get it under control so we can carry on working confidently and creatively? BrainSmart Leadership has been crucial in improving our unit’s internal communication. We use it in practice when preparing for assignments, exams and tactical missions. In one quite 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.”
Warrant Officer J.T. Ravn, day-to-day head of the “bomb dog platoon”, Helicopter Wing, Royal Danish Air Force
“BrainSmart Leadership is an amazing toolbox for tackling the changes currently spreading through the financial sector. As a leader, I find Anette Prehn’s simple, visual approach to difficult topics highly inspiring. Her books create Aha! moments and make it easy to put this new knowledge into everyday practice.”
Vibeke Bak Solok, Executive Vice President, Group Risk Management, Danske Bank
“BrainSmart Leadership by Anette Prehn is my Bible. I read it repeatedly, experiencing one revelation after another. The book provides me with an understanding of how we humans are influenced and react emotionally—and Anette Prehn makes it easy to apply this understanding in practice. It is wonderfully reassuring that there is a neurological explanation for our patterns of reaction, which to a large extent are common among us as humans. At the same time, what is meaningful varies from individual to individual.
The book makes a research-based area accessible to leaders and enables me to be helpful instead of getting annoyed. Understanding an employee’s behaviour—and the very concrete opportunities I have to influence them constructively—makes me hopeful, opens new directions, and strengthens my trust in my own abilities and possibilities. Anette Prehn practices a delightfully playful and appreciative optimism, which is infectious: ‘Just try something else,’ and ‘don’t take it so hard, it’s perfectly natural.’ I practice patiently and curiously, inspired by the three steps that each chapter ends with. This book makes me far wiser about the specific practice of leadership.“
Anne Andersen, Head of Department, Copenhagen Municipality
“Many thanks for all the inspiration that reading the wonderful book BrainSmart Leadership has given me. I’ve written down more than 130 reflections (potential new pathways). I’ve also bought copies for my entire leadership team, and every week we discuss what they are getting out of it. One team member read it in less than a week, and loves it as much as I do (although that’s hard to believe).”
Anders Skaaning-Höglund, Bakery Manager, Lantmännen Unibake
“A journey of discovery inside the brain for leaders – guaranteed to strike gold. A book you will return to over and over again and that will change your view of leadership, motivation and interaction. In my life and leadership career, there’s an era ‘before’ Anette Prehn and one ‘after’!”
Alan Larsen, principal, Brejninggaard continuation school
“Learning about the rules of the brain is by far the best investment I’ve ever made. I found it particularly interesting to learn about the brain’s watchdog, the importance of values in human interactions and the ability to reinterpret situations and thus make them easier to understand. Anette Prehn has an amazing ability to make difficult subjects easy to apply in practice!”
Marlene Karmark, Head of Department, City of Odense
“In this book, Anette Prehn applies the brain’s logics to modern leadership in a way that is insightful, easy to understand and eminently relevant. The points she presents about what happens in the brain when we interact with each other in organisations are new to me and have far-reaching consequences for the way we think about how we should lead ourselves and others. This book has given me significant new focus points and inspiration for more effective ways of leading change processes. Thank you!”
Rasmus Sielemann Christensen, CEO, Bornholms Energi & Forsyning
“As a leader, you read loads of leadership theories that you later have to spend time converting and adapting to your own reality. With BrainSmart Leadership, you get a book that helps you easily apply what you’ve read. It invites you to stop to reflect and implement some of the many great tips for making the brain your partner – instead of reading it at one sitting, from start to finish. I’ve found Anette Prehn’s books enormously useful for my leadership work and can warmly recommend this one as an alternative leadership book.”
Vibeke Verwohlt, Head, Stolpedal school
“A super book, written in down-to-earth language. Plenty of great exercises that are easy to use in everyday life. I warmly recommend it to everyone – you don’t need a management title or responsibility to benefit from this book. Looking forward to reading more titles by Anette Prehn.”
Mik Steenfeldt, branch manager, Sparekassen Kronjylland
“Once again, Anette Prehn offers unique insight into how we, as leaders, can help our teams and ourselves to tackle change and challenges. Wonderful metaphors, easy to use – and valuable reading for employees at all organisational levels.”
Michael S. Kehlet, VP Talent, LEGO Group
“You rarely benefit and learn so much from reading a single book.”
Tonny Nielsen, Regional Manager, Rema 1000
“I was introduced to Anette Prehn’s book BrainSmart Leadership in 2017 while studying for my MBA. This research-based leadership approach has enabled me to tackle even major change processes with a calm amygdala and BrainSmart mindset that helps me to communicate purposefully and minimise ‘future fog’. The techniques I’ve learnt from the BrainSmart leadership universe enable me to quickly see challenges from different viewpoints, unleashing positive energy in my daily leadership activities and allowing me to ‘share’ this energy – which in turn builds support within the organisation. Recommended for everyone!”
Henrik Gehrt, Major, Head of the National Supplies & Logistics Section, Danish Defence
Sociologist (MA) Anette Prehn is a prolific keynote speaker, trainer, and bestselling non-fiction author, who has inspired hundreds of thousands across the planet, since establishing her business in 2005.
Anette Prehn is on a mission to make neuroscience available to all, i.e. easy to understand, remember and apply. She has worked in the field of NeuroLeadership since 2009 and has taught the rules of the brain to leaders and employees since, thus strengthening their leadership, learning, habit change, cognitive flexibility, and mental health.
Highly skilled at explaining complex ideas in down-to-earth and accessible language, and impossible to pigeonhole, Anette Prehn has developed techniques that make it easy for people to turn their brain into an ally rather than an opponent. The Framestorm® method, that is patented and trademarked, teaches people to flip and widen their perspective, thus paving the way for innovation, emotion regulation and making the most of whatever life throws at you.
In 2018-2019, Anette chaired The National Stress Panel, established by six Danish cabinet ministers. The panel comprised 10 experts and was tasked with identifying 12 actions to radically influence the stress level experienced in Denmark in recent years as well as to engage the Danish public in understanding what stress is and does and how mental health can be strengthened.
Her clients include Maersk, GN Group, Grundfos, Danfoss, Siemens, Bosch, Ericsson, Roche, Lego, Novo Nordic, Man Diesel and Turbo, Nordea, Danske Bank, 40+ Danish municipalities and 100+ educational institutions and schools.
She has written more than 20 books and mini books, among these "BrainSmart Leadership" and "Play Your Brain".
Throughout these many years, her clients have been powerfully inspired to apply neuroscience to work situations, but they have also asked her::
“How do I more specifically apply the logics of the brain to parenting?” and “I can see my kids gaining from knowing this as well. What’s the best way to introduce them to these tools?”
Being the mother of two and the stepmother of two, those questions got Anette Prehn going.
She therefore started adding to her portfolio how parents, teachers and nursery nurses can become more BrainSmart, thus nuturing environments that help kids learn, thrive and regulate emotions relevantly.
In her Brain Friends series, she is sharing with children and teenagers how to strike up a friendship with their brain rather than being at the receiving end of its impulses and habits.
Contact Anette by email: