Episode 250: Cultural Neuroscience: Cultural Intelligence for Global Project Managers (Free)

Summary: Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The PMP Exam Simulator: This interview with Samad Aidane was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2013 North America in New Orleans. Cultural intelligence, the ability to adapt to new cultural contexts, is becoming an increasingly important skill for project leaders. Our interview with Samad Aidane (http://www.neurofrontier.com/) will give you an understanding of the key insights emerging from cultural neuroscience research and their application to leading global projects and designing culturally sensitive change initiatives that stick. We begin our interview with the question of what neuroscience has to do with project management and leadership, and how this understanding will help you in your daily project challenges. Then we discuss how culture impacts how we think & act and how this relates to the team members working on our projects. We close the discussion with several tips from Samad in regards to how you can use the results from this neuroscience research to improve your project successes starting today. Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.  Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: We are back at the PMI Global Congress 2013 in New Orleans and I am sitting here with Samad Aidane in the PMI® Bookstore. Podcast Interview Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Samad! Samad Aidane: Well hello, thank you. Cornelius Fichtner: How is your conference going so far? Samad Aidane: It's going great. It's really going great. I'm enjoying it. Cornelius Fichtner: Wonderful! Yesterday afternoon, you gave a presentation titled: "Cultural Neuroscience: Cultural Intelligence for Global Project Managers". How did it go? Samad Aidane: It went really well. I've been coming to this event for the last 3 years and I spoke at 2011 and 2012, and I have to say, this is my favorite performance. I feel really good about how I did just because I stuck to the script and I didn’t deviate from it and I had plenty of time given for interaction which is my goal and so I achieved it. And then the audience really responded to this topic. They really enjoyed the insights that were shared. Cornelius Fichtner: How many people were there? Samad Aidane: There was I believe approximately 70 people. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! Samad Aidane: It was a good turnout. Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah. Now, neuroscience, it's the title. Cultural neuroscience. Neuroscience, it's about the brain. Why? What is it have to do with project management? Samad Aidane: Well for the last 5 to 6 years, I've been really digging deep into looking at what is the research out there about the brain that we can as project managers, we can use to be better leaders because at the end of the day, our business is trying to motivate people, trying to get them to engage, trying to get them to focus, pay attention. All of these processes are brain-based processes. So it makes sense for us project managers to actually understand what is the underlying inputs and outputs to these processes similar to what we do about project managers and understanding how the PMBOK is structured. I believe that we need to focus on the underlying mechanisms that drive behavior and drive thoughts and drive feelings and emotions. And I think this explosion of research is happening in neuroscience and especially in a branch called the social cognitive and affective neuroscience which deals with things such as how people make decisions, what are the drivers for collaboration. What is the underlying neural activations that underlie for example trust. And in general, communication in general. So these things are very important topics that we as project managers can benefit from understanding what is happening in the field of neuroscience. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. How does this help the project manager out there? Our listeners, they are all project managers. They have projects that they go back to after they fini