Video and slides synchronized, mp3 and slide download available at URL http://bit.ly/1PdwEu7. Jenni Jepsen shares the neuroscience behind why human brain is wired to connect with others, and how to use that to delight customers and stakeholders every day, providing practical advice on strengthening relationships in the workplace. Filmed at qconlondon.com. Jenni Jepsen is a partner at goAgile, a Denmark-based Agile consulting firm, where her focus in on helping people deliver the right product faster and at the same time create lasting change. While she is crazy about Agile methodologies, she is most interested in delivering value – no matter what the process.

1. Wired to connect
Creating relationships is human nature
Helping you create lasting change
Jenni Jepsen
twitter: @jenniindk
jenni@goagile.dk
QCon London – March 2015

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Watch the video with slide
synchronization on InfoQ.com!
http://www.infoq.com/presentations
/brain-connect-relationship

3. Presented at QCon London
www.qconlondon.com
Purpose of QCon
- to empower software development by facilitating the spread of
knowledge and innovation
Strategy
- practitioner-driven conference designed for YOU: influencers of
change and innovation in your teams
- speakers and topics driving the evolution and innovation
- connecting and catalyzing the influencers and innovators
Highlights
- attended by more than 12,000 delegates since 2007
- held in 9 cities worldwide

4. Quiz
What are the three things we need to survive?
1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Water

5. Quiz #1
What are the three things we need to survive?
1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Water
We cannot get food,
shelter or water
without social
connection

6. 3 major brain adaptations that make us
wired to connect
1. Connecting
(Neural overlap
between social and
physical pain)
2. Mindreading
(Mentalizing)
3. Harmonizing
(Sense of self is
a ”superhighway”
for social influence)

7. • Goal-oriented
behavior
• Emotion & self control
• Higher-level thought
• Sense of self
• Theory of Mind
(thinking about what others are thinking)
Prefrontal
Cortex (PFC)
Key region of the brain for thinking

8. Quiz #2
Take one minute to sit and think…
What did you think
about?

9. Default network: social thinking

10. Connection is critical to our survival

11. Understanding the effect of our social motivations
Socialpain
is the same as
physical pain
in the brain.

12. Ways that our brains minimize social pain and
maximize social pleasure:
 Mindreading
(mentalizing system)
 Harmonizing
(reflect on ourselves and
controlling our impulses)

13. The question is…
Why do people watch Paradise Hotel?
Because our brainscrave WHYstories

15. Mindreading (mentalizing)
Often our success at something is intertwined with
how well someone else is doing, or it depends on our
interaction with that person. In these cases, keeping track of
or predicting the other person’s mental state can be the
difference between success and failure.

16. What’s water?

17. Self system & harmonizing
Our sense of
self contains
what we
believe to be
private and
inaccessible,
yet in reality, it
is a conduit for
the
socialization of
our beliefs and
values.

18. Cognitive self-control & harmonizing
We have an immediate intuitive sense of things being a certain
way, and it takes self-control to set this perspective aside to
consider alternative ways of processing the same information.
Self control is the price of admission to society.
- Matthew D. Lieberman, Ph.D.
”
”

19. Quiz #3 Read the colors, not the words
YELLOW BLUE ORANGE
BLACK RED GREEN
PURPLE YELLOW RED
ORANGE GREEN BLACK
BLUE RED PURPLE
GREEN BLUE ORANGE

20. Meeting people where they are at…
Away Toward
Threat
(pain)
Reward
(pleasure)
Source: Amy Arnsten, Ph.D., professor of Neurobiology, Yale University Medical School
Toward & Away Response

21. What triggers social pain or pleasure?
Status
Relatedness
Fairness

22. 26
Connect Scenarios
Connecting Exercise
In groups, come up with one idea on how to
connect with the person in the scenario.
You have 2 minutes.

23. Emotions are contagious
The strongest emotion
in a team can ripple out
and create the same
emotion in others –
without anyone
consciously knowing
this is happening.

24. Positivity – your brain is shaped by what you focus on!
Positivity:
Broadens the scope of possibilities in the brain –
making you better able to solve problems and do so with more
creativity and innovation.
Reduces stress and changes your outlook on the world.

25. The effect of positivity
With positivity, you go from classifying people
as separate ”me” and ”you,” to seeing more
interconnection, as in ”we” and ”us.”

26. How to create stronger relationships at work
• Reappraise the others’ behaviors to find positive meanings.
• SMILE!
• Savor goodness – get more positivity from positive things.
• Show gratitude.
• Be kind.
• Apply your strengths.
• Practice mindfulness to become more open.

27. Value in knowing how your work benefits others

28. Relationships = Results
£
!

29. Watch the video with slide synchronization on
InfoQ.com!
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/brain-
connect-relationship