Professor and author Amy Edmondson’s recent research says that intelligent failures in organizations help us adapt, improve and innovate – as individuals and teams. Leaders who recognize, value and even celebrate failures for the learning opportunities they present, encourage organizational innovation and improvement.

Dr. Esther Sternberg, author of Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace, shares research on how our work environments impact our health and productivity. Dr. Sternberg provides guidance to leaders on how to integrate the seven domains of health into workspace design, fostering healthier employees who are more focused, productive and happier to be at the office.

Dr. Sternberg is a professor of medicine, psychology, planning and landscape architecture, and nutritional sciences and wellness at the University of Arizona. She has served as an advisor to the World Health Organization and the Vatican; in the U.S. she has advised the National Academy of Sciences, Department of Defense, and Congress. She is also the author of two previous books, The Balance Within and Healing Spaces.

Today on In Session: Leading the Judiciary, Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, shares a purpose-driven and people-centered approach for designing meaningful and memorable meetings that people want to attend. Parker is a facilitator and strategic advisor trained in the field of conflict resolution and has spent twenty years guiding leaders and groups through difficult conversations about community, identity, and vision. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia.

We encourage you to use and share two free resources that complement this episode: Priya Parker’s Newsletter and her guide, The New Rules of Gathering.

Woo-kyoung Ahn, professor of psychology at Yale University and author of Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better, discusses how our brains are hard-wired to make quick decisions in order to keep us safe. These cognitive shortcuts can lead to misguided decision-making and stifled innovation in the short-term while costing us time, energy, and money in the long run.

Ahn received Yale’s Lex Hixon Prize for teaching excellence in the social sciences in 2022, and her research was funded by the National Institutes of Health. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.