March 2, 2025 • 13 mins
Don’t Change the Women, Change the Workplace.
Rethinking Workplace Diversity to Include Neurosignature Diversity.
In this episode, Friederike discusses the issues with traditional diversity initiatives like anti-bias training, which often do not yield meaningful results. She shares an alternative approach focused on neurosignature diversity, highlighting the importance of considering differences in personality, skills, and strengths (which are shaped by one's neurosignature) rather than just gender. By creating policies that respect these differences, such as fostering autonomy, creating flexible work environments, and focusing on outcome culture, workplaces can become more inclusive and benefit from a wider talent pool. This, she argues, would ultimately lead to more diverse leadership and better organizational performance overall, as a brain-friendly workplace benefits everyone.
00:00 Introduction
00:09 Why Current Diversity Efforts Are Failing
02:04 Neurosignature Diversity
04:55 Understanding Different Neurosignatures
08:32 Creating a Brain-Friendly Workplace
12:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Follow Friederike on LinkedIn to stay connected and up to date on her neurohacks.
And if you're looking for more brain-friendly insights be sure to subscribe to The Brain-Friendly Newsletter.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to my podcast.
Happy to have you back.
Today, I would like to talkabout women in the workplace.
I have five kids, I'm working, andI think the only reason why it's
working is because I don't have a boss.
I don't work for a big company,and when I look at what companies
are doing for women, I just thinkit's such a waste of energy and
(00:29):
resources, and there are zero results.
So I would like to offer an alternative.
When we look at anti-bias trainingand diversity training and these
kind of efforts, there's noevidence that these have any impact
whatsoever, and I'm not surprised.
I think the only reason whycompanies are doing that is because
(00:52):
it boosts their ESG ratings.
It's just a nice check in the boxyou know: "Whoa, diversity training.
Okay, we did everything for women."I don't think there's any impact.
Like, let's now think of aperson you strongly dislike.
Let's say you have abias against somebody.
Somebody really goes on your nerves.
Now imagine that somebody sendsyou to a one day workshop to reduce
(01:16):
your bias against that person.
Kind of like, be nice to thatperson, question your bias.
The only thing that would happen tome is it would make me even more angry
and upset and annoyed, and I wouldfeel like somebody's trying to teach
me things that I don't want to hear.
So it would only result in whatpsychologists call reactance.
(01:39):
You become even more biased and upset.
And there's even some scientificevidence for that, that anti-bias
training actually resurfacesbiases and makes them more active.
I think it's just the wrong approach.
There's no impact whatsoever.
Studies have shown that there is noimpact, so why are we wasting time,
energy, and money on these initiatives?
(02:02):
I have an alternative for you.
We need to stop making this allabout gender, and instead we should
think about neurosignature diversity.
What do I mean by this?
We should stop looking only atthe outside, we should look at
what's inside people's brains.
Because there are real differences betweenpeople, and we are not really trying to
(02:26):
do anything with that deep diversity.
We're only looking at the surfaceand I think that's problematic.
When we look at neurosignaturediversity, there are differences in
personality between men and women, onaverage not in the individual, due to
differences in our neurochemical setup.
(02:48):
And the thing is, it doesn'tgo at a straight gender line.
There are actually some men who havemore estrogen activity in their brains,
and there are some women who have moretestosterone activity in their brains.
What I think is that the workplace isbiased toward individuals, regardless
of gender, who have more of atestosterone/dopamine neurosignature.
(03:11):
Which means they are ambitious,driven, ruthless, boundless
energy, high stress tolerance.
So if you have these characteristics,either as a man or a woman,
chances are high that you'regoing to make it to the top.
More men than women on averagehave that kind of neurosignature
(03:32):
due to differences in testosteronelevels and dopamine levels.
And so, as a result, all the top levelsin organizations are filled with men.
But I think it's not just aboutgender, it's actually about these
dopamine/testosterone personalities.
So, what can we do with that knowledge?
First of all, I think we need tounderstand neurosignature diversity.
(03:55):
People are different for a reason.
We all benefit when we'redifferent cognitively.
People have different skills, soas a species, we have evolved to be
different because together, since wecollaborate, we are stronger if people are
different than if everybody is the same.
So if you have a group of a hundredpeople, there will be a couple of
(04:17):
people who are good at math, otherpeople who are good with people, other
people who are good at this and that.
And when they bring all their knowledgetogether, together the group is stronger.
That's why we're at thetop of the food chain.
In today's corporate world, all theseskills are kind of neglected and
there's just one type of corporateleader that is being successful.
(04:38):
And I think that should change becausewe are just more successful if we have
more respect and more appreciationfor people's deep diversity,
for people's inner differences.
So, let's take a quick look at those.
I will just oversimplify thingshere a little bit and not go
too deep . So, we have dopamine.
Dopamine makes you curious, energetic, itmakes you adventurous, future oriented.
(05:04):
People who have those skillsare usually very innovative,
very creative, very energetic.
You know, it's great skills to have.
But the downside of that can be reckless,irresponsible behavior, starting
things and not finishing them, ignoringdetails, taking unnecessary risks.
(05:26):
So while these are great skills, it'sgood to complement them with people who
have the opposite complementary skills.
And that's where serotonin comes in.
Some people have more ofan active serotonin system.
And for them, that means they'reloyal, trustworthy, detail
oriented, meticulous, risk averse.
(05:49):
For example, if you hire a lawyer,you may want that person to be really
detail oriented and meticulous andrisk averse rather than just be
like, oh, we'll wing it in court.
For different jobs and fordifferent situations, you need
people with different skills.
If you have a lot of high dopaminepeople, it's good to also have a
similar amount of high serotonin peoplebecause they will balance things out.
(06:13):
While part of the group is into takingrisks, the other part of the group is
saying, hey, wait a moment maybe we shouldthink about health here or compliance
or safety or that kind of concern.
So there's a reason why we havethose different neurosignatures.
They're complementary.
Now we have estrogen and testosterone.
And while men, obviously, havemore testosterone in general, some
(06:38):
women have a brain that has beenshaped by testosterone, and some
men, about a third, have a brainthat is shaped more by estrogen.
So it's not a clear gender line here.
Women have testosteroneand men have estrogen.
It's just a matter of how much.
And testosterone makes us verylogical, good at math, good at
(07:00):
music, very structured, veryambitious, a bit aggressive.
While estrogen helps us to be moreempathetic, good with people, good
with words and also good at whatHelen Fisher called web thinking.
So the ability to have a bit of a bigpicture type of creativity where you bring
(07:22):
seemingly unrelated concepts together.
When you look at that, again,we have complementary skills.
And I think at the moment, only the menand women who are high testosterone make
it to the top, and we don't promote thepeople who are more people oriented or
have more of those web thinking skills,more of that like divergent creativity.
(07:44):
I think we need all four and we needa workplace that respects all four.
Because at the moment, I think the onlyway to make it as a leader is by being
super extroverted, super energetic,super aggressive, and very ambitious.
And maybe a bit ruthlessto a certain degree.
(08:05):
I don't want to paint a negative picture,but the people who make it are the
ones who are the most career oriented.
And we lose a lot of skill by notpromoting people who are more of a people
focus or more of that web thinking,etc. And most leaders at the top have a
combination of dopamine and testosterone.
(08:27):
And we create a workplace, orbetter, they create a workplace
that works for these kind of people.
So I believe, don't change thewomen, change the workplace.
Instead of telling women to lean inand to tell men to be less biased,
we should create a workplace thatworks for all kinds of people.
(08:47):
And I would like to give you a coupleof pointers on what that would mean.
The first thing is child care.
It's obvious that a person with a highestrogen neurosignature is not going to
put their career ahead of their children.
So if you want to have more peoplewith a high estrogen neurosignature,
which very often means more women inyour organization, then creating more
(09:11):
child-friendly policies such as bringyour child to work or workplace childcare
or more flexible work hours, thatkind of stuff, will have huge impact.
As simple as that.
But companies are not investing into that.
Instead, they run a one dayanti-bias diversity training.
I also think we need tounderstand that people have
(09:32):
different personal stress points.
That means that people reach their peakperformance at different stress levels.
The high dopamine/testosteroneleaders, they reach their best
performance at very high stress levels.
So they create high stresswork environments, and so
all the other ones drop out.
So I think we need to understand thatthe people who are most stress resistant
(09:57):
are not necessarily also the smartestin the room or the best performers.
It's just that people aredifferent with respect to stress.
This means that you should givepeople the possibility to perform
at different stress levels.
So if you just create a super high-stressorganization, you're going to lose
(10:18):
all the people who have more of aserotonin or estrogen neurosignature
and that's not good for you becauseyou then lose out on that cognitive
diversity or that deep diversity.
I also believe in autonomy.
If you want people to perform well, youshould hire great people and then give
them the autonomy to get things done.
(10:38):
I work from home, unless when Itravel for my keynotes, and of
course, that's a huge time saver.
I'm not saying that everybody should workfrom home, but what I'm saying is that
whenever you can, I would foster autonomy,foster flexibility, so that people can
create their own brain-friendly workplace.
I have created my perfect workplace formyself that works for me at the stress
(11:03):
level I enjoy, I do the tasks I enjoy.
So I'm my own boss.
I set things up so thatI'm happy and thriving.
And even if you work for a bigcompany, I think you should try
to do that for people as much aspossible and give them autonomy.
The brain really thrives on autonomy.
So give people the possibility to workaccording to their own rules instead of
(11:29):
just according to a standard set of rules.
That leads me to something I'm reallypassionate about, outcome culture.
Rather than measuring how manyhours a day somebody is at their
desk, look at their performance.
I think we need an outcomeculture where what matters is
whether you get stuff done or not.
(11:50):
And how you do it should be up to you.
So I think as long as people deliver,as long as people perform, we should
be more flexible regarding what theyneed to do to reach that performance.
And when we implement those simplethings, better child care, more child
friendly policies, allowing people towork at different stress levels and stress
(12:13):
points, giving them more autonomy, andcreating an outcome culture, I would
pretty much bet that you would get somuch more women into top positions.
And not just the women, but people justwith more diverse brains, which in the
end, I think is what you should care aboutin your company because your performance
(12:33):
is linked to people's mental performancesand when you just have one type of
person you get one type of result, butwhen you have different personalities
and really that cognitive diversity youcan really outperform the competition.
So that's my thought on diversity.
Let me know what you think Ilove to have you here on my show
(12:57):
and I hope to see you next week.
Have a great day.
Hello and welcome to my podcast.
Happy to have you back.
Today, I would like to talkabout women in the workplace.
I have five kids, I'm working, andI think the only reason why it's
working is because I don't have a boss.
I don't work for a big company,and when I look at what companies
are doing for women, I just thinkit's such a waste of energy and
(00:29):
resources, and there are zero results.
So I would like to offer an alternative.
When we look at anti-bias trainingand diversity training and these
kind of efforts, there's noevidence that these have any impact
whatsoever, and I'm not surprised.
I think the only reason whycompanies are doing that is because
(00:52):
it boosts their ESG ratings.
It's just a nice check in the boxyou know: "Whoa, diversity training.
Okay, we did everything for women."I don't think there's any impact.
Like, let's now think of aperson you strongly dislike.
Let's say you have abias against somebody.
Somebody really goes on your nerves.
Now imagine that somebody sendsyou to a one day workshop to reduce
(01:16):
your bias against that person.
Kind of like, be nice to thatperson, question your bias.
The only thing that would happen tome is it would make me even more angry
and upset and annoyed, and I wouldfeel like somebody's trying to teach
me things that I don't want to hear.
So it would only result in whatpsychologists call reactance.
(01:39):
You become even more biased and upset.
And there's even some scientificevidence for that, that anti-bias
training actually resurfacesbiases and makes them more active.
I think it's just the wrong approach.
There's no impact whatsoever.
Studies have shown that there is noimpact, so why are we wasting time,
energy, and money on these initiatives?
(02:02):
I have an alternative for you.
We need to stop making this allabout gender, and instead we should
think about neurosignature diversity.
What do I mean by this?
We should stop looking only atthe outside, we should look at
what's inside people's brains.
Because there are real differences betweenpeople, and we are not really trying to
(02:26):
do anything with that deep diversity.
We're only looking at the surfaceand I think that's problematic.
When we look at neurosignaturediversity, there are differences in
personality between men and women, onaverage not in the individual, due to
differences in our neurochemical setup.
(02:48):
And the thing is, it doesn'tgo at a straight gender line.
There are actually some men who havemore estrogen activity in their brains,
and there are some women who have moretestosterone activity in their brains.
What I think is that the workplace isbiased toward individuals, regardless
of gender, who have more of atestosterone/dopamine neurosignature.
(03:11):
Which means they are ambitious,driven, ruthless, boundless
energy, high stress tolerance.
So if you have these characteristics,either as a man or a woman,
chances are high that you'regoing to make it to the top.
More men than women on averagehave that kind of neurosignature
(03:32):
due to differences in testosteronelevels and dopamine levels.
And so, as a result, all the top levelsin organizations are filled with men.
But I think it's not just aboutgender, it's actually about these
dopamine/testosterone personalities.
So, what can we do with that knowledge?
First of all, I think we need tounderstand neurosignature diversity.
(03:55):
People are different for a reason.
We all benefit when we'redifferent cognitively.
People have different skills, soas a species, we have evolved to be
different because together, since wecollaborate, we are stronger if people are
different than if everybody is the same.
So if you have a group of a hundredpeople, there will be a couple of
(04:17):
people who are good at math, otherpeople who are good with people, other
people who are good at this and that.
And when they bring all their knowledgetogether, together the group is stronger.
That's why we're at thetop of the food chain.
In today's corporate world, all theseskills are kind of neglected and
there's just one type of corporateleader that is being successful.
(04:38):
And I think that should change becausewe are just more successful if we have
more respect and more appreciationfor people's deep diversity,
for people's inner differences.
So, let's take a quick look at those.
I will just oversimplify thingshere a little bit and not go
too deep . So, we have dopamine.
Dopamine makes you curious, energetic, itmakes you adventurous, future oriented.
(05:04):
People who have those skillsare usually very innovative,
very creative, very energetic.
You know, it's great skills to have.
But the downside of that can be reckless,irresponsible behavior, starting
things and not finishing them, ignoringdetails, taking unnecessary risks.
(05:26):
So while these are great skills, it'sgood to complement them with people who
have the opposite complementary skills.
And that's where serotonin comes in.
Some people have more ofan active serotonin system.
And for them, that means they'reloyal, trustworthy, detail
oriented, meticulous, risk averse.
(05:49):
For example, if you hire a lawyer,you may want that person to be really
detail oriented and meticulous andrisk averse rather than just be
like, oh, we'll wing it in court.
For different jobs and fordifferent situations, you need
people with different skills.
If you have a lot of high dopaminepeople, it's good to also have a
similar amount of high serotonin peoplebecause they will balance things out.
(06:13):
While part of the group is into takingrisks, the other part of the group is
saying, hey, wait a moment maybe we shouldthink about health here or compliance
or safety or that kind of concern.
So there's a reason why we havethose different neurosignatures.
They're complementary.
Now we have estrogen and testosterone.
And while men, obviously, havemore testosterone in general, some
(06:38):
women have a brain that has beenshaped by testosterone, and some
men, about a third, have a brainthat is shaped more by estrogen.
So it's not a clear gender line here.
Women have testosteroneand men have estrogen.
It's just a matter of how much.
And testosterone makes us verylogical, good at math, good at
(07:00):
music, very structured, veryambitious, a bit aggressive.
While estrogen helps us to be moreempathetic, good with people, good
with words and also good at whatHelen Fisher called web thinking.
So the ability to have a bit of a bigpicture type of creativity where you bring
(07:22):
seemingly unrelated concepts together.
When you look at that, again,we have complementary skills.
And I think at the moment, only the menand women who are high testosterone make
it to the top, and we don't promote thepeople who are more people oriented or
have more of those web thinking skills,more of that like divergent creativity.
(07:44):
I think we need all four and we needa workplace that respects all four.
Because at the moment, I think the onlyway to make it as a leader is by being
super extroverted, super energetic,super aggressive, and very ambitious.
And maybe a bit ruthlessto a certain degree.
(08:05):
I don't want to paint a negative picture,but the people who make it are the
ones who are the most career oriented.
And we lose a lot of skill by notpromoting people who are more of a people
focus or more of that web thinking,etc. And most leaders at the top have a
combination of dopamine and testosterone.
(08:27):
And we create a workplace, orbetter, they create a workplace
that works for these kind of people.
So I believe, don't change thewomen, change the workplace.
Instead of telling women to lean inand to tell men to be less biased,
we should create a workplace thatworks for all kinds of people.
(08:47):
And I would like to give you a coupleof pointers on what that would mean.
The first thing is child care.
It's obvious that a person with a highestrogen neurosignature is not going to
put their career ahead of their children.
So if you want to have more peoplewith a high estrogen neurosignature,
which very often means more women inyour organization, then creating more
(09:11):
child-friendly policies such as bringyour child to work or workplace childcare
or more flexible work hours, thatkind of stuff, will have huge impact.
As simple as that.
But companies are not investing into that.
Instead, they run a one dayanti-bias diversity training.
I also think we need tounderstand that people have
(09:32):
different personal stress points.
That means that people reach their peakperformance at different stress levels.
The high dopamine/testosteroneleaders, they reach their best
performance at very high stress levels.
So they create high stresswork environments, and so
all the other ones drop out.
So I think we need to understand thatthe people who are most stress resistant
(09:57):
are not necessarily also the smartestin the room or the best performers.
It's just that people aredifferent with respect to stress.
This means that you should givepeople the possibility to perform
at different stress levels.
So if you just create a super high-stressorganization, you're going to lose
(10:18):
all the people who have more of aserotonin or estrogen neurosignature
and that's not good for you becauseyou then lose out on that cognitive
diversity or that deep diversity.
I also believe in autonomy.
If you want people to perform well, youshould hire great people and then give
them the autonomy to get things done.
(10:38):
I work from home, unless when Itravel for my keynotes, and of
course, that's a huge time saver.
I'm not saying that everybody should workfrom home, but what I'm saying is that
whenever you can, I would foster autonomy,foster flexibility, so that people can
create their own brain-friendly workplace.
I have created my perfect workplace formyself that works for me at the stress
(11:03):
level I enjoy, I do the tasks I enjoy.
So I'm my own boss.
I set things up so thatI'm happy and thriving.
And even if you work for a bigcompany, I think you should try
to do that for people as much aspossible and give them autonomy.
The brain really thrives on autonomy.
So give people the possibility to workaccording to their own rules instead of
(11:29):
just according to a standard set of rules.
That leads me to something I'm reallypassionate about, outcome culture.
Rather than measuring how manyhours a day somebody is at their
desk, look at their performance.
I think we need an outcomeculture where what matters is
whether you get stuff done or not.
(11:50):
And how you do it should be up to you.
So I think as long as people deliver,as long as people perform, we should
be more flexible regarding what theyneed to do to reach that performance.
And when we implement those simplethings, better child care, more child
friendly policies, allowing people towork at different stress levels and stress
(12:13):
points, giving them more autonomy, andcreating an outcome culture, I would
pretty much bet that you would get somuch more women into top positions.
And not just the women, but people justwith more diverse brains, which in the
end, I think is what you should care aboutin your company because your performance
(12:33):
is linked to people's mental performancesand when you just have one type of
person you get one type of result, butwhen you have different personalities
and really that cognitive diversity youcan really outperform the competition.
So that's my thought on diversity.
Let me know what you think Ilove to have you here on my show
(12:57):
and I hope to see you next week.
Have a great day.
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