Heidi Brooks

Modern organizations are dynamic workplaces that are rapidly evolving and complex, yet they still adhere to the 1950s ideas of management that are often ill-equipped to serve the changed leadership demands. In this era, the work experience requires learning and development, making work the equivalent of school for adults.

As such, this moment’s uncertain and increasingly AI-driven world must practice a new kind of leadership – one that is attuned, responsive and real, says Heidi Brooks, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in organizational behavior at Yale School of Management (SOM).

“We understand that kids need to grow and learn. We set up schools to create the conditions for and to give kids the explicit job of learning. But adults in a changing world have a tremendous need to continue to grow and develop to meet the demands of their work and role,” explains Brooks, whose guidance has been invaluable to organizations in varied industries, including Google, Novartis, Ernst & Young, Volvo, Indeed, Lululemon, Salesforce, Disney and Visa. “It’s less about learning facts and procedures and more about learning how to be the kind of person who can shepherd both people and complex human processes into a rapidly approaching future with our humanity and well-being intact.”

A pioneer of the concept of “everyday leadership” – the cumulative moments of impact that shape our shared experience – her practical framework shows leaders, teams and individuals how to transform organizations, and build a better future and an improved experience of work. Director of the Yale SOM’s Program for the Practice of Everyday Leadership and host of the transformative Learning Through Experience podcast, her unique approach is not based in issuing directives from the top but in creating a mutual sense of purpose and action. Brooks calls for leaders and managers to pay more nuanced attention to their everyday impact and to intentionally take inventory of the micro-actions that impact others. In a context where we are often grandiose about what leadership means, this focus on meaningful microactions is encouraging and actionable by stakeholders at all levels.

A trusted advisor to senior teams that devote time to improving the quality of stakeholder experience, Brooks’ voice especially resonates with law firms, technology companies and professional services where, individually, people want their work to be more impactful, rather than transactional, and where there is a meaningful commitment to company culture as a crucial aspect of and vessel for the professional experience.

“At Yale, I teach and speak about being the kind of everyday leadership presence that allows us to be a living, walking example of our values and that we each and all have impact – not just in the formal moments but also in the everyday micro-moments that make up our shared experience of people and place,” explains Brooks. “By paying attention to the quality of experience in a micro-community made of the people whose lives you impact each day, we can be in the practice of showing up aligned with the person we aim to be. By making our aspirations and impact more discussable and transparent, we normalize the intentional building and learning project that is part and parcel of working together day in and day out.”

A dynamic storyteller who punctuates her interactive sessions with vivid case studies and examples, Brooks specializes in culture change projects focused on individual and collective leadership effectiveness in organizations. By creating the conditions for learning, senior teams build capacity for transformative candor and the ability to discuss what matters most. Senior teams and groups become much more able to notice, name and clear obstacles that stand in the way of pursuing collective purpose.

“Our ideas of leadership often focus on individualism, self-promotion, and confidence, ” explains Brooks, whose MBA elective Interpersonal Dynamics, has been in demand at Yale SOM for the last 25 years. “We need more of the kind of leadership that can stay the course in a changing world and stay present, curious and enlivening while managers navigate the way into an exciting and intimidating future of work in an anxious and agitated world.”

As an advisor, Brooks partners with leaders and senior teams to co-create the kind of interpersonal and group dynamics that free people up to contribute the best of what they bring to the company by becoming more courageous about naming aspirations and barriers as part of a process of crafting more collective agency about organizational dynamics.

Unlocking the Power of “Everyday Leadership” For Everyday Impact

Through her research, Brooks is redefining leadership as an element of business that everyone can step into by noticing impact, beginning with invigorating and depleting everyday experience. She encourages leaders to unlearn the practice of ignoring and tolerating what impacts us about work. She also highlights the problems we unintentionally create when we train to be immune to the everyday impact of work and to the space between us.

Brooks specializes in teaching individuals and groups how to understand and take responsibility for the impact they may not realize they have on others, while aligning that impact with intentions via their day-to-day actions. By connecting micromoments to macromoments and their affective impact, leaders are better able to see the scale, scope and set of everyday actions they can employ can make a difference.

In Brooks’ presentations, warm fireside chats and customizable workshops, she emphasizes how management’s ordinary interactions, which she calls “microactions,” can collectively define an organization’s trajectory. Her relatable stories highlight behaviors and actions like humor, laughter, time, self-disclosure, and inviting and introducing people, and their opposing “shadow sides,” like denying, ignoring or avoiding. She then points out tangible steps for making real changes that better align with how we all want work to feel. Brooks partners closely with organizations, individual leaders and high-potential junior managers to develop personalized sessions that are renowned for creating spaces where all can engage candidly and constructively, challenging conventional norms while advocating for a management style that is as gentle as it is hard hitting.

“There are things people can be doing on an everyday basis that wind up changing our collective lived experience together for the better,” Brooks reveals, emphasizing the practical steps every leader can take to develop norms in their company.

By humanizing universal dilemmas that all members of an organization experience, like stressful moments faced in times of rapid growth or friction between team members, and drawing visible comparisons between the experiences of a CEO’s individual and an organization’s shared everyday leadership journey, Brooks reinvigorates the spirit of purpose across teams, leading to newfound collaboration and achievement.

“I am able to make hard things between us more discussable because of my ability to observe assess and discuss while also making it possible for others to speak up, be courageous and creating team conditions where it is safe and productively transformative to do so,” explains Brooks. “The vision is of a future of where we are attending to our everyday impact, and the space between us is a common way to lead and structure an experience of work that is freeing and powerfully productive in ways that matter”

Steps for Fostering Effective and Courageous Communities          

With two decades dedicated to fostering effective and courageous communities in businesses and beyond, Brooks emphasizes that courageous community is about what we can do to create a better experience of work as shared experience. She delivers practical techniques for individuals to both let themselves be more known and to recognize when other people do this for themselves. This unleashes a reliably positive and textured experience of others in the workplace.

“Seeing people means listening and staying present with kindness and curiosity, but also with genuine and real reactions,” she explains. “There is room for people to be themselves AND impact each other.”

By illustrating how to build confidence in essential skills and norms, including transparency, openness to discussion, accountability, paying attention to others and intelligent failure, Brooks shows organizations how to engage in the revitalizing and fulfilling process of creating an organizational community that is more free, more compelling and able to shape its own future.

“Organizations are microcosms of society, and by creating a better place to work, people realize they have some agency to create a better future Brooks sums up. “We can reimagine what leadership is and what work is and needs to be. Work can be a place where we create a tomorrow that we’re enthusiastic about.”

Heidi Brooks, Ph.D., teaches and advises on everyday leadership and directs the Program for the Practice of Everyday Leadership (PPEL) at Yale SOM. PPEL offers learning experiences that aim to transform the capacity to shape our shared future. The MBA elective she has taught for two decades, Interpersonal Dynamics, is one of the courses most in demand at Yale School of Management (SOM). She has also taught Emotional Intelligence, Power & Politics, Managing Groups & Teams, and Coaching Skills for Managers.

Brooks received her doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University.

Heidi Brooks is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.