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Learn More About Heidi Brooks
Heidi Brooks, Ph.D., teaches and advises on everyday leadership: the cumulative moments of impact that shape our shared experience. Fostering courageous and effective organizational communities is a particular passion of hers. Brooks specializes in large-scale culture change projects focused on individual and collective leadership effectiveness in organizations.
Interpersonal Dynamics, the MBA elective she has taught for 20 years, is one of the courses most in demand at Yale School of Management (SOM). Brooks directs the Program for the Practice of Everyday Leadership at Yale SOM. PPEL offers learning experiences that aim to transform the capacity to shape our shared future. 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. She is a lifelong experiential learner; you can find her as a student in classrooms as far-ranging as improvisational theater and immersion language lessons.
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®.
Unlock the Power of “Everyday Leadership”
The scale, pace and complexity of modern institutions place demands on leaders that extend far beyond their trained subject matter expertise. Today’s managers are now stewards of dynamic workplace systems, and outdated ideas of management crafted in the 1950s often do not serve current organizational forms. According to Heidi Brooks of the Yale School of Management, while administrating systems remains essential, the success of leadership increasingly hinges on meaning-making in a complex world, creating a sense of belonging in a divided world, and unleashing potential in a reactive world.
Everyday leadership is about impact through the way we lead and interact with others. Brooks, host of the transformational podcast “Learning Through Experience,” which is drawn from her top-rated Yale School of Management course “Everyday Leadership,” illustrates how we influence others in moments and micro-moments. By taking advantage of these key opportunities for “everyday impact,” leaders can unlock newfound collaboration and innovation within their organizations.
In engaging and thoughtful presentations that Brooks customizes to suit any organization’s individual needs, Brooks reveals how to promote understanding of how and where these moments occur in our daily lives and how our everyday experience crafts our organizational culture and success. Highly flexible and responsive to individual organizational needs, he also discusses how to align interactions with values and intentions by crafting everyday moments that matter. An especially warm presenter, Brooks’ central focus is to increase the ability to understand and upgrade “everyday leadership” effectiveness while adding new skills and mindsets to leaders’ personal toolboxes.
How to Lead Into the Future with an Optimistic Vision
In a world quick to highlight difficult challenges, how can innovative organizations ensure a strategic advantage by cultivating a culture of optimism? According to YSM senior lecturer Heidi Brooks, hope can be a foundational strategy for navigating and shaping the future, especially in uncertain times. In this highly interactive presentation, Brooks explores how optimism can transform organizational dynamics, fostering environments where creativity and innovation flourish. Managers will learn how to infuse their leadership approach with hope, transforming mindsets and creating resilient, forward-thinking teams ready to turn challenges into opportunities.
Leading Through Uncertainty: A New Blueprint for the AI Era
How can organizations foster the new kind of leadership – adaptive, insightful and inherently human – required in today’s complex AI-driven world? According to Yale SOM senior lecturer Heidi Brooks, it’s vital to blend technological integration with the essential human qualities of empathy, creativity, and ethical decision-making. In this energizing and thoughtful presentation, Brooks offers an interactive blueprint for leading effectively in an era marked by both technological advancement and significant uncertainty. Going beyond practical use cases for AI, Brooks blends her insights from decades at the front lines of leadership education at the Yale School of Management to showcase how to integrate AI without losing sight of the human elements that underpin successful organizations. Managers emerge with the knowledge to transform uncertainty into a strategic advantage, fostering a workplace that values resilience, adaptability, and the courage to embrace technological paradigm shifts.
Reflective Leadership: Harnessing Self-Other-Systems Awareness to Spark Organizational Change
In this dynamic and introspective workshop, Heidi Brooks, a senior lecturer from the Yale School of Management and lecturer at Yale Law School, invites leaders to explore the transformative power of reflection in everyday leadership. Drawing on her extensive experience teaching diverse audiences that have ranged from athletes to executives, Brooks demonstrates how introspective thinking can bridge the gap between intention and action.
This session is designed to empower participants to cultivate a reflective mindset and to engage in collaborative reflective with others, a crucial skill for adaptive leaders in uncertain business environments. By engaging in guided reflective exercises, participants will learn to assess their own leadership styles and the impact of their daily interactions. Highly responsive to individual organizational needs, Brooks uses a series of real-life case studies and personal anecdotes to illustrate how self-examination fosters deeper connections within teams to reveal methods for enhancing decision-making and driving meaningful change.
Participants will leave with practical tools to implement reflective practices that enhance both personal growth and organizational effectiveness. This workshop not only deepens the understanding of one’s leadership impact but also redefines how leaders can shape a collaborative, innovative and resilient organizational future.
Heidi Brooks is also happy to customize workshops on the following topics and to personalize her sessions to your organization’s individual needs:
- Unlock the Power of “Everyday Leadership”
- How to Lead Into the Future with an Optimistic Vision
- Leading Through Uncertainty: A New Blueprint for the AI Era