Why the Brain Follows: Transform Leadership, Beat Burnout with Neuroscience- August 19 IN-PERSON WORKSHOP

Here’s what most people get wrong about workplace stress: yes, it’s caused by heavy workloads, tight deadlines, and tough markets. But more importantly, it’s shaped by people — specifically, by leadership behaviors that trigger the brain’s threat response, often without the leader realizing it. Stress is socially contagious. A frustrated leader in a Monday morning meeting can raise the stress level of every person in the room — and that response doesn’t shut off when the meeting ends. Over time, this becomes chronic stress, then burnout, then turnover. The costs are real and measurable: lost productivity, disengagement, and the expense of replacing people who leave — often the best people, who have the most options. Most approaches to burnout focus on helping employees cope — more self-care, more resilience, and more breathing exercises. That treats the symptom and ignores the source.The Performance Excellence Network is pleased to announce a powerful workshop on August 19th: Why the Brain Follows: Transform Leadership, Beat Burnout with Neuroscience with Dr. Terry Wu. Dr. Wu’s training flips that equation. It starts with the neuroscience of how stress works in the brain, connects it directly to leadership behavior, and gives leaders the tools to break the cycle — not just for themselves, but for their teams. Most leadership content explains what leaders should do. This workshop explains why the brain responds the way it does — and once leaders see the biology, the what becomes obvious.

The promise is simple: your leaders will see something about stress and burnout that was sitting in their own experience the whole time — and wonder how they missed it.

That recognition is where change starts. When leaders understand that their own behavior is a primary driver of their team’s stress — and that small, specific shifts can reverse it — they have something most burnout interventions never provide: a lever they actually control. The organizations that address burnout at its source, rather than asking employees to cope with it, are the ones that hold onto their people.

Learning Objectives

How stress spreads from leader to team — the neuroscience of social contagion and why one leader’s behavior can activate the threat response across an entire organization.
The stress-leadership vicious cycle — how chronic stress degrades the exact brain functions leaders need most: decision-making, emotional regulation, and social connection.
The 5 safety signals — the specific conditions the brain scans for before it decides an environment is safe. Leaders will learn how to create these safety signals and how they accidentally destroy them.
Practical tools to break the cycle — science-backed shifts in how leaders communicate, respond under pressure, and structure their teams. These are the specific behaviors that lower a team’s baseline stress and protect against the disengagement that precedes turnover.
Why resilience training backfires — the biology behind why “toughing it out” accelerates burnout instead of preventing it.

Because the underlying biology operates wherever humans interact, leaders consistently report applying these tools beyond the workplace — with their teams, their families, and themselves. That durability matters: content that gets remembered and applied is content that actually changes how people lead, long after the session ends. The mechanisms stick because they’re real, not because they’re motivational.

The session will be hosted in the Twin Cities (location TBD) from 9:00-Noon; materials included and light snacks offered throughout. Dr. Wu will be available from 12:00-12:30pm for Q&A.

Investment is $325 for members ($650 for non-members). Discounts available for teams of 3-4 from the same organization registering at the same time ($300) as well as teams of 5+ ($275).

When

August 19th, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Event Fee(s)

PEN Member	$325.00
PEN Member Group (3-4 registering together)	$300.00
PEN Member Group (5+ registering together)	$275.00
Non-Member	$650.00
Partners of Terry Wu	$575.00
PEN Premium Member	$0.00