Most people have far more potential than they realize, but our own brains often hold us back. That’s the core insight of Dr. Karolien Notebaert’s work. A neuroscientist with a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience , Dr. Notebaert has spent a big part of her career exploring how the brain regulates performance under stress. She’s the author of the Spiegel bestsellers ‘Drei Tage, zwei Frauen, ein Affe und der Sinn des Lebens’ and ‘Vom Glück der richtigen Gedanken’ (Random House) and an international keynote speaker, including TEDx and GedankenTanken presentations, where her talk “Hack Your Brain” has inspired audiences worldwide.
Her mission is simple, yet highly noble: help people unlock their full potential using neuroscience. By bridging neuroscience and leadership development, she provides practical self-regulation tools that improve decision-making, creativity, and agility, which are especially needed in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) workplaces. At the heart of her strategy is mindfulness meditation, a scientifically backed method to reduce stress-related amygdala activation, which we will dive into later.
The “Hack Your Brain” Strategy In Short
Dr. Notebaert believes everyone has potential, but many stressful situations in life can cause self-inflicted blockages. These blockages are called internal interferences and they reduce performance by preventing access to full potential. The goal is to identify and reduce these interferences for natural high performance. Therefore, Dr. Notebaert uses a simple but powerful formula: Performance = Potential – Internal Interferences.
Potential includes the skills, talents, and expertise a person brings. Internal interferences, feelings like anxiety, self-doubt, overthinking, are hidden barriers that block access to this potential. When stress over-activates the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, which responsible for focus, planning, and decision-making, is temporarily shut down. In high-pressure workplaces, these blockages are common yet often ignored. She compares the prefrontal cortex to a battery explaining that it has limited capacity and drains with overuse. When exhausted, people become their “worst selves,” prone to poor decisions, irritability, and mistakes. Chronic workplace stress accelerates this drain.
Mindfulness meditation offers a proven solution. By emptying the mind and focusing on one’s body, mindfulness meditation reduces amygdala activation and strengthens prefrontal cortex capacity. Regular practice can physically shrink the amygdala, leading to two major benefits: a calmer, less stressed mind, and improved focus and decision-making. Employees sleep better, have lower blood pressure, improved mood, and naturally increase performance, all advantages for both individuals and organizations.
Self-Regulation Over Everything
When asked whether natural potential or formal education is more important for performance, Dr. Notebaert brings in a new viewpoint: both are valuable, but insufficient in isolation. She explains that high intelligence or advanced degrees mean little if internal interferences are unmanaged. Dr. Notebaert says that self-regulation, so the ability to recognize and manage your own mental blockages, is, apart from socioeconomic status, one of the strongest predictor of success in life. And mindfulness is a proven tool to develop this capacity.
This insight has profound implications for hiring. Traditional recruitment often emphasizes skills and credentials while overlooking self-regulation, stress management, and emotional resilience. Dr. Notebaert recommends that companies evaluate candidates on these dimensions, as self-regulation, social skills and cultural fit frequently outweigh technical ability in real-world roles.
This is exactly where Skills Based comes in. By testing for real-world capabilities, problem-solving, adaptability, and culture fit, Skills Based uncovers hidden potential that resumes alone can’t reveal. While self-regulation is a largely untapped metric in recruitment, it is definitely a relevant factor to look into for the future.
HR Strategies Inspired from Neuroscience
Creating a high-performing workforce requires more than performance targets, it requires understanding the biology behind stress and human behavior. Two of the biggest triggers for internal interferences are job insecurities, like job instability, or fear of mistakes, and social rejection, so experiencing things like intense criticism or social exclusion, both of which significantly activate the amygdala, keeping employees from reaching peak performance.
But HR and leadership can mitigate these triggers with practical, neuroscience-backed strategies like:
- Micro-recovery moments — having short breaks to prevent mental exhaustion, such as having meetings 50 minutes instead of a full hour so participants can relax and reflect for ten minutes.
- Talk about emotions — normalizing discussions about mental health reduces stress and strengthens resilience.
- Healthy approach to failure — reframing mistakes as learning opportunities rather than blame.
- Foster social connection — informal interactions, like kitchen chats, or team-building experiences enhance trust and mental health.
These practices emphasize that mental health is not a side concern but a crucial component of sustainable performance. Lasting productivity comes not from pushing harder but from regulating the brain effectively.
A Neuroscience-Backed Vision for Better Work
Dr. Notebaert’s work bridges neuroscience and leadership to create workplaces where people thrive. By removing internal blockages, strengthening self-regulation, and designing systems that support mental health, organizations can unlock both individual and collective peak potential.
Skills Based shares this vision. By valuing capability and potential over credentials alone, Skills Based helps organizations identify talent that might be overlooked. Combining neuroscience insights with skills-based hiring creates a future where employees are recognized for what they can truly do. In this scenario organisations support and take care of their employees then reap the benefits of their highest potential. When neuroscience meets smart hiring, both people and workplaces flourish.
