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Dr. Emma Sarro is a researcher at the NeuroLeadership Institute, where she translates cognitive and social neuroscience into practical strategies that help organizations improve leadership, collaboration, and innovation. Formerly a professor at Dominican College and New York University, she also conducted research at the Nathan Kline Institute. She earned her bachelor’s from Brown University and her PhD in neuroscience from NYU, focusing on sensory processing, brain plasticity, and the effects of early life trauma. At NLI, her work highlights how understanding and working within the brain’s capacity—while challenging it in the right ways—can boost creativity, trust, and team performance, all while reducing social threat responses and fostering meaningful growth.

 

 

In this episode, Steve and Dr. Emma discuss:

  • The link between growth mindset and improved performance
  • How the brain’s plasticity fuels learning, adaptability, and resilience
  • Practical strategies for fostering a growth-oriented environment in organizations
  • Why moments of stillness and mind-wandering boost innovation and insight
  • The impact of stress and cortisol on creativity, decision-making, and brain health

Key Takeaways:

  • Adopting a growth mindset actively redirects your brain’s resources toward setting and achieving goals, while easing the grip of fear-based, threat-focused thinking. This mental shift opens the door to greater creativity and resilience.
  • Respecting your cognitive capacity isn’t just about avoiding overload—it’s about optimizing brain performance. Protecting your mental bandwidth helps you make sharper, more strategic decisions.
  • Mind-wandering is a powerful tool for innovation. Stepping away from intense focus allows your brain to form new connections and unlock fresh, unexpected ideas.
  • Chronic stress and prolonged cortisol levels act like roadblocks to creativity and problem-solving. Leaders who learn to manage stress effectively safeguard both their health and their innovative potential.
  • Small, intentional changes—like adding the word “yet” to reframe challenges or regularly reflecting on mistakes—can gradually transform your mindset. These micro-adjustments often lead to long-term performance gains.

“Accepting that you can change and accepting that you can improve is completely different from accepting that you are, that you have a certain skill, and that whatever you put out is the best that you can do.”

 - Dr. Emma Sarro

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Listen to the podcast here:

 

Dr. Emma Sarro- Revisited

Hello, Insight Interview listeners. This is one of your hosts, Steve Scanlon, and today I've got a special treat for us. We get to re-listen to one of my favorite podcast episodes that we have, and now that we've been doing this for a few years, I get to say years, I want to present to you again. Dr. Emma Sarro. This was one of my favorite episodes of all time, and as I re listened to it and heard Dr Sarro talk, I was just super encouraged, and I thought, I think you might want to be encouraged too. Dr. Sarro is deeply steeped in neuroscience and her practices, and she works with the Neuro Leadership Institute now. She's been a professor, and she's just been a mentor to me, and I had the great honor, really, to work with her in this podcast episode, and I think you're going to greatly benefit from it. So, grab a cup of tea, grab whatever you want to grab, sit down and let's listen again to Dr. Emma Sarro.

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Insight interviews. This is your host, Steve Scanlon. I'm coming into the show today, I gotta tell you, I think I say this a lot, but I'm pretty fired up. I'm really excited for my guest today. It would be so nice to say this is a long lost friend of mine, but actually, this is someone I just recently got to know, and right out of the gate, I said I'd love it if you were part of our show. So, Insight Interview world, say hello to Emma Sarro. Emma, say hi to the Insight Interview world.

Hello. Thanks for having me.

No problem. Well, we're excited. I try to get that level of excitement up because I'm thinking that listeners are going to be going, okay, well, who the heck is this? Let's go. Like, this better be exciting if Steve's gonna pump it up that much. Anyway, we'll get to who you are and why you're even on the show, but I like to do something before we even get there, Emma, and it's this. I want to know in life, in work or life, however you want to say it, what are you grateful for today?

That’s such a difficult and great question. Well, I guess I would break it up into what and who. So, I would say what I'm grateful for is where I am right now. I get to do what I love. I get to nerd out on the stuff that I love every day and help people get better at what they do at work and individual and all of that, but the only reason I'm here is because who I'm grateful for. So, my family, my parents and my brothers were my forever cheerleaders, I guess, and they helped open, I would say the first door into where I am now. So, I kind of like see myself as where I am now is all based on a number of doors that I had opportunities to open, and they were the first ones to help.

When the doors were being opened, did you recognize them at the time?

Not at all. No, really, not at all, until after I was through it, right? In the very beginning, the only reason I got a step forward into, let's say the school that I ended up going to was because my parents supported me in a sport. That was really it. I had no idea what I was going to get by going to the school that I went to and the doors that opened up from there.

Have you ever talked to people about opening doors? Is that a concept that you talk about?

Not so much, but I used to teach, and when I worked with students that I was advising, I would try to help them in the same way. You know? Remember that, you know, playing on the sport for instance, it might be fun, but it's going to help you down the road, so maybe, you know, add these things to your resume, for instance, knowing that they're not going to understand it then, but maybe, years from then.

Yeah, that's really, really cool. You know, the name of our show is the Insight Interviews, which I think you and I laughed about a little earlier because of your affiliation with the Neuro Leadership Institute. You know, one of the insights that I'm already writing down is it comes more of like the question of like, gosh, do I recognize doors? And how can I recognize them? You know, now after the fact, I wonder what I could do to recognize a door when the door is open, and not maybe just after the fact. So, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think that would help us in making all of our decisions, right? If we knew that we were at some kind of impasse and we had these choice points, if we knew that going through one, would give us this kind of opportunity, but it's kind of unknown, right?

Which makes a lot of people meet those doors with anxiety.

Absolutely.

And fear. And here we are talking about them like the greatest things of life went through that door.

Yeah, absolutely, yes. I do think you can appreciate these things after the fact, but the unknown being the uncertainty is what I think holds a lot of us away from doing things. From making changes.

That is so great. All right, well, I could so easily read a resume, read your curriculum vitae, which is wonderful. Not that you're gonna read it but give us the Emma Sarro story. I can ask you to synthesize that but tell us how you got to where you got and if you could read or digest as best you can your story that brings you to what you're doing today. That would just be great.

All right, so I'll try to shorten it. I so I said that in the very beginning, my parents kind of helped me make the first step and I had no idea what I was doing when I was doing it, but I ran a lot in high school, and were my coaches. It was kind of like a runner family, but that kind of defined me when I was younger, and this still kind of does to some degree, but it helped me get into Brown. And when I went there, I was going there just to run, you know, that's all I cared about. I had no idea the opportunities that going there would provide for me. So, that's one of those things where I look back and realize that it completely changed my life. So, all of the people that I met, all of my connections from there helped me to fall in love with neuroscience. I just happened to take a neuroscience class, and I loved it. And sometimes when I think back to that class, I don't even think I paid much attention every single day. I was just like the typical college student, but I did love the science, and it then opened the door to grad school. I went to grad school at NYU, so that brought me to New York, and I had a great mentor. I went to the Center for Neuroscience, which is one of the neuroscience departments of New York University, and I studied the development of auditory physiology with Dan Saenz in Gerbils. It was amazing work. He taught me so much, but he also taught me how to teach, and I realized that I love translating science to others. So, while I did love research, I think I loved working with others more than I loved being at the lab bench, I would say. And so eventually I ended up getting into teaching and I taught for about seven years at a small liberal arts college. I taught anything from neuroscience to biology, like genetics and all the whole range of topics, and I love that too. I loved working with students and seeing their insights if we're going to link it back to insights. I loved watching them learn. It was very gratifying. But then a position opened up at the Neuro Leadership Institute, which is a completely different kind of position, but similar in that I'm still translating science, but in this case, it allowed me to jump back into neuroscience. And so, I'm fully focused on neuroscience research, and sometimes I think about what my role is here as kind of like keeping the pipeline of research open towards organizations. So, we work to kind of translate science to organizations and help individuals in their performance at work, at home, you know, working better with teams being better leaders, all of those things, but we use science to do it, and so I love it. I have to, as my job, keep on top of all of the new research, and I get to translate this amazing work into something that people can actually use to get better. So that's what I'm doing now and it's great.

I suspect people listening to this, and for all I know, maybe I'm just the freak going, this is so cool. I have so many questions for you. I think you and I had talked about before, I am a graduate of your brain based coaching program through the Neuro Leadership Institute, and I think that's kind of what intrigued me about your role. David Rock, right? I don't know how much you get to interact with David Rock, but he's a guy that's also passionate about the science of everything.

Oh yeah.

So very, very cool that you get to do that. I so wish I was with a group of people right now, because I just longed to go, okay, you just heard all that. What questions would you like to ask Emma? So here is my first question. I got questions for you, okay, and I hope you don't think this is cheating, but let's say you did that at a cocktail party or with just a group of friends, and you told them what you did or whatever, what questions do you typically get from people when you go into the fact that you got into neuroscience and neurobiology, and you're a teacher and studying a brain, and you geek out about it, and it's the brain, what questions do you get from the world?

Well, I always say one of the top questions I get is, can you tell me what's wrong with me then?

Oh, so I can't ask that one?

No, no, I can't answer that one.

You should just say, oh, a lot.

No, yeah, that's definitely a top question I get. But yeah, I mean I am a huge brain nerd. I love talking about how amazing it is. So that is usually the road that I go down.

Okay, I'll buy that. I get that. What specifically, again, this is off the top of your mind, pun intended, what specifically about the brain lately has really amazed you?

I think the overriding thing that always keeps amazing me about the brain is how adaptive it is, how plastic it is, and how our behavior is. So, I would say that we don't know the extent to what the brain does to control our behavior. So, for instance, when things happen to the brain, when we lose sections of it or have damage to it, there are some amazing ways that the brain can recover and amazing ways that the brain can adapt to our environment and can allow us to do amazing things with our body as well.

So translate that for us, if you will. That's very cool. Let's say, and I'm going to make up a scenario here, let's say I'm a manager, I'm a leader, I work in tech, I work at a hospital, I don't know. I'm a leader, I'm a manager and I think to myself, man, I want to get better at my job. I want to grow. I want to improve. I want to, whatever. How would you translate this capacity for the brain to change to someone who just, maybe they don't have a pathology, you know, like, what's wrong with me? But maybe they just want to get better in life. Maybe they want to earn better income, have better relationships. Help us understand how what you just said about the brain could help those folks.

So, I think the first step might be just in, like, accepting a different mindset. You probably remember this, but the idea of a growth mindset is, I think, the first step, because just by accepting that you can change and accepting that you can improve is completely different than accepting that you have a certain skill and that whatever you put out is the best that you can do. So, I think accepting first that you're not there yet, or that when you make a mistake, you learn from it, as opposed to it meaning that you aren't good at that thing.

And how does that work? By the way, accepting a growth mindset, accepting that you can change, etc., that you can improve, that's awesome. How help me understand that neuro biologically. I get that experientially and humanistically but what's the biology of accepting a growth mindset? You're not just saying that because, oh, that fits a little fluffy, feely, good thing. Like, what's the neurobiology of a growth mindset?

Yeah, so I think there are probably a number of things, but I think some of it is in kind of the opening up of a part of the brain that accepts new material. So, there are kind of like two major areas of the brain that kind of controls our cognitive capacity, like executive functions, allows us to plan behaviors and have goals and things like that. And then there's a part of the brain that basically, you know, tries to keep us alive and looks for threats to our environment and responds to those threats. And that part of our brain is very sensitive, and it takes resources away from the part of the brain that allows us to go after our goals. So, I think by accepting growth mindset, you're kind of focusing resources towards the part of the brain that allows you to work out your goals and reach your goals and in a way that doesn't restrict you by like the emotional restrictions that come in place when you think you can't get there. So, I think part of it is just kind of like focusing your resources on the part of the brain that will allow you to reach your goals, plan them, and reach them.

If we don't intend that focus, if there's not some sort of intentionality with that focus, and again, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, you know, I've told you this now several times, even offline, if I'm making this up, even in our podcast here, feel free to go, yes, Steve, you're making that up because you're the scientist of the two of us. But if I heard you correctly, the intention to do that is huge, because if we don't intend that survivalist part of our brain will gather the resources. Do I understand that correctly?

Yeah, I would say to a very like global view, that is right. And I think that by intentionally shifting these resources to a part of the brain that allows you to see small goals and then feel rewarded by them, that will kind of propel you forward, as opposed to being kind of weighed down by this like survivalist I just need to, survive and compete against others and see yourself in a different light.

There might be some science to this year again, you've got your finger on that pipeline of good neuroscience, but do you know of any science to suggest what percentage of people walking around the planet, you know, or, let's just say, here in the United States, I don't know, maybe just experientially, Emma, the way you just put that, like man, just gather resources here so that you can take habits, what percentage of people do you experience actually do that well consistently?

I think that probably varies a lot and I think it probably varies contextually as well. I mean, I think we're incredibly swayed by the world around us too, and it very easily puts us in a state, like a negative state. I mean, even if you were to talk about, like, think about the number of thoughts that we have. Most of our thoughts that we have every day, whether we know it or not are negative, so it does take a good amount of intention to keep us out of that state.

Is that why you suspect that, and again, I'm not trying to say that you're going to say 80% of people, because we don't talk like that, because the research probably doesn't support that, but if I just heard you right, is it fair to say even that the default mode for the brain is negative? You just said, man, we think more negative. Like, whether we like to admit that or not we do, is that just because of survivalist predisposition?

Yeah. Maybe. And I don't know the statistics, right? I don't know if anyone really has proposed that, and if they have, then it likely varies, and probably varies culturally as well. I think some of the impact comes from how we grow up and the influences that we have then. I mean, there's some classic work in education that shows a very clear difference between enabling a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset in students and how that leads to performance in school and then probably outside of school as well. So, I think there are probably huge differences culturally and socioeconomically as well. But yeah, and I think in a way, yes, I think we've evolved mostly to survive and to compete for resources and I think it does take a little bit more intention to be placed in that state of growth.

Perfect. Okay, hope not to put you on the spot too much. If you were going to write a book, and the book was going to be entitled, Emma's kick butt ways to foster a growth mindset, and I made that up. I'm sure you can come up with better. Emma's top three or four or five ways to foster a growth mindset. What do you what would some of the chapter titles be to that? What are some key best practices that you know of to foster a growth mindset?

Well, I would say one of them is to respect your cognitive capacity. I think when we overwork ourselves, we put ourselves in a state of depleted resources, and we're bound to see things as more threatening or in a negative light, as opposed to not. That is one. I would say, use the power of the word yet, and we talk about this in NLA all the time, but this idea that even just by kind of labeling what you know you feel you're good or bad at, you know? I'm not great at cooking yet. That's like, pretty powerful if you say it that way, as opposed to I'm not great at cooking and it changes the way that you view the whole skill, right?

I love it.

I would say if you put in place practices to, you know, see mistakes, reflect on mistakes, I think the idea of reflection is pretty powerful, because it forces you to look at what happened after the fact and almost label it and take the emotion out of it. So you feel really bad about some mistake that you made, so after the fact, reflect on it, use it, and force yourself to use it as a learning experience, as opposed to ruminating on the negative emotions. And that kind of pulls into place this, like emotional regulation piece where, if you're able to kind of label your emotions, it kind of disentangles the emotional heavy piece, from your ability to cognitively control it and use it to plan a future goal.

That's great. That's three. One had a bunch of sub points. Anything else?

Yeah, I think, I mean, if we were to talk about positive and negative emotions, I would say, and this could maybe be applied to organizations as well, but I think in general, being in an environment that fosters it will help you as well. So, the interpersonal relations and the relations between like leader and employee, definitely. So, leaders, for instance, should foster a growth mindset with their employees. So, help them to reach their own goals and not compare them with other like employees. So, take the competitiveness slightly out of that. So, I think they can help. Like, the environment itself is important.

That's great. I won't press you much further, I just, you know, I don't want it to be two o'clock in the morning and have you pop out of bed and go, Oh man

I probably will.

So as you think about it there, here's what I've written. Respect cognitive capacity, using the power of yet, and then you talked about labeling, etc., reflecting and how we learn on mistakes that we learn through reflection and then finding an environment that already fosters a growth mindset. Like put yourself there as best you can do. Did I have those right?

Yeah, and you know, this is one of those things that popped into my head afterwards, but I often think about this idea of self-compassion and self-compassion seems a little fluffy, but what it is is really part of it at least is realizing that we're accepting this idea that we all succeed and fail, and we all feel bad at some point. That is something that we have a hard time doing ourselves. We're, in a way, we're pretty self-centered. That's the way that our brain has evolved to think about ourselves all the time. So, we don't often think that we are the same as others. So, we see others fail, and we think it's fine, but we don't think that of ourselves. So, I think part of it is accepting that we can all succeed and fail and we can all feel pretty bad about it.

That's awesome. That's also a form of labeling and noticing with lack of judgment, right? I can hear that coming through meditative sessions with anyone who practices meditation. It is just this sense of a lack of judgment on our own thoughts and feelings.

Right.

They are what they are. Really, really good. We don't have much time. I told you, this is going to go fast. What do you hope I ask you? What's one of your favorite questions to answer about the brain? Because I could go down the road of a million different ways, and I just want to go, what's some of your favorite topics or things to answer about how the brain works, how people
work, etc.?

That's a great question. I love talking about insights, weirdly enough, as the name of the podcast. But I love the idea of the underlying reason why we have insights, and the fact that we don't give ourselves enough time for insights. Yeah, that's my favorite topic.

Well, I don't want to play the exact same game, but if we have more time, all right, Emma's best practices to get insights, which is similar to a growth mindset. Okay, so how about this question? I got one. I got one. Can you give us an example of an insight that you had about you that goes beyond just the academic understanding of insights, but like a real example of like, what do you mean by an insight? Like, what happened to you where you got a great insight?

Well, what I mean by insight, really is just that it's like this idea that pops up in your head when you're not in a place where you can even write it down. So usually you're in the shower or like walking your dog or driving home from work or whatever it is, but it's usually away from your computer, and that says so much about what the brain is doing when you're having these ideas. But these are these aha moments, and they usually come with a lot of positive emotions, and you feel good, and you never forget it. But I think that they're really powerful, and what they usually mean is that your brain is kind of like working on these problems that you've had, that when you're at your desk, you're not able to listen to those sounds. They're like quiet signals that you won't be able to hear, because you're focused on something else, and that takes the spotlight away from those quiet signals. But I've had so many of these moments that I think back when I was either writing my thesis or working here, when I am away from my computer, I usually have to bring my phone with me so I can write them down quick, or something like that, because just like you said before, wake up in the middle of the night with some idea. That's why it happens. Your brain is still working even when you're not at your computer.

So, in order to facilitate that, and again, I'm just asking here, would you suggest that moments of stillness, quietness, do you intentionally put yourself in those moments so that you can, perhaps intentionally have these insights?

Yeah, I mean, I try to. It's hard because we're all so busy, and it's our default kind of activity is to fill the space with something. So, when we're on a break, we look at our phone, or we turn on podcasts, or we turn on music or whatever it is, but we think we have to fill all of the space with something, but the truth is, to foster most insight is really by stepping away and letting your mind wander. Which is not really being lazy, it's just letting your mind, kind of like form new connections in a way that it hasn't before. And it's actually more innovative to do this, which is directly applicable to competitive organizations. Being innovative means that you have to think outside the box, and the only way that you can really do that is by letting your mind form new kinds of solutions. I think most of the time, these eureka moments always happen when you're not at work, and so you have to give yourself time to do that. The cool thing about insights are, or these moments when you have them is it's not like you need hours of time. So, you can just step away for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.

I just want to go, thank you everybody, have a good day and just walk away right now. Like, not even end well. Emma, this is really, really great. All right. I don't care if The Insight Interview people that are listening to this, like this question is for me, because guess what, I run this. Thank you for all of that. Letting your mind wander, being innovative. These are some of the things that I was writing down. There are so many offshoot questions from that, but since we don't have a lot of time, I get to ask you a question. This one's for me, but maybe we can hopefully include other people. I mean, we're being recorded for God's sakes. Okay. That innovation and those insights, talk to us a little bit about the presence of cortisol and the stress hormone, cortisol, which we know regulates digestion and heart rate and all kinds of other good things, and yet, if it's aka ‘the stress hormone” and the distress that people a lot of times, because we're worried about this, worried about that, talk to us about the relationship between innovation and mind wandering for the good and eureka moments and the presence of cortisol.

Yeah, that's such a good question. So, in general, lots of cortisol, especially for long periods of time, like long periods of chronic stress or trauma or things like that, are clearly bad for the brain. I mean, there's a reason it's released. It's released to help us survive; to get all of our resources out so we can survive long periods of stress. But normally, we've evolved to have bursts of this and then have it returned to normal, but with periods of chronic stress and chronic cortisol, it can actually have structural damage to your brain. And in the short term, like a louder signal in your brain than what you need for insights, so you won't be able to turn that attention off and just kind of listen to those quiet, innovative signals when you have high levels of cortisol. So, it'll definitely take it away. However, I should say that there is this idea of eustress, which is kind of like your ideal level of stress for performing. So, like the butterflies that you get in your stomach before performing or speaking or things like that, that's a good level of stress, not very high levels of cortisol, and definitely good for performance. So, having deadlines and things like that, sometimes can be good to a point, but chronic stress is kind of like over the threshold for what you need, and can be damaging to the brain.

Again, I'm super sensitive to making stuff up, but I've been thinking as I read and even listen to you that I walk away and I'm thinking, it seems to me like it would be pretty difficult to be under chronic stress. You know, we're worried about our jobs, we're worried about sales, we're worried about money, we're worried about our kids, we're worried about this. For so many people, stress is chronic, you know? I want to bring you back and just talk about chronic stress and the effect of cortisol and its effect on the hippocampus, specifically. You know, we can't do that today, but anyway, we'll do that later. But under stress, if one of the things that we're walking away with today is like, man, I'd love to be more innovative and have those eureka moments, like, would it be okay to suggest to people to start attending to that level of chronic stress? Because, if nothing else, forget all the nefarious physiological effects that we know cortisol can bring, if nothing else, it has got to block our ability to be innovative and create, right?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if there's one thing you could do, you know, I mean, if you're able to first step away from the triggers that cause you to feel stress, sometimes it's hard to, but if you can give yourself 10 minutes away from those triggers so you can't see your computer, you're away from some of those pulls, then those 10 minutes are yours to rest the rest of your brain and also to allow your mind to wander a bit. It does take practice and it is hard to do, so that's kind of almost like a habit that has to be formed, but I think it can help the other parts of your day, when you need to focus, for sure.

Can we come back one day and talk about habit formation?

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Oh god, I gotta do it. See, I looked down at my stopwatch and saw the time, and I was like, going, cortisol, cortisol, gosh darn it. It arrested me. I got hijacked. But unfortunately, we got to come to a close. I am super grateful to you for our time. Thank you so much for being a part of
this.

Oh, this was so much fun. I love it. Anytime.

Yeah, well, you and I talked about being nerds together in this, but you are the one that has really gone to the lengths to study this and understand it, and I'm super grateful. Look, folks, usually we end this thing by talking about the insights, and I will tell you that it doesn't matter what insights Emma has, or I have, what matters is yours, right? That's what matters is what aha moments, what eureka moments, what insights, what dawning’s did you have as you look at things like, you know, finding an environment that fosters it, self-compassion, cognitive capacity. Man, if you don't rewind and listen to this thing again and think of yourself through it, that'd be no good. So, I know I am going to. Anyway, Emma, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. This is so much fun.

Yeah, and like we say every time, we'll see you next time here on The Insight Interviews.


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