Understanding Human Behavior for Effective Leadership With Dr. Nicolas Pokorny

Name: Understanding Human Behavior for Effective Leadership With Dr. Nicolas Pokorny
Uploaded: 2025-08-21T19:52:58+00:00
Duration: 28 min 27 s
Channel: Workforce Alchemy

Workforce Alchemy

What if leadership wasn’t just an art—but a science rooted in human biology?

In this conversation, Dr. Nicolas Pokorny, neuroscientist, leadership expert, and author of The Mammoth in the Room, explores the intersection of neuroscience, human behavior, and leadership. He explains why understanding what truly motivates people is the key to building trust, inspiring performance, and driving lasting organizational transformation.

We discuss:

✅ Why people are motivated by personal goals before corporate objectives
✅ How leaders can balance competition and collaboration
✅ The science of trust and its impact on engagement
✅ Intelligent risk-taking and innovation
✅ Why resistance to change is natural—and how to rewire it
✅ How to evolve leadership styles for today’s challenges

This episode blends neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and practical leadership strategies into a playbook for anyone leading teams in a rapidly changing world.

Full Podcast Episode

https://shows.acast.com/themasonduchatschekshow/episodes/understanding-human-behavior-for-effective-leadership

Chapters

00:00 The Intersection of Neuroscience and Leadership
03:30 Understanding Human Behavior in Leadership
10:04 The Importance of Individual Understanding in Teams
17:02 Navigating Competition and Collaboration in Teams
21:52 Universal Behaviors of Top Performers
24:03 Balancing Performance and Well-being
26:22 Fostering Unity in a Polarized World
31:04 Intelligent Risk-Taking in Leadership
34:41 Rewiring Resistance to Change
38:34 Evolving Leadership Styles for Modern Challenges

About This Channel

I’m Mason Duchatschek, business consultant, bestselling author, and host of The Mason Duchatschek Show.

On this channel, I bring you powerful conversations with CEOs, authors, and thought leaders who share strategies to:

Recruit and retain top talent

Build stronger workplace cultures

Improve leadership effectiveness

Scale businesses sustainably

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Transcript

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00:00What if leadership wasn't just an art, but a science rooted in human biology?

00:05Today's guest, Nicholas Pokorny, is the founder and CEO of Mammoth Leadership Sciences,

00:11and a rare blend of neuroscientists, business strategists, and global executives.

00:17With a PhD in neuroethology and an MBA in organizational behavior,

00:23Nicholas has spent decades exploring how group dynamics and human behavior shape leadership and vice versa.

00:29He even wrote a book about it called The Mammoth in the Room,

00:32How Great Leaders and Their Teams Embrace Evolutionary Truths for Outstanding Business Results.

00:39He's led multicultural, high-performing teams around the world.

00:42He's built cultures that scale collaboration and inclusion

00:45and driven business transformations at the intersection of science, strategy, and humanity.

00:52Nicholas believes that great leadership isn't about charisma or control.

00:55It's about understanding what makes people tick and designing cultures that tap into that truth.

01:01If you want to explore the evolutionary principles of leadership,

01:04decode behavior in high-stakes environments,

01:07and learn how to lead like a scientist and a human, this conversation's for you.

01:12Nicholas, welcome to the show.

01:13Thanks very much for having me. A fantastic opportunity.

01:16So, you have a PhD in neuroethology and a background in business leadership.

01:23How did those worlds collide for you, and what did that spark?

01:26Yeah. Well, the neuroscience background goes back to my university time.

01:31So, I studied neurobiology, and then within the neurobiology, it was a lot about biochemistry.

01:40But then, very quickly, it became more when we were able to link biochemistry to behavior,

01:48obviously, on animal level. But then, once I stopped studying, you know, you need to make money.

01:56So, the first job I got was going into sales in a biopharmaceutical company.

02:02And over time, I was able to lead teams.

02:06So, I had the honor to lead teams of all sizes, obviously, at the beginning, very small,

02:10and then later on, very big ones.

02:12And what I found was everything I learned during my studies about behavior applied on a human level

02:19in the same way when you go into, when you look into biology books.

02:24You could just basically find out that evolutionary, evolutionary psychology,

02:29socioeconomics, all of that transpires in everyday interactions.

02:33And I found that my evolutionary understanding of human biology and behavior helped so much in leading teams.

02:42So, you actually go back into the human biology, into evolution, into evolutionary psychology,

02:50and that gives you the ground knowledge and basics for leading teams.

02:58Now, that was that part.

03:00But then, later on, because I was in business, I also needed to add more knowledge about business.

03:05That is when the MBA came together.

03:07But what I did do is my master thesis at the MBA was about human behavior and how humans behave in bigger groups like corporations.

03:20Okay.

03:20So, what do most leaders get wrong about human behavior in group settings?

03:24And how can understanding brain science change how we lead?

03:27Yeah.

03:27So, I think the biggest learning for myself, and that's the way how I look at it, is as business leaders,

03:34we are actually not leading the business.

03:37We are actually leading the people who do the business.

03:39And that is on a completely different scale.

03:43I see it in a way that every business decision, since the beginning of time,

03:47since the beginning of businesses have been established,

03:50or since we started to trade as human beings, has never been anything else than the representation of the human behavior of that very person who took this decision.

04:00And that means we're actually not leading a business, but we're leading human behavior.

04:04And human behavior is on a complete different planet as what we normally learn in business school.

04:11We learn about strategy and about implementation and we learn about the P&L and all these things.

04:17It's all great.

04:17It's all important.

04:18But I believe that the reason why businesses succeed or fail is not because we know or don't know how to do a strategy.

04:28I think we succeed or we don't succeed because we don't know enough about how do we steer, develop, nurture human behavior,

04:37so that it becomes a culture which supports the business outcomes long term.

04:43Okay.

04:44So you say great leadership starts with the individual and scales through the group.

04:49Can you walk us through what that looks like in practice, in the real world?

04:52Yeah, yeah.

04:53Well, there was big learning from my side.

04:58I didn't strategically approach this from the get-go like this.

05:02But what companies very often do is they lead with the business objectives and then basically expect that the humans who actually do the business are then somehow finding their place within these objectives.

05:18And that was also my approach at the beginning.

05:21So I led with all stuff I got from headquarter and all the slides and this is where we need to go and let's go and blah, blah, blah and all this.

05:29But then later on, I found out very quickly, actually, that if you do that, you're actually losing your people because each and every one of us is working for him or herself first.

05:43You're not working for a company.

05:44You're working in a company, but you work for yourself.

05:47You want to make a living.

05:49You want to sustain your family.

05:52You want to pay the rent, right?

05:54So my approach has changed.

05:56When I work in a team, when I have the honor to lead a team, my first actions are actually going into a very deep understanding of the people.

06:04So I try to understand every single individual very deeply what drives him or her, where he or she wants to go.

06:14What are his or her career plans and paths?

06:17And once we figured that out, then I go to the business.

06:21And then I say, okay, here is where the business needs to go.

06:24Here is where you need to go.

06:25And here is where you can find, and I work with the employee, here is where you can find your career goals, your future within the company goals.

06:34So that's important that every individual who works in a company can identify his or her own goals within the company goals.

06:42I appreciate that you're taking the time to do that with people.

06:47I've actually spoken with him, a friend of mine, his name is Hank Epstein, and he runs a business coaching practice out of Washington, Missouri called The Quality Coach.

06:56And we get together for lunch every so often.

06:59And one of the last times we got together, he talked about how people are meaning-making machines.

07:06It's not like you just tell them something and they do it.

07:08They process that, what does this mean to me, and what may sound good for the company may be perceived, whether accurately or inaccurately, as a threat to them or to their career.

07:19And getting them to engage does require, in his opinion, exactly what you're saying is someone to sit down there and explain to them, like, these are the corporate objectives, and this is what this means to you.

07:30Yeah, exactly.

07:31In a non-threatening way so that there is lack of anxiety and fear and enhanced engagement and cooperations.

07:40And yes, that does take more time for a leader to do that, but it's a short investment time up front to pay off over the long term by far.

07:50So I agree with what you're saying.

07:51A hundred percent, and what's important here is when someone is able to do that, then you start to know your people, not only where they want to go, but also how they tick.

08:03And that is also one of the big learnings I had in my career.

08:06So you talk, even when you go within a team to a certain place, whatever that business goal is, it's important that you understand, is that person in private maybe an artist, maybe a professor for botany, or maybe an athlete.

08:24And these are all real examples, because even when I explain business goals, I will talk about the same business goals, but in a different way to the different people.

08:35Now, the reason is, what's important here is, when you scale up an organization, that only works with a certain number of people.

08:43That's why it's important to, when you lead people, that your span of control is always manageable.

08:50So your team of six, of eight, of 10, it works.

08:54If you lead 20 or 30 people who report to you, it doesn't work anymore.

08:58That is why it's always, you need to find the balance between hierarchical organizations and the different levels and flat organizations.

09:06I'm not a big fan of flat organizations to the extent that one person has 30 direct reports, because then this individual approach goes overboard.

09:15But when you get it right, you are in the best shape to navigate the complexities within the group.

09:23And I can speak about them as well, but that's fine.

09:26So could you give me one story where the science completely shifted the way you or someone else approached a leadership challenge?

09:34Oh, yeah, absolutely.

09:36I was a product manager, and then I had the opportunity to become a sales team leader, which is also an interesting thing, right?

09:43Because in the way how we promote people through the organizations is, I was a great product manager.

09:48I was good in doing detail ads.

09:50I was great in running scientific conferences.

09:53And then one day, my boss told me, now you're ready to lead eight people, right?

09:58So I am going into this first meeting with them and equipped with all my headquarter BS slides.

10:05And this is where we go.

10:06This is where we go.

10:06And this is what we need to do.

10:07And here is, you know, P&L and growth over last year.

10:10And I have this very inspiring, I thought for me, inspiring presentation.

10:14And once I've done, I'm walking out and one of my later on turned out to be super strong salespeople, one of the best I ever had, right?

10:26She comes to me and says, Nicholas, you've been long into with headquarter now.

10:32I think you have good connections.

10:34So I am actually, that was her only comment on that day.

10:37I would like to have that next class car.

10:41And I know it's a little bit above the limit, but I know you are connected enough that we get a little bit of an exception.

10:48So I can get this new car.

10:50And I was like, hold on a second.

10:51We spend an afternoon on strategy and everything.

10:54And you come with your own thing, what is important for you.

10:59Now, I could have now said, it's completely crazy.

11:03And why are you asking this?

11:05But what I did was I sat down in the car and was thinking about it.

11:08Okay, so I'm talking about strategy for a whole afternoon.

11:12But the person who actually is one of the best salespeople had much more her personal well-being in mind.

11:23And that is 100% clear once you think about it, because every single person works first and foremost for him or herself.

11:32If you get the people on board first and then you are rolling out your strategy.

11:38And now, obviously, this is not something you do over the course of months.

11:42You need to be very quick on this, right?

11:44You need to sit down at the beginning.

11:46Just recently, one person was promoted from an individual contributor role to leading a team of eight.

11:55And he called me and I have no clue for the first time in my career what I do.

12:01Because I am an expert in what I did before, but now I need to lead eight people.

12:06What do I do first?

12:07And I told him, sit down with your people.

12:10Of course, you understand your business goals, but sit down with your people and understand them deeply.

12:17And that is what he's doing now.

12:18It's funny you say that, because I was in a conversation not long ago, and the executive I was talking to said his number one priority was to build the trust of his team members.

12:30He said, and he said when he first got, he just spent the first day talking to them about who their family was, where they went to school, where they grew up, what they're like.

12:39He wanted to get to know them on a personal level.

12:40He said, I'm going to have a whole career worth of time to get to work with these people, but I want to know who they are, what matters to them, and why.

12:47And as a leader, our decisions are only as sound as the facts on which they're based.

12:51And we can't be everywhere all the time, and we can't see everything.

12:54We have to rely on other people.

12:56And if there isn't trust, they won't feel safe telling the leader the truth.

13:02And by default, the leader is incapable of making the best decisions because they don't have the best information.

13:07And taking that little bit of time up front, I think, is a very, very good investment of time.

13:11If you've got someone who is in a role and they feel that everyone else is competing and they want that role, then the person who is in charge, like I said earlier, your decisions as a leader are only as sound as the facts on which they're based.

13:26And you have to rely on other people.

13:27And if you can't trust them to tell you what's good and what's better and what's going on, and they're not your eyes and ears because they've got a different agenda, that is a breeding ground.

13:36And I've seen cultures like that.

13:40I have actually once taken over a big group of around 100, not quite 100, around 90 people who were basically in the leadership before were living that toxic culture.

13:53And it took the team I inherited because it was a multiple layers company.

13:57It took us, I think, two years to get this toxicity out and to replace this with an environment where everyone was really, really happy to contribute.

14:08This is where the science gets a bit of an art, I can tell you that.

14:12So I know that you've built and led multicultural teams across continents.

14:16What are some universal behaviors that you've seen consistent in top performers?

14:22You know, the top performers are team-

14:25Regards to culture.

14:25The guardians of culture, they all know it is important to work together.

14:32I've never seen, maybe it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I've never seen a really high performer who was just going his or her way.

14:41I've only seen people who really understood that you need to work with a team and for a team.

14:47These people were also very clear and very candid and very self-confident of what they want to achieve in life.

14:56The third thing is they are never, ever satisfied.

15:00Never.

15:00And that means they always go for the next level.

15:04The best people, they always want to win.

15:07So in today's polarized world, how can leaders foster unity and shared purpose without forcing conformity?

15:14Wow.

15:15That's a topic I can tell you.

15:17That's something I struggle often with.

15:19Because you're not the only one.

15:21I think everyone struggles with that.

15:22Yeah, I mean, look, I'm originally from Austria and I'm living here in the United States.

15:29And I'm from a country where we have a parliamentarian system where it's far, far, far from perfect.

15:38But there are multiple, multiple, there are many parties and you need to compromise.

15:44And to be honest, here in the U.S., as somebody who is allowed to pay taxes but not to vote, it is sometimes difficult because it feels a little bit, there is a cultural thing going on.

15:57Not only in the U.S., I think everywhere you're either for something and if you're not for something, you are automatically against it.

16:05Now, that is a bit of an issue.

16:07And, you know, it's funny, actually, because my first reaction to this is just avoid it.

16:15Don't talk about it.

16:16Don't bring it up and deny it.

16:19But that doesn't work as well, right?

16:22Because then you have, then things are brewing in the back.

16:26And it's a difficult topic.

16:27And to be honest, I don't have one recipe for this.

16:31The way how I approach it, when I see things coming, I'm not denying it anymore.

16:35When I see things are, I mean, there are some situations where teams are starting to discuss, not politics per se, but like policies.

16:44And it gets a little bit heated.

16:46I actually say, okay, let's discuss this a little bit.

16:49Let's take it.

16:51I'm a fan of transparency.

16:53Yeah, yeah.

16:53When the playing field is level and you have a shared understanding, then it's a lot easier to come up with a shared purpose when you have a shared understanding.

17:03And then when everyone understands and they have a shared understanding and you come up with a shared purpose, informality isn't something that is pushed.

17:14To me, it seems like a collaboration is the outcome.

17:18That's the natural result.

17:20Yeah, yeah.

17:20No, we have four kids and whenever one kid came up with something, well, you didn't say this to him or to her, somebody felt untreated.

17:31And I heard something along the lines of, you're not doing it in the same way like you did with him or her.

17:42Then my answer was always, look, you are a different person, a different personality, and you have the right to be treated differently.

17:51And I think it is important because there are no two same people in the world.

17:55Biology doesn't work like that, right?

17:57And as long as we stay kind to each other and don't yell at each other, let's talk about it.

18:06And maybe at some point you just say, okay, let's agree to disagree and then we move on because we don't always have to agree.

18:14We just don't.

18:15It's not needed.

18:16So what role does intelligent risk taking play in leadership and how can leaders distinguish between boldness and recklessness?

18:24Yeah, intelligent risk taking is something which I learned from one of the companies I worked with.

18:32And it was in that company, it was one of the ground, one of the basic values they were cherishing.

18:37And intelligent risk taking for me is something where you take the risk needed, but you're not going overboard.

18:45That means there's a lot of data going to this, of course, right?

18:50You need to understand how a certain business situation is, what you can do about it, what you can't do about it.

18:56But then you're always trying to push and transform the business for the future.

19:02Now, if you are a non-risk taker at all, then you are just keep doing what you're doing.

19:08And a lot of companies are doing great things, but if you never take any intelligent risk, you just always will keep doing what you're doing.

19:18And then at some point, environment will change and you will fail because environment is constant changing.

19:28In my book, I'm talking about dynamic stability and transformation of businesses.

19:34So not risk taking at all means basically failing over time because your environment around yourself is changing.

19:41Now, reckless risk taking, I would describe as something what a lot of companies do, but they don't understand that they are reckless.

19:50That's the biggest threat in this.

19:53And this is when companies are not trying to see the future, are not transforming voluntarily over time.

20:00And then at some point, they see that the environment has changed and then they need to be reckless to do quick change.

20:10And when they do quick change, a lot of things go terribly overboard.

20:14And, you know, there are so many examples also in the business world, right?

20:18Just think about, you know, just think about Kodak, right?

20:21They invented a digital camera and it was a moment where these engineers showed this.

20:26And what they should have done is to say, that's potentially the future.

20:30We are market leader in the whole film industry.

20:33So let's take this and evolve this.

20:35What they did is they denied it.

20:37They threw it back until it was too late.

20:39And when all the others started to work on that, that was the moment where they tried to throw everything overboard.

20:45And that is when then thing collapsed.

20:48And then there was, of course, they went bankrupt.

20:51So in avoiding change for so long and not working voluntarily by purpose on the transformation of your business all the time, constantly, which I call the intelligent risk-taking, you're ending up at some point where it's too late.

21:07And then this reckless risk-taking starts to save the company.

21:11And, you know, what then happens, it's all clear, right?

21:13Because the people who are actually responsible for that, the CEOs and the top executive leadership, are the last to go.

21:18First, we save the P&L, and then we let the workers go, the employees go, who actually have nothing to do.

21:25Some of them already had seen that coming and say, hold on a second, we should change, right?

21:30But they are then the first to go.

21:31Yeah, that is the difference.

21:33So neuroscience tells us that people resist change, but your work focuses on ongoing transformation.

21:40How do you rewire resistance?

21:42Now, there is this saying, don't fix what's working or something like that, right?

21:47If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

21:48Yeah, exactly.

21:49If it ain't broke, that's the way how you say that in English.

21:52If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

21:54But things don't need to break to fix it.

21:57Things need to evolve over time.

21:59And that feels not nice because we're wired to have these consistencies.

22:08You need to address that and say, okay, the way how we're doing business now, even if it's our core business, needs to change over time.

22:15Because in 3, 5, 10, 15 years, it will be different.

22:20Because if you want to change things which are not broken, it doesn't feel good.

22:24On the opposite, the other thing, when then change has to happen because you haven't changed over time, then change feels even more terrible because then you have this revolutionary change process.

22:37The biggest advice I can give based on my own learning is build evolution into your business over time.

22:46Build a culture where evolution transforming the business over time is built in.

22:52So let's talk about evolution of business.

22:55How do you coach leaders who are stuck in outdated, top-down styles to evolve and adapt to more human-centric approaches?

23:03So I am trying to build this balance.

23:06The default leadership style should be by competence, by vision, by humility, by inclusion, by transparency, because that is influence-based leadership.

23:20And it's built on – and that is the big clue.

23:23It inspires collaboration and cooperation.

23:25Absolutely, absolutely, right?

23:27But in certain situations, like a crisis situation, a production line fails or whatever, right?

23:36You need to have a very clear guidance who says what, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then things are gone.

23:43But that shouldn't be the default way.

23:44And it's deeply evolutionary that top-down default doesn't work.

23:54When you look at – it doesn't matter.

23:57Look at warfare.

23:59Look at the – a good example is the Jin Dynasty, around 220 before BCE, where they were efforts of – they had an unbelievable unification effort at that time.

24:13They built streets, they had unified unit system, and so on and so forth.

24:19So they were able to do a lot within a short period of time.

24:23But when this guy died, there was immediately a revolt.

24:26The next dynasty afterwards was built on – the Han Dynasty was built on collaboration, was built on this – what I described as the second part of the leadership, which is an influence-based leadership.

24:38It wasn't bloodless.

24:39There was also hierarchy, but it held much longer.

24:41So I tell my leaders all the time, you need to build your influence network, you need to build your competence, you need to be trusted as a leader in a collaboration way and influence-based.

24:55And you be very sparely in going top-down, and you need to also be very transparent and saying, now we need to be quick, now we need to be top-down, and it will only be for a certain period of time.

25:06And that is okay. People will okay that when you have built the foundation of the influence-based leadership.

25:14Constantly top-down doesn't work.

25:16So if people want to know more – I really appreciate your time.

25:19It's been a pleasure having you on.

25:21If people want to know more about you and the work you do in your company, what's the best way for them to connect with you and your company?

25:27Well, I think the best way is you can find me on LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile, Nicolas Bocconi.

25:33There is also the links to the web page, Mammoth Leadership Sciences.

25:37Then I have a book, The Mammoth in the Room.

25:40That is – you can find that on our company page, our web page.

25:45You can also find it on Amazon and wherever you want to buy your book.

25:48And then I have a podcast.

25:49It's a weekly podcast.

25:50It's called The Mammoth in the Room.

25:52It's on YouTube and Spotify and Apple, wherever you get your podcasts from.

25:55And you can listen in.

25:57And this is a story approach on leadership.

26:04We always talk about companies.

26:06We talk about historic cases.

26:10It's very short, only 10, 12 minutes.

26:12So you can link in.

26:14And at the moment, we are running a couple of shows on overconfidence and on hierarchy.

26:19So just listen in.

26:20And then in fall or beginning of next year, we will launch an online leadership academy where we have a course where we put all the things which are in the book together so that leaders can apply that from day one.

26:32So I want to give you the chance to promote your book.

26:35What are a couple of the big takeaways or benefits that people are going to get from reading your book?

26:38I think what they get is the book is built on three sections.

26:43It has on people, on strategy, and on implementation.

26:46And when you read the on people piece, you learn a lot about human behavior, the basics of human behavior, which we are not taught in business school.

26:56Why are people behaving like they behave?

26:59But then also to bring that into a group setting because individual behavior is very different to how we behave when we are in groups, when reciprocity comes into, when you have reputation and this kind of thing.

27:13That is what the chapter or section does.

27:15The second section is about strategy, where we go a lot into what does it mean for building strategy, and we are touching a lot on evolutionary biases, on false positive decision-making biases, overconfidence biases, and all these things.

27:32It's very important to understand them and know them.

27:34And once you have done that, and there is also a section built in which is called be political because that's the way how decisions are done.

27:42You can like it or not, but politics is the way, even in a company, how decisions are done.

27:48You need to build your network.

27:49You learn how to be political in a good way, right, so that you get your good project, your good intention through.

27:57The last piece is an implementation, how to put all of this in the ground.

28:01It's a nice parenthesis about everything.

28:04We believe if you read it, you're in a good place for a good start.

28:10Good. Well, thank you so much.

28:12Nicholas, it's been a pleasure having you on, and I appreciate your time very much.

28:16Thank you for coming on the show.

28:17Thank you very much for having me.