Cerebra

We train psychological safety and performance for knowledge workers. Check out our pages for more detail.

CEREBRA is New Zealand’s premier brain performance consultancy, committed to helping you and your people improve your performance. We use research-based approaches to support your goals and give you confidence that what we do really works. We'll help you maximise performance through understanding your brain, mind and behaviour and then applying strategies for change. This will help you create more productive people and teams, build teams that self-manage health and safety, and develop a culture of collaborative success. We offer a full range of services from 1:1 coaching to team workshops to group facilitation. Book a workshop with us today, or contact us to talk about what you’d like to achieve.

14/10/2026

You can’t tell people to calm down. Give the arousal a better job.

I am ashamed to admit I have, more than once, committed the egregious social, intimate relationship, workplace relationship, and parental sin, of telling someone in full sympathetic nervous system arousal, that they should just calm down. You may throw tomatoes, and possibly soft apples, now. It is possibly the least useful instruction available to a person who isn’t calm. It’s well intended (of course!...

You can’t tell people to calm down. Give the arousal a better job. October 14, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General I am ashamed to admit I have, more than once, committed the egregious social, intimate relationship, workplace relationship, and parental sin, of telling someone in full symp...

07/10/2026

Birth order, labels, and how your team performs

A couple of weeks ago I was talking personality with a group of Emergency Managers. They’d recently completed a five factor questionnaire for me as part of a week-long residential programme they were attending. We were discussing how this information could feed into their work in teams, with new teams they might suddenly be thrust into, what they felt about the results, what it all means, and so on....

Birth order, labels, and how your team performs October 7, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General A couple of weeks ago I was talking personality with a group of Emergency Managers. They’d recently completed a five factor questionnaire for me as part of a week-long residential programme they...

29/09/2026

It’s hard to learn to swim on land. If the real job happens under pressure, some of the training should too

It’s very hard to learn to swim on land. At some point, sooner than later, ya gotta get in the water. I recently participated in a simulation with emergency managers, while they learned by engaging in a deliberately chaotic scenario. Fun, practical, and very, very useful. As an observer, it was a fascinating to watch Typically, we teach skills in calm conditions, assess them in calm conditions, sign the person off as competent, and then hope or expect the skill to survive intact when the working environment adds urgency, uncertainty, noise, interruption, interpersonal difficulties, scrutiny and consequence....

It’s hard to learn to swim on land. If the real job happens under pressure, some of the training should too September 30, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General It’s very hard to learn to swim on land. At some point, sooner than later, ya gotta get in the water. I recently participated in ...

22/09/2026

The most expert move under pressure might be to stop trusting your memory

Experts are supposed to know what they’re doing. Right? I think that’s fair. They’re experts after all. What I think we do though, is stretch that further than it should go. One way we do this is to think that ‘experts have deep knowledge and skill’ means ‘experts should know everything about their field’, even if they’re a specialist. But also, which interests me more, they should be able to recall every critical step, in sequence, under pressure, while interrupted, with incomplete information, and without looking anything up....

The most expert move under pressure might be to stop trusting your memory September 23, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General Experts are supposed to know what they’re doing. Right? I think that’s fair. They’re experts after all. What I think we do though, is stretch that further than i...

16/09/2026

A lawyer said her team shouldn’t get sick?

I read an article in the New Zealand Herald about a senior New Zealand lawyer who reportedly told her junior staff they didn't need sick days, because theirs wasn't a physical job. When one of them reported a high fever, she apparently suggested it was psychosomatic. You may have seen it. It was a wild ride. I found this interesting on several fronts but let me choose just two, both of which are things I’ve heard over the years, and both of which are wrong....

A lawyer said her team shouldn’t get sick? September 16, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General I read an article in the New Zealand Herald about a senior New Zealand lawyer who reportedly told her junior staff they didn’t need sick days, because theirs wasn’t a physical job. When one of...

09/09/2026

Why couldn’t I think of it at the time?

“But I know this! Why couldn’t I think of it at the time!!” I’ve said versions of this in my head, and occasionally aloud. I’ve heard if after difficult meetings, during clinical events, presentations, and negotiations. You’ve probably heard versions of it too. Basically, someone competent (like you and me, naturally) looks back at an obvious piece of information, maybe a familiar process, some straightforward option perhaps, and wonders why it wasn’t available to them when they needed it....

Why couldn’t I think of it at the time? September 9, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General “But I know this! Why couldn’t I think of it at the time!!” I’ve said versions of this in my head, and occasionally aloud. I’ve heard if after difficult meetings, during clinical events, pre...

02/09/2026

Apparently, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after an interruption

Apparently, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after an interruption. At least, that’s the rule according to wellbeing programmes, slide decks I’ve seen, the occasional HR newsletter and, perhaps, presentations you’ve sat through yourself. Fast Company ran the 23 minute version in 2013. The Washington Post covered it in 2015. Today it resides in the blogs of time management and workplace analytics tools as seemingly accepted fact about the average person....

Apparently, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after an interruption September 2, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General Apparently, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after an interruption. At least, that’s the rule according to wellbeing programmes, slide decks I’ve...

25/08/2026

What happens to decisions under sustained stress?

I was working with a group of Public Information Managers recently who are in the emergency response space, What a great group of people from across the Canterbury region, and across a range of organisations. Completely dedicated to their work. In brief, I was talking about how cognitive performance degrades under stress. It was a bit of a skim across the highlights but did prompt me to write some more on an aspect we couldn't really cover in any depth, so here you go....

What happens to decisions under sustained stress? August 26, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General I was working with a group of Public Information Managers recently who are in the emergency response space, What a great group of people from across the Canterbury region, and across a range of....

19/08/2026

Mental Health First Aid is not a psychosocial risk strategy

Training mental health first aiders might tick a box intended to sit in a different column, will not change workload, rosters, communication, role clarity, management styles, leadership, or other factors that we might roll into psychosocial risk. ‘Number of people who attended MHFA’, or ‘20% completed, 35% scheduled within six months’, should never, repeat never, make it into Board papers as a metric for addressing psychosocial risk....

Mental Health First Aid is not a psychosocial risk strategy August 19, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General Training mental health first aiders might tick a box intended to sit in a different column, will not change workload, rosters, communication, role clarity, management styles, leadershi...

11/08/2026

The difference between a speak-up channel and a speak-up climate

Having a speak up channel is important organisational infrastructure. It’s different from the organisational climate, which is what people feel when they consider using it. I’d posit that many organisations have a channel, but most have never measured either. Infrastructure, like a physical structure, is easy to point to. We can retrieve a policy, point to a sticker on the wall with a phone number and email address, print a pdf, highlight a contact person, register training completion, and so on....

The difference between a speak-up channel and a speak-up climate August 12, 2026 Author: brendonbclark Category: General Having a speak up channel is important organisational infrastructure. It’s different from the organisational climate, which is what people feel when they consider using it. I’...

Address

Christchurch
8083

Website

http://cerebra.co.nz/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cerebra posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Cerebra:

Want your business to be the top-listed business in Christchurch?