Brain Aware Podcast
The Brain Aware Podcast, exploring the science of success. We harness the power of human biology to help people—and organizations—rise to their potential. Join internationally recognized thought leader Dr. Britt Andreatta and talent strategist Justin Reinert as they explore the neuroscience behind today's workplace challenges, like change, teams, and leadership.
Each episode unpacks actionable insights from cutting-edge research to help you create environments for people to do their best work. Whether you’re an executive, people leader, talent professional, or lifelong learner, you’ll walk away with tools you can use today. Listen to become more brain aware.
Brain Aware Podcast
The Accidental Trainer's Journey from Sales to Learning & Development Leadership
When we experience change, whether by choice or circumstance, our brains undergo a predictable series of reactions. Understanding these patterns can transform how we navigate transitions—both as individuals and as leaders guiding others through organizational shifts.
Bob Bednarz, Director of Learning and Development at Advantage, shares his journey from "accidental trainer" to change management expert in this illuminating conversation about the neuroscience of adaptation. With over 15 years in talent development and experience implementing change across multiple organizations, Bob offers practical wisdom about leading teams through performance management overhauls, mergers, acquisitions, and cultural transformations.
What makes his approach unique is the deep integration of brain science principles. Bob reveals how he uses the Change Quest methodology to help people become more conscious of their reactions to change, addressing the four key brain structures that determine our resistance or receptivity to new situations. He explains why standardizing titles across 14 acquired companies requires more than just process updates—it demands individualized support for managers delivering complex messages about identity, compensation, and future direction.
The most powerful insights come from Bob's techniques for building motivation during change. By recognizing that people process transitions at different rates, creating psychological safety, involving early adopters as champions, and giving individuals some agency in the process, he demonstrates how organizations can accelerate adaptation without triggering the brain's threat response.
Looking toward the future, Bob shares his excitement about leveraging AI to create safe practice environments for developing new skills—allowing people to build confidence without the fear of real-world failure. This represents the next frontier in learning and development: combining neuroscience with technology to create more accessible, personalized growth experiences.
Whether you're currently leading change, experiencing it yourself, or preparing for future transitions, this episode offers valuable strategies for making your brain—and those of your team members—more adaptable and resilient through life's inevitable shifts.
Welcome to the Brain Aware podcast, where we explore the science of success. On this episode, Dr Britt Andreatta and Justin Reinert welcome Bob Bednarz, director of Learning and Development, at Advantive. Join us as we discuss Bob's journey in navigating and leading others through change.
Britt Andreatta:Hi, Bob. We're excited to welcome you to our podcast and have a conversation with you today.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, thanks, britt, I'm excited to be here.
Britt Andreatta:Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. How did you get to where you are now?
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, I'll give you the short version. So my name is Bob Ben-Nars and I guess you could say I've been in the training and or talent development world for probably the last 15 plus years. But like a lot of people that get into learning and development, I was an accidental trainer. I didn't know what it was. I did have a mission at one point in college. Me was like I want to help people develop personally and professionally. So I knew I wanted to do that. I didn't know how to get there or what method to get there. So I did start my career in sales and really got introduced to the sales training which now widely known as sales enablement, and I'm like, oh, this learning and development seems even better. So this does it on a bigger scale. So the rest is kind of history there of building L&D programs from scratch on global levels, individual levels as well. Great, thank you.
Justin Reinert:So and you know it's funny Bob thinking about like starting your career in sales. So, and you know it's funny Bob thinking about like starting your career in sales similar path. But I'm curious, thinking back on your career, what is a change initiative that you went through that was either successful or maybe one where there was a lot of struggle?
Bob Bednarz:Yeah. So it's interesting to think about it, because a lot of things that I feel like I do on day to day it's either implementing a change for somebody, whether it's a learning program, or we're involved in like a merger or an acquisition that comes to play, so, or maybe it's just like introducing a new process or standard, and I feel like any of those. Maybe this is a little too generic or high level. The same questions come up or the same comments come up all the time Like is this thing replacing me? Like there's a new technology, system or process, or like I can do better. I've done it like this for 20 plus years. I I know better than than the system. Um, so it's more just like it's the same thing over and over again, just in a different context, whether it's software or somebody coming in and we're acquiring a company. I don't know if that makes any sense.
Britt Andreatta:Absolutely. How about what's going on right now? Is there a change you're going through right now, and where in that change journey are you?
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, so I'm on a personal change journey. I feel like I'm also leading some, so maybe we can talk about a couple of them. But I did switch companies about six to seven months ago, so that's a big, big change, even though in this case, I had a desire, I had the choice. I wanted to make a change and I went ahead and did it. So we're definitely not of like the stage one or into stage two, stage three.
Bob Bednarz:But what's interesting is, anytime you start a new position or a new job, right, there's fluxes in motivation or like it's not always like everything's great, like you get hit challenges or roadblocks and then the motivation dips With that.
Bob Bednarz:The company I'm working for right now we're in the process of introducing a lot of new programs and standardization around learning, performance management, how we hire, how we interview. So I'm also a change agent in a lot of ways and we're bringing people through the process at different points. So some people are definitely more of that shock, denial stage of the change, or they're like a little anger or fear, Like what is this? What is this actually happening? We do have some early adopters, though, I will say it, some people that are like running, embracing the change, they're excited to kind of jump in. So I'm definitely playing a variety of roles. So it's always interesting going on a change journey while you're leading a group of people through it, but I'm also being a trailblazer and making sure that journey is like we have all the pieces in the puzzle together for all the individual people.
Britt Andreatta:Absolutely, and it sounds like you're juggling both your personal change of starting a new career with a new company and then also leading change within that company and having to get everyone else on board.
Justin Reinert:A hundred percent, yeah. So, bob, I'm curious about some of these professional changes. You said you were rolling out your performance management and the way that you hire. Which one of those is is um the most challenging for you right now.
Bob Bednarz:Um, they're both pretty close real time Cause we're literally in the performance management cycle this week. I'll I'll say that one is cause it's very, very real where we have groups of managers that are first time managers, that have never led a performance review, and then we have some that have led performance reviews from prior companies or through acquisitions. That it's been more of like a cheerleading process versus like a coaching process of how do I develop my people for the future. The other challenge is some people have never had metrics or KPIs around their role or what they're going to or how it impacts their bonus. So we're we're in the process of using a lot, introducing a lot of different things, and then the icing on the cake is we're standardizing the titles across the company, cause there's been a lot of acquisitions over the last three years of my current company, like 14 to be specific.
Bob Bednarz:So we want to try to make sure that. So our managers some of them first time managers are delivering. Not only here's how to deliver a good performance review and everything you do, but I have to deliver. The title changes, your bonus, your compensation, like your merit increases all in that one conversation. So there's been a lot of work that some of the team has been working day and night and overnight to make sure we have all the pieces in place so that we can enable our managers to deliver this message and there's no surprises for people.
Britt Andreatta:That's a lot. That's a lot to roll in, especially for a first time manager to handle.
Justin Reinert:Wow, I'm feeling a lot of flashback because I've gone through a lot of those things I'm curious about. You know you talk about performance management and how you've got some people who have prior experience with other companies and then some that are coming in really fresh. How do you bridge that gap when you're managing kind of this rollout? If here's this new process and you have, you know you do your needs analysis and you have people at very different places, how do you approach it so that, as you're getting people ready for the change process, they all come in at different places but we can end hopefully at the same successful place?
Bob Bednarz:A lot of it. I mean this is going to sound a very like people leader type of answer, but it is literally individualized plans. They're people centric where it's understanding those different audiences. So the person that has a lot of experience of delivering performance reviews and all the different types of conversations they very much need the process. So last week I had a bunch of office hours and people would sign up for office hours and for them it was focusing on maybe okay, what's the process, how do I do this? How do I deliver a few type orders that need to go versus the new time managers and even, like I would call like the middle managers, where they have maybe five years of experience.
Bob Bednarz:It was role-playing the conversation around okay, I need to have this difficult conversation, let's do it. So I'm like go, I'm your employee, we'll jump into the situation. Actually give them more of that like safe place to be able to practice and start getting the confidence this is where they go in front of the employee. It's not the first time, cause, just like the employees probably have anxiety around the performance management premises and they know a lot of these changes are coming Like we've announced a little bit about the title standardization, as well as like roles and how we're doing all this different stuff. But the managers also have a little bit of that like okay, I don't want to fail at delivering this message to the person, because they know the importance of if we do this right, we're going to create this culture of growth, of how we want to grow our people and develop the capabilities long term.
Justin Reinert:So you have you've actually ruled out or used the change quest methodology in two prior organizations. I'm just curious kind of how you've used it in the past and and you know what benefit you've seen in using that framework.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, I'm, we're getting close to doing it again and starting the next organization, which is really exciting, and it it iterates a little bit every time depending on the organization or what's the best fit. But when I think of like any of the learning programs that we're doing, a lot of it comes with building self-awareness, whether it's a leader or the individual, because then they can better perform on their job. So one way I've definitely used the framework is becoming more conscious or brain aware right, of what you're doing and why you're doing it and where it's actually coming from. So I've seen a lot of differences in people If you look at like individual contributors, if they're going through any sort of change or doing things they know like okay, this is me in this situation, maybe this is why I'm acting this way. Now I can use the strategy, but before it was just like okay, I don't know why I'm frustrated or I'm angry, I'm having extra levels of anxiety. They didn't have that opportunity to step out and see themselves Kind of like a step outside, like watching their conscious self make those specific decisions.
Bob Bednarz:I will say, like, from a leadership perspective, we use it a lot with making sure the leaders are strategic about how they're implementing a change and knowing that, hey, it's not a one size fits all. Everyone's in a different place, everything's a little bit different. Even the conversations around like what's the bandwidth of change, because people have gone through a lot of change over the last half decade and like understanding, like, okay, who's at their maximum, can we delay this a little bit? In most cases we haven't won that battle. But even like having people understand the numbers of changes people are going through, what type of change it is, have made a big difference.
Bob Bednarz:So I would say a lot of the change quests or even like methodology around the brain science of people going through change is filtered into onboarding, a lot of ways that we build psychological safety and building opportunities for people to fail and or learn on the job as they go to. We're doing a merger and acquisition where this person yesterday didn't even know they were going to be working for another company and how are we going to help them manage that individual change? But also their leader, who's going through the same exact change, may or may not, in most cases, have known about it. How do we help them and lead them through that actual change in the acquisition?
Britt Andreatta:Yeah, I love that. I mean, you know change is a skill like any other skill right. So we can teach people a framework, we can give them the skill set, we can have them practice. And I think that's always best is to embed change management or change training into the organization before you're in the middle of a big gnarly change and everyone has the emotions for that change right. And then you know the reason why we have content for executives and then managers and then employees is because everyone's going through it but they're responsible for a different part of it and if we can get all those pieces aligning, you can really accelerate that adaptivity and resilience.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, and I've also seen where we were just focused on leaders and a lot of my early work that I've worked with a lot of your content was very focused on leaders. And then the leaders would have all this language. It was great for them to work together, but then that language didn't filter down or they couldn't explain it. So language is only powerful if we all have this common language and what goes into it. So I definitely see a difference in how people are approaching it. You mentioned a little bit about just the emotions. We have emotional intelligence training built into a lot of our personal growth programs and helping people manage and know what emotions they're going through, what their triggers are, which is a big part of the Brain Aware program as well.
Britt Andreatta:Absolutely. Tell me a little bit more, like when you're working with others. How do you navigate motivation for change right, Because some folks are going to be like, yes, we want this and they're driving it, and others are going to be really resistant to it. So tell me a little more about how you identify that motivation and how do you move people to become more motivated for change.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, I think part of it is just the recognition that everyone's in a different place. Going back to that people-centric example and saying wherever they are, it's okay. And even that motivation may change, like one day you might be walking with a purpose because you understand the why and where we need to go. Other days you might be digging in your heels because there was a setback and you're like, why don't we just go back to the way I used to do it? So I think it's a lot of a combination of individual coaching, whether that's working through the people managers because at the end of the day, the people managers are the most influential in the leading or managing the change or finding what they use. So making sure they know the why, so they have the desire to help their people to change. But sometimes it's understanding like, here's what I just have to do as an individual, here's my why or what's in there for me to go through it and being able to communicate, and then that's at the goal. So definitely a lot of that, even having a map of here's where we are and here's the vision, right, and everyone usually gets tied into the vision, some shape, or now even if you're like, okay, I can see how my understanding here's the why, here's my purpose, and understanding how I go from here to here that makes a huge difference, a big part, and we're definitely in the remote first type based company.
Bob Bednarz:So I've been preaching and trying to bring up as much as possible If you want people to be motivated. They're all going in through together, even sometimes trudging along together on whatever struggle it is. We'll build experience, especially in our mergers and acquisitions, where we have an entire month of welcome that we're working through and they're going through it together and like how are we moving their motivations Um of where it needs to go? And that's kind of like you give them that social connection, they feel a little bit safer but they can then talk up a little bit more. There's the psychological safety component. So a lot of different tools and a lot of them.
Bob Bednarz:I would say that we we've adopted or we try to bring in. But it's really it starts for me with the why and I think at this point probably everyone's seen the Simon Sinek start with the why and why it's important. But can you actually drill down into the individual and get their motivation? Because if that one people manager isn't on board or they don't understand why they don't have the desire to actually change. Good luck getting the rest of their organization or everyone underneath. You're going to lose those people at the end of the day.
Justin Reinert:Related to motivation. I've been having a lot of conversations lately about you know. So we talk about how our motivation is determined by choice and desirability of any particular change, and I've been leaning a lot into the choice piece and helping people understand when change happens. If we don't have a choice, even if it's desirable, we're not going to be, as you know, running towards it, as we say, and it's just, I don't know. For me, it highlights the importance of individual agency in change. I'm curious how you, you know, when you're trying to get people on board with something, how do you create some individual agency so that you increase their motivation for change?
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, early, and often we've all heard it right In theory it's something that everyone's heard in their life, but harder to execute or have the execution on it. So if we can get in front of people and say, hey, this is coming, here's why it's coming, here's how it's going to help you, the man message gets cascaded down throughout their organization. So when it happens, it's not like the immediate shock I will say. I will say. But the other thing I think that really helps is understanding who your early adopters are, who are going to be your change champions is a term that often gets used for this and bringing them in to start, like, be involved with the change or the situation. Hopefully all your managers are part of that early adopters, but we know they're not going to be. You're going to have the people and let's invite them into the conversation too, cause usually they have a concern. It's valid. We just need to listen to the concern and help them understand what that concern is and how to mitigate it or or move forward from that. So, combination of the high level where, like, how do we get everyone on board the line, messaging, but there's also a lot of that individual listening and coaching, whether it's the champion and saying, hey, how do I get this other person? And when I noticed so-and-so is struggling, you've known this person or you work closely with them why do you think they're struggling and how do you think we can help bring them aboard or bring them along as well?
Bob Bednarz:So some things maybe specific things we'll do, especially in like a merger and acquisition. Example is have a weekly call with just those people managers. Let's walk me through your team. Like how's it going? How are the? Where are they at? What's their status? Like are they trudging along right to your point, like, or are they? Are they digging in their heels? Hopefully the trudging along gets to the point where they're walking a little bit more, even if it's it's uphill a little bit. But how do we move them to a little bit more, even if it's uphill a little bit? But how do we move them to a little bit more of that positive direction versus digging in the heels is what we're trying to do.
Britt Andreatta:Bob, I'd love to hear a little more. Just because you've done. You have an extensive experience with mergers and acquisitions, right? That's a lot to have gone through. I'm wondering what are some of your best tips or your playbook for successful M&A, Because some of our listeners may be kind of approaching that for the first time. I'm wondering what you've learned in your journey of doing a lot of M&As.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, I would say every M&A is a little bit different and every company does M&A a little bit different. I've worked at companies where we do an M&A and 100% of the employees are go forward and they continue to stay with the company. And I've worked with other companies where 80% of the employees don't continue but you need to do some sort of knowledge transfer to make sure there's business continuity. So a lot of it, I will say, is similar to what what we we talked about, whether it's like let's talk about let's assuming we're keeping everybody, is empowering them on like here's the why or here's where we're going, here's the vision long-term and here's how. This is good for you, but also making sure that all the little things in their brain to bring in the brain science a little bit, or being at ease, so we know they're going to have to develop new habits. So what do we have?
Bob Bednarz:The framework of how we're going to get there, and showing them the map that we talked about of here's how you're going to get, like whether it's an onboarding plan or an immersion plan to get those social connections would be like one way to do it.
Bob Bednarz:Um, the other way is getting them in contact with people who have gone through the similar type of change and they have almost like a mentor and somebody that can reach out.
Bob Bednarz:That's separate of like say me who might be in like leading that vision or be like get excited about that. Um, those are a couple things off off the bat, but I do think the individual like calls with the people managers and helping them and guide them through the change is the biggest part, because you might not be able to reach a hundred people like individual, have individual calls, understand, but I can reach 25 people and if I have to have 30 minute or 25, 30 minute meetings through the course of that week or as you're going through that first, like 90 days to make sure like people are moving away from that like digging in the heels or like to that like I have the knowledge, I have what I need to do. To maybe Justin's point, I didn't have a choice in this, but I'm seeing where this is going. I see how this can positively impact me, so I'm going to at least I'm going to go along with it and give it more than just like digging in and kind of shrinking like digging in and kind of shrinking.
Justin Reinert:So Bob in wired to resist. Brett talks about the four brain structures that are activated by change and I'm I'm curious kind of how you've seen any one of those play out in change initiatives that you'd been involved with in the past.
Bob Bednarz:Maybe we switch. Good, we talked a lot on M and a, or at least a little bit of that. I think I did mention earlier that a lot of the change quest shows up in different programs, even like onboarding. So there's a big focus in our onboarding, really the first 90 days to make sure that people are given the space to create the habits, which is kind of the basal ganglia. I know I'm talking to the experts here, so hopefully I don't. I don't mess anything up on the brain science. I don't have the PhD, I've only learned from the best when it comes to that. Um, so giving that like.
Bob Bednarz:Also, like even when any new person comes to the organization, like we talk a lot about psychological safety and how we build that as an individual or as a team this way the amygdala is very happy and a team this way the amygdala is very happy and it's not thinking like I'm gonna, I'm not, I'm in danger at the end of the day because we're not going to be able to get them to like learn something complex or or think very high unless they feel safe.
Bob Bednarz:And then, um, they have that space to kind of build the habits. Um, the other thing is there's built-in structure. So I think we mentioned this as well that they can fail right away, not like fail and just continue to fail. Like there's the safety net, we're helping them out with a mentor or a coach or somebody that is bringing them along the way, but it's like, hey, it's okay to fail, but we learned on it and here's how we're going to do it.
Bob Bednarz:So hopefully that banyula relaxes a little bit and starts being like it's okay, I can take the leap, I can jump on it and do okay. So like a lot of it and even if we don't call out like the parts of the brain, specifically, it's making sure that we have these strategies and the tools, that the parts of the brain that are going crazy and saying I can't do this or I'm afraid I'm gonna fail, or calmed a little bit and you can focus more on where they need to go. You've passed your brain structure test, but I don't think you mentioned the basal ganglia, which I know is a big one for Brett.
Britt Andreatta:You did, you covered that one. The two we haven't talked about are the inner renal cortex, which is all about maps of physical space and social networks, and then the habenula, which is the brain structure that tracks failure.
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, so like the inter renal cortex, like giving people the map or making those social connections. So everyone has heard to like you've created an immersion plan of having them meet people, but once again, the execution behind that and making sure their managers are like who have you met? What have you learned? How do you utilize the strength to help them build those maps in their first really 30 to 60, 90 days? So then they're set on the right path, which makes a big difference first, really 30 to 60, 90 days.
Bob Bednarz:So then they're set on the right path, which makes a big difference.
Britt Andreatta:Right, as we wrap up our conversation today, I want to hear a little bit about what you're excited for in the coming months. What's something you're working on or that's got you kind of juiced up as you look forward?
Bob Bednarz:Yeah, and if you probably would have asked me this question maybe a year ago definitely not two years ago it would have been probably a way different answer. And maybe a year ago definitely not two years ago it would have been probably a way different answer. And I know it's a hot topic. It's coming up the river with the concept of AI and what it means to help people learn, develop, ramp up faster. So I've been doing a lot of just like research over the last six, seven months, especially when I think about redesigning some of our programs and scaling it in a larger sense of like how can we leverage AI to help somebody develop interviewing skills in that safe environment? So they're going to interview and have been. You know, I was like, well, I've never ran an interview before, I'm probably going to be bad at this Like I don't want to fail. Right, we're getting rid of that sort of stuff or build the habits that make a difference.
Bob Bednarz:So I feel like AI is a big buzzword. A lot of people are talking about it. I don't think it's fully there on how far I want it to go. So I'm hoping in the next three to six months either a vendor figures out the perfect scenario so we don't all have to create our own chat GPT bots and and train them and it's just like magic and I just I plug in a like a couple of prompts and everything works magically. But I think helping people get that opportunity to learn and develop skills on their own, as well as create those social connections, will make even more powerful experiences.
Bob Bednarz:When we have those live sessions, I feel like a lot of my career. We like we have the live sessions, only live as possible. And then we went really far like okay, let's build the e-learning and the e-learning, okay, was effective, but doesn't necessarily like drive the skill. I feel like now we're getting to the point where we do have all the tools, even though we've been talking about virtual reality, like now's the time like ai can actually make it more accessible and take it to the next level so anyone knows and anyone's doing it.
Bob Bednarz:please reach out to me and let me know how you're doing it, cause that's been on my brain for a while. At this point, Awesome, thank you.
Justin Reinert:Great. Well, bob, it was really great to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much, and um, we'll make sure in our show notes we have your um LinkedIn profile so people can reach out to you and find you. Are there any other things that you would want to share of you? Know how people find you. I know you have a lot of extracurricular stuff in your life, and so I don't know if there's anything else you want to plug with us today.
Bob Bednarz:Oh no, obviously they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm not probably an active poster, but I am an active follower and if somebody does send me a message, as long as it's not just all trying to sell me AI now that I mentioned AI, I will visit. I do have networking meetings. That's always a good thing at the end of the day, but obviously if you're in Chicago, you're based in Chicago and you want to look me up, want to get together, happy to do that. I do have a lot of extracurriculars. If you probably search the internet for me, you'll find all the other things and I'll have my other life when I'm not helping develop habits and doing a little bit of brain aware and learning and development.
Britt Andreatta:Fantastic. It's so lovely to see you again, bob and connect. You know you and I have crossed paths for many years now and I'm so honored that you're a client of ours and that you're bringing our training to your third company. So thank you for being such a great partner.
Speaker 1:Thank you, guys. Thank you for listening to the Brain Aware podcast. To learn more about Brain Aware training and our brain-based approach to change teams and all levels of employee development, visit brainawaretrainingcom.
