Paul Brown > Quotes

“When you win, say nothing, when you lose say less.”
― Paul Brown

“Excessive and persistent levels of fear create changes in brain function that then interfere with decision-making processes.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Fear-based cultures foster short-term thinking: you become defensive, seek to avoid confrontation or reprisal and focus on eliminating any threats instead of working together to deliver shared targets and outcomes.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Make it full of energy, not adrenalin; focused on possibility, not profit; generating independent thinking, not obedience; and spawning meaning everywhere because what really matters there is what really matters.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“When a leader is excited about a project, or trusts the people in the team, this too is infectious; fears are calmed and people are inspired to do their best.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Fear… is the most depressing of all the emotions; and it soon induces utter, helpless prostration, as if in consequence of, or in association with, the most violent and prolonged attempts to escape have actually been made.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“But triggered persistently, it destroys brain cells, causes ruminative early morning waking, and damages the immune system.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“What idea have the south-country people of the Tyne? The truth is any object nearly 300 miles distant is not only entirely out of range of metropolitan sympathy, but pretty nearly out of the confines of metropolitan knowledge. To thousands and thousands the tune is barley a sound; it conveys no ideas.”
― Paul Brown

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!”
― Paul Brown, The 1000 Best Quotes of All Time

“Fear experiences can produce dramatic changes in the brain’s architecture, resulting in profound alterations in our assumptions and perceptions.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Leaders therefore need to be able to calm their own fight/ flight/ freeze emotions of anger, disgust, shame and sadness, but most especially of fear so that they don’t get passed on to others.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“In many organizations not a decision can be made without calling a meeting. Fear of making a mistake trumps the willingness to take risks. And without some risk-taking there is little chance of creating an exciting future. So rather than risking a decision, leaders and managers have meetings.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Two days after the incident, the commander of the task group, Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, signalled ships with a list of 15 lessons learned.”
― Paul Brown, Abandon Ship: The Real Story of the Sinkings in the Falklands War

“Fear is never healthy in an organization. It doesn’t encourage positive action; instead it destroys motivation and productivity, and undermines your confidence and morale.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture