Laura Huang

It’s one of the most polarizing pieces of advice that we hear: “Go with your gut.” Many of us disregard our intuition in favor of gathering more and more data. But in an age where AI is rapidly taking over decision-making, Laura Huang argues that our intuition is the most important thing setting high performers apart. And more importantly, she teaches us how to hone it.

In this talk, Laura discusses her research on decision-making in organizations, and how you can combine both data and gut feel to make better decisions. Drawing on her fascinating book, You Already Know, she reveals how individuals and organizations alike can make better decisions by combining our unique experience with the data we already have.

Laura scientifically breaks down what happens during the intuiting process and details the personified, physical, emotional, and cognitive components of the gut feel that results. She shares real-life examples of ways you can leverage your intuition—like meeting someone three different times and in three different contexts before you hire them (and how you can do that in only 45 minutes). And she provides valuable exercises to help you recognize, understand, and strengthen your intuition:

• taking it from passive and accidental to active and intentional;
• developing it to deliver increasingly reliable signals;
• heightening our own sensitivity to the signals it sends;
• and much more.

This talk is a must-listen for leaders, managers, individual contributors, and everyone looking to use what they already know to make better decisions in the day-to-day.

Despite the transformative nature of artificial intelligence and data analytics, what underlies these technologies and tools are human capabilities, innovative uncertainty, and complex information sources. If we can include our own authentic human intelligence in the conversation around AI, we’ll gain a more positive, balanced, and sophisticated AI strategy.

Drawing from her award-winning research on perceptions, signals, and human behavior, Laura Huang integrates her human-centric perspective to show how the artificially-intelligent (AI) perspective is only as good as our ability to recognize the authentic and a behaviorally-intelligent perspective.

Biases and inaccurate perceptions exist in the workplace. But if we find our edge and flip the narrative, we can use these perceptions to our advantage and create an inclusive organizational culture of belongingness. In this talk, Laura Huang explores the research that’s been done on workplace culture and organizational climate, and shows us the actions we can take to make a difference. She empowers us with practical tools and tactics to leverage our range of backgrounds and career paths to support, inspire and make a sustainable impact. Laura shows us how we can communicate clearly, develop an inclusive culture from the outside and from the inside, and foster an environment where everyone can bring their unique edge to work.

When we think about “inclusivity,” most of us shift our mindset to center underrepresented groups. Yet Laura Huang argues that inclusivity entails including all voices without bias and provides a ground-breaking approach where we can aim for, and talk about, inclusion in a way that doesn’t lead to the political or emotional polarization.

With her realistic approach, inclusion is truly all-inclusive. She offers ways that leaders can promote both outside-in (macro, big-picture) and inside-out solutions (practical and empowering). Filled with real-world examples and actionable strategies, this talk inspires leaders to think of everyone’s experiences in a much broader way, going beyond mere representation and ultimately building stronger, more resilient teams that thrive on the richness of varied experiences and perspectives.